The Teaching of the Holocaust: Dilemmas and Considerations

Abstract

Education literature has failed to deal with the problem of teaching the Holocaust. Publications dealing with teaching the Holocaust begin appearing in the beginning of the sixties and in the late seventies in Israel, Germany, the United States, and elsewhere. Educators and students dis covered that they were not prepared to confront the prob lems the Holocaust evoked. There are many educational ap proaches to the Holocaust but the educator needs the correct teaching aids, methods, and curriculum support. There is no clear-cut concept of the Holocaust. Rather, the problem is how to present the truth without traumatizing. Educators need to foster students' sensitivity to and involvement and identifi cation with the Holocaust. To bring students to an honest confrontation with the phenomenon of antisemitism and with the murder of European Jewry while a silent world stood by is a universal objective.