Problems in Coping with the Holocaust: Experiences with Students in a Multinational Program

Abstract

Ever since the end of the Holocaust we have been forced to confront the penetrating question, Does peda gogy have a special and unique task in the education of man in the world after Auschwitz? The program "Teaching the Holocaust as Education Toward Values" has been developed over the past three years in various educational settings in three different countries: the United States, Germany, and Israel. In order to overcome the problems in coping with this unique theme in the classroom, we have used as a guiding principle the placing of adolescents at the focal point of the educational process. Beyond the differences in the cultural backgrounds and emotional attachments, students in all three countries underwent a similar process: giving up precon ceived judgments and stereotypes and replacing them with an effort toward critical thinking. As one of the students ex pressed : "Auschwitz is the furthest end of a human con tinuum. I am obliged to do everything I can to prevent the human degeneration toward it."