Teaching about the Holocaust: Major Educational Predicaments,Proposals for Reform,and Change—An International Perspective

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyze the findings of a research project on how the Holocaust is taught around the world. The project analyzes central issues and educational events that occur while teaching the Holocaust “behind the classroom door,” in public schools in different countries. Researchers from 10 nations participated in the project: Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Estonia, Scotland, Australia, the United States, Canada, and Israel. One of the major findings of this research was that although the official establishment is very interested in teaching the subject of the Holocaust, teachers can find it hard to teach because of resistance by their students, who occasionally react in class with cynical, racist, anti-Semitic, and antidemocratic remarks. In all the countries, researchers indicate three principal ways of handling the question of the Holocaust: education, teacher training, and research.