There is a surge of racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic tweets since Elon Musk, a self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” took over Twitter and unleashed rightwing hate speech. Anti-Semitic posts rose by over 60%. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reports that in 2021 there were more documented cases of harassment, vandalism and violence directed against Jews than in any year since the group started to keep records in 1979. So far, 2022 looks like it will equal or top 2021.
Musk’s Twitter antics are not the only contributor to rising anti-Semitism in the United States. Donald Trump, who notoriously declared some of the neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 were “very fine people,” recently hosted a dinner at his Mar-a-Lago estate where he entertained Kanye West (a/k/a Ye) and the white nationalist Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes. Earlier in 2022, Marjorie Taylor Greene (Rep-GA) Georgia spoke at a fundraising event hosted by Fuentes. Arizona Congressional Representative Paul Gosar also attended the event. Greene was removed from Congressional committee assignments for statements where she claimed that California wildfires may have been caused by Jewish bankers. But with Republicans now in control of the House of Representatives, Greene, an ally of the new majority leader, could end up chairing House committees.
Holocaust education, focusing on the Nazi plan to exterminate European Jews during World War II, is proposed as a way to combat anti-Semitism by organizations including Yad Vashem and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, argues “Addressing antisemitism through education is both an immediate security imperative and a long-term educational investment to promote human rights and global citizenship.” New York State is currently exploring whether the European Holocaust is sufficiently covered in the secondary school curriculum.
Starting in 1933 with its rise to power in Germany, the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler savagely victimized German Jews and between 1942 and 1945 Germany exterminated an estimated 6 million Eastern European Jews while killing tens of millions of other people. The European Holocaust was over 75 years and three generations ago and few survivors remain alive today. My father’s grandfather, an aunt, and cousins were all murdered in what is today Ukraine. But these people died years before I was born and for my grandchildren these events are ancient history. It is not clear to me how expanded Holocaust education in schools will address the current wave of anti-Semitism.
An underlying question when developing a Holocaust curriculum is “What is important to know and why about what happened to Eastern European Jews during World War II?” Answering that question requires considering whether the European Holocaust was just one of a series of horrendous historical events during the 20th century that included genocides committed by Turkey against Armenians and genocides in Cambodia, Kosovo, Rwanda, and the Congo, the atomic attacks by the United States on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, murderous Stalinist purges and the starvation of millions of Ukrainians by the Soviet Union, mass starvation during China’s Great Leap Forward, and countless brutal wars. Because everything cannot get equal weight or even be included in a 10th grade global history curriculum that covers roughly 1750 to the present, teachers need to decide which events should be addressed at all and which should receive extended coverage. Part of the curriculum debate is whether the European Holocaust was fundamentally different from other genocides, a singularity that should be a major curriculum focus. Even if you decide to make the European Holocaust a curriculum focus, decisions have to be made about how much time should be spent on what the Nazis did before and during the war, other groups that were complicit, bystanders, resistance, rescuers, post-war judgment, and what the United States and its allies did or did not know about what was taking place.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and Facing History and Ourselves both recommend taking a comparative approach in the curriculum looking at similarities and differences with other 20th and 21st century catastrophic events. Facing History and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum both warn that simplistic comparisons risk trivializing what happened to Eastern European Jews.
I identify what happened during World War II as the European Holocaust to be specific and because I do not believe the term holocaust should be reserved for just that event. I consider other genocidal acts to be holocausts as well. The origin of the term “holocaust” is the ancient Greek term for “burnt offering” and before World War II it was used to describe the mass murder of any large group of people. It was not until the 1960s that holocaust was being used by academics to refer to the Nazi campaign of extermination against Eastern European Jews and it was not until the 1978 movie Holocaust starring Meryl Streep that the term became widely associated with the Nazi extermination of Eastern European Jewry. Jews sometimes refer to what then as “Shoah,” Hebrew for “catastrophe.”
While New York State has mandated Holocaust education since 1994, recent legislation is supposed to ensure the mandate is being followed and address the continuing problem of anti-Semitism. The state’s Education Department will be surveying school districts to discover how much time they allocate to teach the history of the European Holocaust. School districts have until January 1, 2023 to respond and those considered to have inadequate coverage will be required to submit plans to revise their curriculum. It is not clear what constitutes adequate coverage, what revisions would be required, and how actual teaching about the European Holocaust will be monitored. It is definitely not clear how lessons on the European Holocaust will end anti-Semitism.
The New York State Middle School Social Studies Framework currently calls for students to learn how after World War II “The damage from total warfare and atrocities such as the Holocaust led to a call for international efforts to protect human rights and prevent future wars. ” The 10th grade curriculum requests that students “examine the atrocities against the Armenians; examine the Ukrainian Holodomor, and examine the Holocaust” and recognizes that “Since the Holocaust, human rights violations have generated worldwide attention and concern.” In 11th grade students “investigate and analyze the historical context of the Holocaust, Nuremberg Trials, and Tokyo Trials and their impacts on the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” There are no other guidelines or time recommendations so districts, schools, and teachers approach coverage of the European Holocaust very differently.
I recommend a twelve-lesson unit, “World War II, the Holocaust & Genocide,” in tenth grade organized around these aim questions. A number of the lessons address Nazi ideology and presage the “Final Solution.”
- What challenges did the Weimar Republic face after World War I?
- Why did Hitler appeal to Germany?
- How did Hitler promise to help Germany?
- Why did fascism appeal to Italy?
- How did Japan’s world power increase in the 1930’s?
- Why was global peace threatened again?
- How did the Allies win World War II?
- Was World War II a just war?
- Was the cost of World War II worth the effects?
- How can we assess responsibility for the European Holocaust?
- How did individuals and small groups resist the Nazis and rescue victims?
- How should individuals, schools, nations, and the international community remember the Holocaust and prevent future genocides?
Historical ignorance runs deep in this country. A 2020 survey found that Almost two-thirds of young adults in the United States did not know that 6 million Jews were killed during the European Holocaust and almost 50% did not know the name of a single concentration camp. In New York State nearly 20% of 18-39 year olds thought that Jews caused the Holocaust. There is clearly a problem with education and with anti-Semitism, but it is not clear how one or two additional lessons on the European Holocaust is going to change this.
