Holocaust

Education,

Remembrance and

Research

Mr. Miles Lerman

CHAIRMAN, UNITED STATES MEMORIAL HOLOCAUST COUNCIL

UNITED STATES

Overview of the Importance of Holocaust

Education, Remembrance and Research

Break-out Session: Overview of the Importance of Holocaust

Education, Remembrance and Research

In the Hall of Remembrance of the Holocaust Memorial

Museum, the Eternal Flame is surrounded by the prophetic inscription of

the Holy Scriptures of Deuteronomy, chapter 4. It reads:

"Only guard yourself and guard your soul carefully, lest you

forget the things your eyes saw, and lest these things depart your heart all

the days of your life, and you shall make them known to your children,

and to your children’s children.”

What a fitting quote to inspire remembrance.

Our session today is dedicated to Holocaust education,

remembrance and research.

How remarkable and how wonderful it is that in the midst of

discussions of financial assets, of what to do to bring some modicum of

justice after the biggest theft in human history, that we decided to discuss

future plans for Holocaust education.

It is a mark of great foresight to understand how important it is

that this century not end with assets, not end with a business deal, but

with consideration of the hearts and minds of future generations. I am

very pleased that so many dignitaries, scholars and specialists from

several countries have seen fit to address the need to shape the future

through Holocaust education, and I look forward to the exciting

presentation of the Task Force for International Cooperation on

Holocaust Education.

Dr. Beate Kosmala

CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF ANTI-SEMITISM

TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY BERLIN

GERMANY

Holocaust Education - Research -

Remembrance in Germany

Break-out Session: Overview of the Importance of Holocaust

Education, Remembrance and Research

“Those who run away from their past will be caught up by it. We

Germans face up to the past for the sake of the future.” This conviction

was expressed by German President Roman Herzog during the visit of

Israel’s President Ezer Weizmann to Bonn in early 1996.

With the exception of Israel, probably no nation has placed a

greater emphasis on Holocaust education than Germany in the last

decades. Since the early 60s, the conference of ministers of education

and culture in the German states has provided explicit guidelines for

teaching about National Socialism and the Holocaust. All official

schoolbooks published since the mid-1980s have dealt with the

Holocaust. Libraries for teachers and for students contain extensive

literature in the German language on National Socialism and the

Holocaust. Many German schools include a visit to a concentration camp

memorial, meetings with survivors and eyewitnesses, and the use of

related resources in Holocaust education. Outside the school setting, the

subjects of World War II, the Holocaust and Jewish issues are very often

featured in print media, television and radio, as well as in the world of

the arts.

So it seems the younger generation have received a

comprehensive education about this terrible chapter of German history.

Unfortunately, one sometimes hears German students - and even teachers

- say, “I’ve heard enough already.” This reaction does not necessarily

follow an intensive confrontation with the theme. Instead, it has to do
806 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

with, on one hand, weariness with the many media programs in these

issues, and on the other hand it involves a defense-mechanism and

resistance to these themes. Clearly, what are needed are not just more

hours, more material and more media coverage, but new pedagogicalpsychological concepts. It raises questions not about the quantity of

information but rather the quality of educational developments in

Holocaust education.

What are the unique conditions of Holocaust education in

Germany, regarding the destruction of European Jewry? Youth are

confronted with the fact that the map of terror bears German names; that

Germans ordered and planned the murder of European Jewry, and were

the majority of perpetrators. This raises issues - for Germans most of all -

of guilt, collective guilt and responsibility. Even though the educational

target is by now the third or fourth post-war generation, with fewer direct

family ties to National Socialism, the Holocaust theme draws sometimes

resistance, characterized by a diffuse guilt-complex. Youth often feel as

if they have been held collectively responsible, on an international stage.

To reach this generation, to prepare them for intensive confrontations

with this chapter of history, concepts must be developed that take into

account this feeling, and that tie in to the lifestyles and thought patterns

of youth.

Another situation unique to Germany is that until 1989 there

were two German nations, in which the Holocaust and National

Socialism were handled quite differently. The official antifascist policy

of East Germany was like a political religion, built on concepts of guilt

and pardon. With National Socialism subsumed under Fascism and with

the new economic system allowing a distancing from the past, questions

about German guilt and complicity faded out of the picture. In the last

history schoolbook of GDR, published in 1988, the problem was

explained away as yet another imperialistic crime, while antifascist

resistance became increasingly important in educational material.

Both parts of Germany now have to learn together how to handle

the tragic inheritance of our history from 1933 to 1945.

In 1995, when youth in the former East German state of

Brandenburg were asked their position in Jews and Israel, researchers

noted “a remarkable lack of feeling and paucity of words regarding the

persecution and murder of Jews.” In fact, teachers are confronted more

often with disinterest, declarations of irrelevance - such as “history

doesn’t interest me” - and ignorance among students than with

aggressive prejudice or denial. And disinterest is certainly not only a

problem in former East Germany or even in unified Germany. To combat
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 807

disinterest and indifference regarding recent history - and therefore

regarding the suffering of millions - is the greatest challenge for

Holocaust pedagogy.

In universities, on the research level, the confrontation with the

murder of European Jewry had a slow start, both in West and East

Germany. In its first phase, primarily in the 50’s, research focused on the

SS, who were made out to be the lone group responsible for Germany’s

massive crimes. This supposedly all-powerful character of the SS and

security police helped explain the lack of resistance among the populace.

In the second phase of the research, as more urgent questions

were raised in West Germany about the massive crimes of National

Socialism - brought on by the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem and the

Auschwitz trial in Frankfurt am Main and other war-crimes trials -

studies were begun on the persecution and murder of Jews; the

concentration camp system; the SS and police; which influenced and

determined the level of knowledge regarding the National Socialist

politics of extermination for decades.

In comprehensive German-language collections and debates of

that time, research focused on the events leading up to the Nazi seizure

of power.

Not until the mid-80’s did the Holocaust itself become a prime

topic for German historians. The 70’s and early 80’s can be seen as a

second phase of repression. Perpetrators and crime scenes, accomplices

and those who profited from the crimes - and most importantly the

victims themselves - remained anonymous. One symptom is that it took

20 years for Raul Hilberg’s ground-breaking work of 1962 “The

destruction of European Jews,” to come out in German, and then only

through a relatively unknown publisher. Only in 1990 was it republished

by a prominent house.

True, since the 1980s the Holocaust has been increasingly a topic

of public discussion in Germany - receiving a major push from the 1979

broadcast of the American TV series, “Holocaust” - but it was usually

discussed as metaphor for genocide in general rather than as a concrete

expression of genocide.

The German contribution of empirical research on the

persecution and murder of the Jews in Europe was minuscule, compared

to that of the United States and Israel.

Since the early 80’s, researchers shifted from discussion of

“Fascism and totalitarism” to a discussion about the decisions leading to

the so-called “Final Solution.” This debate, too, concentrated not on the
808 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

murders themselves - it was assumed that one was already informed - but

rather on the interpretation and result of genocide.

The mid 80’s brought new initiatives related to concrete,

empirical questions; this in turn drew the attention of the international

research community. It is worth mentioning in that context the research

project of Munich’s Institute for Contemporary History (“Dimensions of

Genocide,” published in 1991), aimed at establishing the number of Jews

who were murdered in all occupied countries and in Germany.

Since the mid-90’s, younger German historians have made

important contributions to Holocaust research, based on empirical data,

investigating the actions of the German occupiers in specific locations in

Middle and Eastern Europe. Such research makes it clear that the

National Socialist politics of extermination was no secret, but rather a

clear part of the conquest and occupation plan in Europe. It is not seen

today as an isolated issue but as an essential part of the occupation policy

in the East.

Clearly, the number of those who participated directly or

indirectly in the National Socialist murders extends far beyond the circle

of those who fired weapons or shut the gas chambers doors. This

conclusion can be drawn from studies by Goetz Aly on the murder of

Jews in the Warthegau in Western Poland (“Endlösung: The

Displacement and Murder of European Jewry,” 1995); by historian

Christoph Dieckman on the mass murder of Jews of Lithuania; Christian

Gerlach on the occupation politics and murder of the Jews of White

Russia, and the works of Dieter Pohl and Thomas Sandkühler on the socalled “Final Solution” in Galicia (1996), all of which describe the

circumstances, perpetrators and victims of the murders.

Clearly, the racist attitudes - anti-Semitism - had a decisive

effect in preparing the individual to commit murder. Racism and antiSemitism designated a hierarchy of human worthiness, of the right to

live, and imposed a moral imperative toward extermination by brute

force, in direct opposition to the Humanistic or Christian ideals.

Just as the goal of research should be a clearer perception of the

experience of perpetrators and victims, so should it be a central goal for

Holocaust education that those whose lives were devalued should not be

nameless and undefined, not simply referred to as the “victims,” but

rather as individuals with their own history and identity.

At this point I want to mention still another project. I myself am

involved in research at the Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism in

Berlin, regarding the phenomenon of help and rescue for Jews in

Germany in the face of the Holocaust. Such systematic research has not
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 809

yet been done. We will now try to determine how many rescuers there

were in Germany, who they were, under what circumstances they lived,

what religious and political orientations they had, in which situations

they became rescuers, what their relationships were to the persecuted,

and what motivated them. This raises questions about the possibilities for

contact between Jews and non-Jews during the war and about the actual

dangers to those helping Jews in Germany. It is known that in Berlin

1,400 Jews were able to survive. When one looks at individual cases, it’s

clear that most of them involved a long chain of rescuers. From that we

can conclude that several thousand Berliners helped to rescue Jews from

deportation. This is an important area of resistance history that still needs

to be explored.

The goal of this project is to produce a social history of solidarity

under dictatorship and a contribution toward an understanding of the

mentality of Germans under National Socialism. It is clear from the start

that this won’t result in an “anti-Goldhagen” image of the German

people as a nation of rescuers and helpers. Even if a few thousand found

the courage to help, how much more meaningful it is then to point out

the millions who looked away, who stood by, or who helped carry out

delusional racist policies. The meritorious behavior of a minority does

not outweigh the culpability of the majority.

Nevertheless, this research may have its own value to Holocaust

education. It shows that, despite dictatorship, there was a way for people

to help, to confront the reality of persecution and fear of death for Jews,

to retain their own humanity. Such people stand out from the sea of

indifference. Through discussion of such examples, German students

today may be confronted with their own indifference, and forced to come

to terms with it. In the beginnings of 1996, German President Roman

Herzog declared the 27th of January - the anniversary of the arrival of

Soviet troops in Auschwitz - as a national day of remembrance for the

victims of National Socialism. Though the day is marked by public

discussion on the Shoah, on racism and anti-Semitism, the average

German calendar still does not note this day. The future importance of

this day will depend on how involved students and young people can

become in the discussions and debates taking place. Their involvement

would break through the usual, state-sponsored mechanical rituals of

remembrance, creating a direct connection to the younger generation’s

spheres of experience. But an appropriate education must come first.

Mrs. T.J. Blankert-van Veen

HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT FOR RESISTANCE MEMBERS, VICTIMS

OF PERSECUTION AND CIVILIAN VICTIMS OF WAR,

MINISTRY OF HEALTH, WELFARE AND SPORT

THE NETHERLANDS

Break-out Session: Overview of the Importance of Holocaust

Education, Remembrance and Research

First of all I will thank the organizers of this special so-called

break-out session in this unique Museum to give me, on behalf of the

Dutch government, the opportunity to tell something not only about our

efforts to support Dutch victims of the Second World War, but how to

keep the memory alive of one of the darkest periods in human history

and to inform young people.

Of my present compatriots one in three lived through the Second

World War. Roughly speaking, everyone born before 1942 has conscious

memories of that period. Even those who are too young to remember the

war have been deeply affected by it. Of course the country suffered as a

whole during the occupation but certain groups were singled out for a

particularly tragic fate. Most prominent among them were the Dutch

Jews, but also gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals, political

prisoners and those returning from Japanese internment in the Dutch East

Indies. The Dutch people who had not spent the war in Polish, German

or Japanese camps were unable to conceive of what their compatriots had

been through in captivity. And I am sorry to say that it took some years

for Dutch society to realize this.

Notwithstanding this lack of understanding the Netherlands has

always seen it as its duty and responsibility to give material and

non-material support to the victims of the Second World War. Over the

years a unique system of legislation has been created to meet the needs

of different categories of Dutch war victims: those who were prosecuted;

those who were active in resistance groups and civilian victims of war.

The most important act came into force in 1973: the "Victims of

Persecution 1940-1945 Benefits Act". The act is primarily aimed at

groups whom the Nazis threatened with annihilations but also at victims

of the Japanese occupation. In terms of its scope the act is unique. It still

provides benefits and facilities for about 30,000 people. Most of them
812 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

live in the Netherlands, but the rest are scattered across the globe, in

countries such as Israel, Canada, Australia or here in the United States,

where approximately still 1,400 people are eligible for benefits under this

scheme. In addition to providing material assistance, the Dutch

government funds a number of organizations that specialize in

non-material assistance for war victims, for example psycho-social help.

But as all of us here today are aware, we seem not to have learnt

our lesson from the Second World War. People still oppress others and

people are still forced to flee their homes or live in hiding, terrified that

they will be killed or beaten or locked up because of their race, religion

or their beliefs. Knowing what happened during the Second World War

and understanding the background of what made such a chain of events

possible, enables one to follow present developments critically, to reflect

on one's own behavior and if necessary to change it. For the main thing

for all of us, young and old, is to remain alert. That is why the Dutch

government encourages and supports projects that inform young people

about the Second World War. We fund information campaigns and have

made them standard policy. Over the years a variety of activities have

been organized to tell young people about the events that took place

during the war and the lessons that can be drawn from them.

Memorial centers and museums have been set up at various sites

in the Netherlands which have a special significance relating to the

Second World War. They provide information on the Second World War

in general, and on the events that took place especially on that site,

providing a direct link for present-day visitors to the history of the

Second World War. The centers receive government funding to maintain

their facilities for the public at large. They may use this grants for

maintenance, conservation and so forth, but a substantial share must be

spent on educational activities focusing on the Second World War and

the events leading up to it in relation to contemporary human rights

violations and instances of discrimination. I shall briefly mention a few

of the many activities organized by museums and schools.

-One project has been set up whereby people tell school children

about their wartime experiences. The guest lecturer's account is

then used as a starting point for a discussion on discrimination,

racism and intolerance.

-Another project centers on monuments. Classes at about 1,000

schools have "adopted" over 650 war and resistance monuments.

The aim is to tell the children about the event that "their"

monument commemorates, and to make them understand its

relevance today.
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 813

-Yet another project encourages schools to arrange museum

outings for their pupils. Since the project started, an average of

10,000 pupils visit a war or resistance museum each year.

And of course we have our yearly Day of Remembrance on the

fourth of May. And I am happy to say that young people take part in the

commemoration programs that day, all over the country. Many of them

feel such a special day of remembrance makes people think about current

events, racism today, and developments in other parts of the world, and

therefore highlights the importance of the Dutch Constitution and a

democratic political system.

War museums in the Netherlands work hand in hand with similar

organizations abroad. The government encourages these partnerships not

simply because they are intrinsically valuable, but also to extend the

scope of Dutch policy on information campaigns. Because the

Netherlands -like many other countries- is becoming increasingly

multicultural, the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport has recently

chosen to broaden its approach to youth education on the Second World

War to include present day forms of discrimination. This principle and

practice are probably also familiar to other countries. We are particular

interested in the way authorities and organizations in your countries have

developed your information campaigns, the methods you use, the targets

you have set and the results you have managed to achieve. Recent study

in France, Germany, Belgium and Denmark has taught us the value of

changing ideas on this subject.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Let us never forget the victims. A time may come when they will

be a part of world history, but we must never allow them simply to be

consigned to the past. We are morally obliged to keep their memory alive

and to keep reflecting upon the moral questions raised by the Holocaust

and upon our responsibilities as citizens of democratic nations. The

session of today will provide us a unique forum in which we can

exchange ideas as to what should happen to achieve these goals.

Hopefully it's start of working together as countries to keep the memory

alive and to educate our youngsters.

Dr. Adolphe Steg

DEPUTY CHAIRMAN,

FACT-FINDING MISSION ON THE LOOTING OF JEWISH ASSETS

(MATTÉOLI COMMISSION)

FRANCE

Remembrance and Education

Break-out Session: Overview of the Importance of Holocaust

Education, Remembrance and Research

I would like to describe how France is assuming the double

responsibility of memory and of transmission. Today, in France,

teaching about the Holocaust is largely organized and overseen by the

government. This has not always been the case, however. Initially, the

decimated, ravaged, and exsanguine Jewish community itself was able to

put memory to use. In April 1943 in Grenoble, occupied at the time by

Italian troops, Isaac Scheerson and some friends established the Center

for Contemporary Jewish Documentation (CDJC) in order to collect the

documents of persecution.

At the Liberation, Leon Poliakov and George Wellers, the

directors of the CDJC at the time, established substantial archives,

particularly those of the SS and of the Gestapo in France. In 1946, the

CDJC published The Jewish World, the first journal in the world entirely

devoted to the Shoah.

The Center’s documentation was a major source for Leon

Poliakov Breviary of Hatred which was translated worldwide, as well as

for Joseph Billig’s monumental work on the Central Commissariat for

Jewish Questions.

In 1958, the Memorial to the Unknown Jewish Martyr (MMIJ)

was unveiled, the first and long, the only building in the world which

included in a single setting a memorial, an archival center, a library and a

permanent exhibit. From 1956 on, the Memorial and the CDJC were the

principal sources for research and teaching about the Holocaust.
816 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

The CDJC is not the sole commemorative site. Nearly 76,000

Jews were deported in France and only 2500 returned. At the war’s end,

the survivors were determined to set the memory of those who had been

massacred in stone. The numbers of plaques, steles, and monuments

erected to the memory of survivors on buildings, schools and children’s

homes from which Jews had been wrenched, as well as on the internment

camps where they had been grouped before being deported, are too

numerous to be individually cited here.

In 1978, Serge Klarsfeld published his Memorial of the

Deportation, a major work on the Shoah. This work not only carefully

inventories the names of deportees, but also serves as a tomb for all those

who have disappeared, often without a trace. As early as 1954, a

”National Day of Deportation “ to the memory of political, resistance,

and racial deportees was established. But it was only in 1990, that an

essential step was taken: The French Government acknowledged the

genocide and Vichy’s responsibility for the persecution of Jews in

France. A National Day of Commemoration of racist and anti-Semitic

persecutions was decreed on February 3, 1993, and set for the

anniversary of the Winter Velodrome round-up, on the Sunday following

July 16. On this day, an official ceremony was organized in Paris as well

as in cities all over France that were also requested to set

commemorative plates to the racial and anti-Semitic persecutions of

1940 and 1944. The State thus initiated a deliberate policy of placing

commemorative plates and erecting monuments.

Here we might mention the sites of the principal monuments.

• The camp at Drancy, just outside of Paris.

• The Winter Velodrome, inaugurated by President Francois

Mitterand and Prime Minister Edouard Balladur.

• The more recent monument at Izieu, in the Ain Department,

where 44 children, their school director, and their teachers

were rounded up by Klaus Barbie’s Gestapo.

Last, the historic speech made by President Jacques Chirac on

July 16 is a major part of this process. He emphasized his concern to

see France make its contribution to memory and to history and to accept

responsibility for the Vichy Government’s role in carrying out the antiJewish measures adopted during the German Occupation. Finally, with

respect to those Jews who did not return, the President declared, “We

have an imprescriptible debt. To acknowledge past errors, and the errors

committed by the Government, to hide nothing of the somber hours of
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 817

our history is quite simply to defend the idea of humanity, of human

liberty and of human dignity.”

As we can see, the Government’s creation of these memorials

throughout France and these moments punctuating the calendar year

mark the memory of the Holocaust.

The transmission of memory, however, is first and foremost

based on teaching in the schools. For the last 20 years or so, teaching

about the genocide of the Jews and of the role and responsibility of the

Vichy Government for the persecution of the Jews are part of the

mandatory national school program. These subjects are taught at two

different points in the national curriculum: First, in the 9th grade, when

students are 14-15 years old and then in the senior year of high school,

when students are 16-19 years old. In this way, every young French

person knows something about the Holocaust, from an historical point of

view. While we can, therefore, say that in France, we have the means to

reach the Holocaust, we have not yet resolved the very difficult question

of “how” to teach it, and more specifically, how to teach it to children.

How can we describe an altogether singular phenomenon that is at once

inexpressible, incomprehensible, and unthinkable?

First, this is a phenomenon for which there are no words. Manes

Sperber illustrates this in his paraphrase of a traditional text in the liturgy

of Whitsun:

“Even if the firmament were made of parchment,

And all the trees were pens,

All of the seas filled with ink,

And every dweller on the earth a scribe

Writing day in and day out,

Never could the Holocaust be described,

This Jewish tragedy of our era and of times to come.”

Shouldn’t this eloquent text be set in exegue to every work that

deals with genocide?

Second, the Holocaust is, by its nature, inconceivable. What can

we tell children, when what was done goes beyond human understanding

and cannot be grasped by the imagination? What can we tell them

without making their blood run cold? These questions take on an even

more painful acuity when we are talking to Jewish children. Children, to

whom, for more than 3000 years on the eve of Passover, we have

recounted the story of the Jews’ suffering under Pharaoh and the

miraculous flight from Egypt. But what shall we tell them when no
818 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

miracle has occurred? The Red Sea. The red sea of Jewish blood did not

open up to save the Jews and its waves did not come down to drown

Jewish persecutors.

Third, teaching the Holocaust is incomprehensible. Every

teacher is faced with a question that is asked over and over again: Why?

Why the Jews? Why the Germans? Why God? Yes, why did God let

this happen?

We do not emphasize these difficulties in order to diminish the

importance of teaching the Holocaust, but rather because these

particularities make this a subject unlike any other, which, in order to be

taught, requires a specific pedagogy. Indeed, as teachers gain experience

in teaching the Holocaust, their pedagogy will evolve.

I would like to offer some recommendations made by our

teachers, based on their own experience. First of all, they consider that

this teaching should not in preference be based on images. Children are

stuffed with images on a daily basis; on television, they constantly see

images of murders, blood, and bodies. The issue is not to speak to their

eyes but to their hearts and to their minds.

Paradoxically, Claude Lanzmann’s monumental and definitive

work, Shoah, is often used in this context because this film shows neither

blood nor cries, nor tears nor bodies. It shows only witnesses and

through their testimony, we see what no image can show.

Isn’t it enough, on occasion, to simply read a page of Serge

Memorial. Take, for example, the Holz family, page 590.

The parents were deported. Their children were sheltered in a children’s

home, but two years later were arrested and deported. Listen:

Holz, David, 13 years old

Holz, Joseph, 12 years old

Holz, Jacques, 10 years old

Holz, Myriam, 8 years old

Holz, Paul, 6 years old

Holz, Emmanuel, Barely 4 years old.

When were they deported? On July 31, 1944.

The Allies were about to enter Paris. The German Army used

every means possible to resist their advance and despite this, even though

there were not enough trains to carry German troops to the Western

Front, the Germans did not hesitate to send one train eastwards, to

Auschwitz.
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 819

Isn’t this example the best illustration for the children of this

unbelievable phenomenon; for the Germans, the destruction of the Jews

took priority over everything else, even over victory. Doesn’t this

example lead to a consideration of the hundreds and hundreds, the

thousands of children murdered by these beings bearing human faces

without flagging or being revolted by their acts? Doesn’t this example

lead, at least for the oldest high school students, to thinking about these

children, the young Holz children and their cohort of poor little Jewish

children, denuded, terrorized, walking quickly towards the sites of their

murder? And yet, they had children’s eyes and cried children’s tears.

Next recommendation this teaching should not be taking place

solely in history classes. It should cut across disciplines and be referred

to in literature classes, in geography classes, in classes on civic

education, and on philosophy so that this expression of Andre Neher; in

particular, might be dwelled upon: “The millenary adventure of the

human spirit underwent a complete failure at Auschwitz.”

Last, and this is the final particularity of this teaching, the goal is

not simply to acquire a knowledge but to bear a moral message based on

values, on the absolute value of human life and on the absolute value of

human dignity. For, and with this we shall conclude, in the words of

Jean-Louis Forges:

“After Auschwitz, it is not enough to teach about Auschwitz, we

must teach against Auschwitz.”

Rev. Dr. Remi E. Hoeckman, O.P.

SECRETARY, COMMISSION FOR RELIGIOUS RELATIONS WITH THE JEWS

THE HOLY SEE

Break-out Session: Overview of the Importance of Holocaust

Education, Remembrance and Research

The Holy See published on 16 March of this year a document

entitled We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah. This document is

addressed to Catholics throughout the world, especially in countries far

removed, by geography and history, from the scene where the Shoah

took place. It invites everybody else to join them in remembering this

horrendous crime perpetuated by the Nazis against the Jews in Europe.

On the occasion of its publication, His Holiness Pope John Paul

II expressed his fervent hope that this document would enable memory to

play its necessary part in the process of shaping a future in which such a

tragedy will never again be possible.

On several occasions prior to the publication of this document,

Pope John Paul II was already very strong and clear on this point, but

especially on the occasion of a concert in commemoration of the Shoah

which took place in the Vatican on 7 April 1994. “We remember”, His

Holiness affirmed, “but it is not enough that we remember”, “we have a

Part of this commitment is the Catholic Church’s engagement in

a process of consciousness-raising and reflection on the Shoah, in

opposing attempts to deny the reality of the Shoah or to trivialize its

significance for the Jews, and in combating anti-Semitism. Hence the

publication by the Holy See of the document We Remember.

The Catholic Church wishes to remember, but it wishes to

remember with a purpose. The purpose of this document, therefore, is

primarily educational in that it helps people to reflect on the past in order

to draw from it the appropriate lessons for the present and for the future.

“For”, as His Holiness has put it, “in our own day, regrettably, there are

many new manifestations of the anti-Semitism, xenophobia and racial

hatred which were the seeds of those unspeakable crimes. Humanity can

not permit all that to happen again” (7 April 1994).

With regard to “Holocaust Education” specifically, the Holy See

would like to point out that a great deal of work is being done in Catholic
822 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

education through the publication and distribution of relevant texts

including the official documents of the Church [e.g. the Second Vatican

Council’s Declaration Nostra Aetate; the Guidelines and Notes published

by the Holy See’s Commission for Religious Relations with the Jews; the

teaching of Pope John Paul II on the Shoah and anti-Semitism;

statements made by the national Catholic hierarchies of many of the

nations most deeply affected by the events of the Shoah], the revision of

textbooks [cf. the content analysis studies of Catholic textbooks and

manuals by Dr. Rose Thering O.P. (1960), Dr. Eugene J. Fisher (1976),

Dr Philip A. Cunningham (1992), and update reports]; pertinent

educational programs and the circulation of appropriate educational

materials [for instance Notre Dame College in Manchester (New

Hampshire) offers several undergraduate courses on the Shoah; resource

materials such as “Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human

Behaviour”, developed by Margot Stern Storm and William S. Parsons,

are used in the Catholic school system in the USA; the Sister Rose

Thering Foundation at Seton Hall University each semester mails out

3,500 brochures on Holocaust Education to Catholic high schools and

grade school principals; also the Sisters of Our Lady of Sion and their

SIDIC Centers are doing a great deal of work in this field], and many

other events, efforts and initiatives.

Most Catholic high school textbook series in this country include

units on the Shoah. On a higher level, just to speak of institutions, there

are many examples: The Institute for Jewish-Christian Studies at Seton

Hall University (New Jersey) has been offering courses on the Shoah for

decades; The National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education at Seton

Hill College (Pennsylvania) was started over a decade ago; The Center

for Christian-Jewish Understanding at Sacred Heart University in

Fairfield (Connecticut); The joint Archdiocese of Washington–AntiDefamation League–US Holocaust Memorial Museum project develops

curricula for Holocaust Education in Catholic schools and religious

education programs. Moreover, in many places Catholic communities

join Jewish communities to remember the Shoah on Yom Hashoah each

year, or organize special services or study sessions on this occasion. In

this country, for instance, the Catholic Bishops’ Conference in 1988

urged all parishes to include prayer for the victims of the Holocaust on

the Sunday closest to Yom Hashoah.

Also in other countries serious efforts are being made in this

regard, for example in Canada, Australia, Italy, Germany, Poland,

France, the United Kingdom. In Italy, for instance, the SIDIC Center in

Rome develops educational programs; initiatives taken by bodies such as
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 823

FIDAE (organization of Catholic teachers) touch schools in various parts

of the country. In Poland, relevant materials are being translated into the

Polish language and distributed. The Catholic “Center for Information,

Meeting, Dialogue, Education and Prayer” in Auschwitz/Oswiecim

assumes an important role in Holocaust Education, also internationally.

In Germany, the Catholic Church has created a wide-spread network of

adult education in which Christian-Jewish programs occupy a prominent

place.

Nonetheless the efforts need to continue and the necessary

“reception process”, especially on the “grass roots” level, needs to be

furthered, for an in-depth reflection on the Shoah reveals its fundamental

cause, namely the fact that when society is stripped of respect for God it

is also stripped of respect for man.

Prof. Yehuda Bauer

PROFESSOR, YAD VASHEM INSTITUTE

ISRAEL

On Holocaust Education

Break-out Session: Overview of the Importance of Holocaust

Education, Remembrance and Research

The basic question we face when we deal with Holocaust

education is - why deal with this particular Genocide rather than with any

other of a host of similar events in this or the previous centuries? The

answer of course is not that one should not deal with the other Genocides

- on the contrary, anyone dealing with the Holocaust must compare, and

must deal with the other tragedies as much as possible. But the basic

response to the challenge must be to understand that the Holocaust has

increasingly become, for the democratic world at least, a symbol of all

the other Genocides, for racism, anti-Semitism, hatred of foreigners,

ethnic cleansing, and mass destruction of humans by humans generally.

The reason for this is, possibly, that a vague realization is taking hold of

people that the Holocaust, the planned total annihilation of the Jewish

people at the hands of the Nazi regime, is both a Genocide like other

Genocides, and also an unprecedented event in human history, which

should serve as a warning to all of us.

The unprecedentedness of the Holocaust consists in the fact that

there are elements in it that are not found in other Genocides, whereas

there are no elements in all the other Genocides that cannot be found in

parallel events of this sort. For the sake of our argument, we are using the

definition of Genocide as it appears in the UN Convention of 1948,

although that definition may be subject to legitimate criticism. The

elements that are not unprecedented in the Holocaust are first and

foremost the suffering and pain endured by its victims. There can be no

gradation of suffering as between Jews, Roma (“Gypsies”), Russians,

Poles, or others who suffered under the Nazi regime. Individual suffering
826 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

is equal as between victims of torture, humiliation, deprivation, and

death. But there are elements in the Holocaust that do not appear in the

other cases, such as Rwanda, or the Genocide of the Armenians, or the

auto-Genocide in Kampuchea, or with Native Americans, or others. First,

there is the totality of the planned murder: every single individual

defined by the Nazis as Jewish was to be murdered. Second, the

globality: ultimately, every such individual all over the world was to be

found, registered, dispossessed, humiliated, marked, arrested,

concentrated, transported and killed. Third, whereas all other Genocides

were committed with some kind of ideological rationalization and

excuse, they all had a pragmatic basis of sorts. Ethnic groups were

murdered because they were thought to be in the way of political

programs, or military plans, or economic and social ideologies aimed at

reorganizing society. With the Holocaust, the ideology was based on

pure fantasy: an imagined world Jewish conspiracy to control the globe;

the idea of Jewish “blood” contaminating and corrupting cultures, ritual

murder accusations, and the like. One only needs to think of the fact that

the German authorities in February 1943 took trained Jewish armament

workers from their factories in the Berlin area, put them on trains and

shipped them to Auschwitz to be killed - after the German defeat at

Stalingrad, when they needed every pair of trained hands to produce

arms. Fourth, the fact that the Jews were a very special group of people

in Europe, the only non-Christian group at the time, who occupied a

unique position in relation to Christianity. Christian civilization

depended on their Scriptures on the one hand, and rejected them because

of their refusal to accept the Christian Messiah on the other hand.

Nineteen hundred years after the appearance of the Christian Savior, His

people were murdered in Central Europe by baptized heathens. This

creates a major problem for what is known as Christendom, even when

most Christians never go to church; it parallels the unsolved problem for

Jews, who consider their relation to the Deity to be a special one, and

who have to ask why this tragedy was visited upon them, and what is its

meaning, if any.

Yet on the other hand, as I said before, the Holocaust is a

Genocide similar to others, and therefore can and must be dealt with in

both its aspects: it’s Jewish specificity - it happened to a specific people,

for specific reasons, at a specific time; and in its universality - it

symbolizes the mass evils we are all capable of. It can serve as a

warning, so it should not become a precedent. Ultimately, the Holocaust

challenges us to work towards a world in which these evils are dammed

in, and perhaps, hopefully, possibly, prevented altogether. Anyone who
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 827

wishes to project a pessimistic prognosis for the future will have an easy

time of it; we have not learned much from the Holocaust, or any other

similar tragedies; we have not established an international community

that is capable of dealing with it, and so on. But there is an imperative for

all of us: we must try and change that situation. Today, at least,

governments and groups of governments are ashamed of what humans

do, and one can see stirrings of international conscience. That is where

we come in: we must engage in the most basic activity directed towards

such a change: education, on all levels.

That in deed is what the Task Force for Remembrance,

Education and Research is all about. It was established at the initiative of

the Swedish government, in order to spread efforts at Holocaust

Education worldwide. The governments of the United States and the

United Kingdom responded, and then those of Germany and Israel. At

this conference, the governments of Poland, the Netherlands and France

also joined. The purpose of the Task Force is to design practical ways to

teach young and old, to spread the knowledge that the example of the

Holocaust shows the danger we all face because we are all of us capable

of extreme evil; but we are also capable of preventing it, and behave in a

way that is the exact opposite of what happened then. It is indeed

absolutely essential that we emphasize the behavior of those few -

pitifully few, to be sure, but yet there were many thousands of them -

who saved and rescued at the risk of their own lives. They show that we

can be different, and that it is a matter of environment, and most

importantly, education, how we will act. For the first time in the history

of mankind politicians, governments, got together to advance a specific

educational project. We are all determined to do all we can to have this

project continue as a permanent fixture: to provide a political umbrella to

international educational efforts based on true cooperation. One should

give full credit to the Swedish initiators of this project, who themselves

are engaging in a massive educational effort in their own country, and

provide a model that might well be imitated by others.

A historian is someone who not only analyzes history, which of

course is his/her primary task, but also tells stories. So let me conclude

by telling a true story. His name is Yankele Skorochod, and he is a

carpenter in Tel-Aviv. He was born in a place called Novogrudek in what

today is Belarus, and became a carpenter’s apprentice. He then moved to

a ghetto in a town called Baranovichi, and joined a group that planned an

armed uprising. The uprising failed, it never took place. Yankele fled to a

Belorussian graveyard in the town, where he was saved by a local

gravedigger, who also showed him the way to the forest (that person is
828 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

one of the about 16.000 people recognized by Yad Vashem as a

Righteous Among the Nations). He followed the advice of his rescuer

and wandered through the Belorussian forests in search of Soviet

partisans. Luckily, he found a group that had been sent from Soviet-held

territory through the lines, of some one hundred men. He made friends

there with a Belorussian youth of his own age, whom he remembers as

Ivan. The two friends were sent out, together with three others, to

recover a machine-gun far in the enemy rear. They were told not to take

food from the peasants, for fear the peasants would turn against the

partisans. The young men-boys became very, very hungry. Ivan saw a

tree with some fruit - they did not know what that fruit was. The others

told him not to eat it, but Ivan was so famished that he disregarded the

advice, climbed the tree, and ate the fruit. A few hours afterwards he

came down with dysentery. Yankele, his best friend, took care of him.

They hid in a barn in a small village, and tried to cure Ivan. They failed,

and Ivan died in Yankele’s arms, saying that Yankele had taken care of

him more lovingly than Ivan’s own mother had.

They had to bury Ivan. Yankele went into the village, and at gunpoint he forced two candles and an old Russian Orthodox Bible (in Old

Slavonic - Yankele could make out the letters) out from the reluctant

peasants. Yankele, the carpenter, then fashioned a crude casket, and put

an Orthodox type of cross on it. They put the body in, and lowered it into

the ground. Then Yankele, the Jewish carpenter, lit the candles and read

out from the Bible what he thought an Orthodox priest would have read.

Then, silently, they started in their way back to their unit. They never

found the machine-gun.

You must understand - Yankele was telling this story at Hebrew

University, to my seminar. He is a heavy-set man, with large hands. He

told his story haltingly, and we sat around in complete and stunned

silence. When he finished, there was an oppressive silence in the room,

and he was resting on his elbows staring at the table in front of him.

Someone had to break the silence, and I was the teacher. So I asked him

the most stupid question I could possibly have asked: Yankele, I said,

why did you do it?

He stared at me, uncomprehendingly, and after a while he

stammered: but...but...he would have done the same for me, had it been

the other way round.

Ever since then, I have always considered myself a pupil of

Yankele Skorochod. So, I think, should all of us who are venturing on

this path of Holocaust education.
Stuart E. Eizenstat

UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR ECONOMIC, BUSINESS AND

AGRICULTURAL AFFAIRS

UNITED STATES

Task Force on Holocaust Education,

Remembrance and Research

Break-out Session: Goals of the Task Force for International

Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research

At the initiative of Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson, the

Swedish, UK and U.S. governments, together with experts from our

countries, gathered in Stockholm last May to launch an unprecedented

initiative – The Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust

Education, Remembrance and Research. Our countries and many others-

– Germany among the first and most consistent-- have engaged in

Holocaust education efforts at home for many years. But this is the first

time that heads of government have agreed to cooperate directly with

others countries, through diplomatic and other channels, to strengthen

Holocaust education efforts on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond.

As Prime Minister Persson said so eloquently in May, and as did

our speakers on the first panel here at the Museum this morning,

Holocaust education and remembrance can help ensure that the crimes of

the Holocaust are never forgotten nor repeated. As this century comes to

a close and we enter the new millennium, our international cooperation

can encourage and reinforce work in many nations to strengthen

Holocaust education efforts, to create new ones and to finally begin such

efforts where they have been overlooked.

Sweden served commendably as Task Force Chairman from

May until September 25, when the U.S. assumed the Task Force

Chairmanship, which will pass to the UK in January 1999. On
830 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

September 25, Israel and Germany became members of the Task Force,

and have already made valuable contributions.

On behalf of the Task Force, I would like to give special

recognition to the Prime Minister of Sweden and his representatives on

the Task Force, State Secretary Pär Nuder and Foreign Ministry Political

Director Ulf Hjertonsson. I wold also like to thank my Task Force

colleagues from Germany, Israel, and the UK for the hard work they

have put into this initiative these past months. Finally, I would also like

to commend Professor Yehuda Bauer of Yad Vashem, one of the great

Holocaust scholars and educators in the world, for his intellectual

guidance as Personal Advisor to the Task Force.

During the U.S. tenure as Task Force Chairman, we have

focused the initiative on a number of priority areas initially agreed in

May. These projects, some of which are work in progress to be

completed in the first half of next year, are highlighted in the Task Force

report that I present to you today. Our hope is to give maximum

exposure to this unique and innovative work before the many

distinguished participants with us at this Conference.

Let me now present a very brief summary of each project that the

Task Force has undertake to date.

First, Swedish Task Force representative have been leading an

effort to assemble a catalog of Holocaust-related institutions and a survey

to efforts currently underway in the field of Holocaust education around

the world. This challenging task has begun in earnest, but is still in its

early stages. In the Task Force report you will find a brief paper

introducing a preliminary directory of organizations engaged in

Holocaust education and remembrance activities in a large number of

countries. We expect that the directory of organizations engaged in

Holocaust education and remembrance activities in a large number of

countries. We expect that the directory, itself a gold mine of

information, will become the basis of a much more comprehensive

survey of such efforts to be completed next year and to be made

available internationally.

Second, as part of the Swedish government’s Living History

Initiative, Holocaust historian Paul Levine and Stephane Bruchfeld

prepared a test on the Holocaust that could be made available to every

family with high school children in Sweden. Their product, “Tell Ye

Your Children,” has been so well received in Sweden as to exceed all

expectations. There are now almost 800,000 copies of the book in

circulation in that country of approximately 9 million people, making it

the second most-widely owned book in Sweden after the Bible. The
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 831

book has been translated into the most common immigrant languages in

Sweden to increase its accessibility to non-native Swedish speakers. At

the request of the Task Force, the book’s authors have created an insert

demonstrating how an international version and individual national

versions of the book can be prepared, should other counties choose to

consider adapting it for their own use. Sweden has also completed a

series of videotapes for use in their school system.

Third, the Chief Historians of the U.S. Department of State and

the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office will produce, at the

request of the Task Force, a guide to finding and using Holocaust-related

archives with the intention that it be employed as a tool by researchers

and educators. The recent opening of archives bearing on the Holocaust,

and in particular those related to Nazi gold and other looted assets, have

made accessible millions of pages of material recent years and have had

an important impact on our collective knowledge about the Holocaust.

Making these archives more accessible is a central goal of the Task

Force. Contained in this report is a brief proposal as to how activities in

this area should proceed over the next year – highlighting in particular a

website which is becoming a nexus of information for research in

virtually every dimension of the Holocaust-era assets issues discussed at

the London and Washington Conferences.

Fourth, in close consultation with Yad Vashem and U.S.

Holocaust Memorial Museum, the UK has led the effort to develop a set

of internationally applicable guidelines, or best practices, for use in

teaching about the Holocaust. In crafting the guidelines, the Task Force

looked to those institutions with the most extensive experience in

navigating the difficult waters of teaching this emotionally charged and

intellectually taxing subject. The guidelines are intended to facilitate the

work of educators both in places where programs exist and in those

where they are yet to be developed. They are based on the experiences,

both positive and negative, of two generations of Holocaust educators.

Fifth, the Task Force has considered and accepted a British

proposal to encourage each of our nations to designate a Day of

Remembrance for Holocaust Victims. In Israel and the United States,

Yom HaShoa serves this purpose. In Germany, January 27, the day of

the liberation of Auschwitz, is recognized. Other Task Force member

countries will designate a day of their choosing on which to honor the

memory of those who perished, and we will all make a concerted effort

to ensure that our government employees and societies as a whole are

aware of the day and recognize it appropriately. We hope other nations

will designate their own Day of Remembrance as well. These acts of
832 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

remembrance will reinforce awareness of the event of the Holocaust and

reach a large audience, while demonstrating solidarity in the fight against

anti-Semitism, racism, prejudice, persecution, and hatred.

In addition to the projects I have already listed, the Task Force

has made commitments in the form of two declarations: one concerning

archival openness and the other the promotion of Holocaust education

efforts. We invite all Washington Conference governments to join us in

endorsing these goals. The Task Force Declaration on the opening of

Holocaust-relevant archives presents as our aim the opening of “all

public and private bearing on the Holocaust and the fate of Naziconfiscated assets by December 31, 1999.” We call on all who posses

such material to open it to as many researchers as possible on an urgent

basis and commit ourselves a governments to do everything possible to

ensure that this important target is met.

The second declaration and final element of the Task Force to

the Conference emphasizes our common conviction that urgent

international attention to paid to Holocaust education, remembrance and

research to reinforce and spread the historic meaning and enduring

lessons of that tragic event. In the declaration we commit our

governments to “reinforce Holocaust education, remembrance and

research in our own countries, with a special focus on our own countries’

histories.” We also pledge to strengthen existing programs or launch

new ones, and encourage other countries to do likewise.

We have pledged our governments’ commitment to this

endeavor, and to our intergovernmental cooperation to advance its

objectives, principally to ensure that the lessons of the Holocaust are not

forgotten and its horrors never repeated. We have full confidence that

when the U.S. chairmanship concludes at the end of the month, the UK

will serve the Task Force admirably in the role of Chairman. We

furthermore hope that Conference participants will find the report of the

Task Force a valuable and useful contribution to the cause of Holocaust

education, remembrance and research.

Most important, whether by working with us through the Task

Force or through other mechanisms, we hope that all countries

represented at the Washington Conference will choose to embrace our

goals and strengthen their Holocaust education and remembrance efforts.

Because our effort is an inclusive one, we also urge other countries to

consider working directly with us in the Task Force. Nothing could be

more important than to honor the many victims and to prevent such

tragedies in the future.
Mr. Pär Nuder

STATE SECRETARY, PRIME’S MINISTER’S OFFICE

SWEDEN

Break-out Session: Goals of the Task Force for International

Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:

The book that you have in front of you, Tell ye your children...

forms the core of the Swedish information campaign about the

Holocaust. On page 50 you will find two pictures.

One shows a group of naked women huddled close together as

they line up. Some are holding children in their arms. Although the

Pietum is indistinct, you can see, you can sense, the fear in their eyes.

The other picture shows the same group of women. this time

lying dead in a heap. Among the dead bodies a small head is sticking out.

One child remains alive. His executioner stands close by, rifle raised.

This child, perhaps aged two or three, could have been your

child or grandchild.

These terrible events, which took place fifty years ago on the

continent of Europe, must never ever be repeated. The Nazi crimes

against humanity must never ever happen again.

Motivated by this conviction, the Swedish Government,

supported by broad political consensus, initiated the information

campaign known as Living History.

So far more than 500,000 households have ordered the book Tell

ye your children.. to help adult members of the family pass on

knowledge about the Holocaust to the younger generation. 800,000

copies of the book have been distributed. Extrapolated to an equivalent

number of families in Great Britain, this equals 2.5 million books. In the

US this would be 10 million copies. 100,000 people have visited the

Living History Web site. 1000 schools have shown movies offered as

part of the information campaign.

By choosing active dialogue instead of passive silence, we

decided to initiate a discussion of ways to develop democracy,

strengthening its powers of resistance, and increasing our understanding

of the challenges to it. We wanted to make everyone aware of the

negative forces behind the Holocaust.
834 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

The Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel once said that it is necessary to

remember, because if we forget the crimes of the past we are doomed to

repeat them. He meant that if one group of people can be killed, any

group of people can be killed.

He was right of course, democracy gives life its moral purpose.

It is built an understanding and, awareness, It rests on the tacit agreement

that we all try to live by the set of values which it represents.

To cite the words of British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, in

another context. Our society, he said, rests on,

"A set of values- A belief in society. In co-operation. In

achieving what we are unable to achieve alone. It is how I try to live my

life. The simple truths. I am worth no more than anyone else. I am my

brother's keeper. I will not walk by on the other side. We aren't simply

people set in isolation from each other, face to face with eternity, but

members of the same family, community, the same human race."

Mr. Chairman,

These simple truths - so simple, so difficult to live up to.

Democracy is vulnerable if we forget.

We must fight ignorance with facts and knowledge.

We must tell its story, We must repudiate without compromise

every new manifestation that violates democracy and human dignity.

We must summon the courage to be clear and resolute.

This responsibility lies with each and everyone of us who has

children. Our parents know and have told us. If we don't remember, if we

don't have the strength, if we don't have the courage - then we have failed

those who died and those who survived. Then we will fail coming

generations.

The Swedish Living History project used the exhortation in the

Old Testament as the title of the book which has become the symbol of

the project: "Tell ye your children of it, and let your children tell their

children, and their children another generation."

In response to the immensely positive reaction to Prime Minister

Persson's initiative on Holocaust education the Task Force for

International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and

Research was established in Stockholm in May of this year. It is a

platform for international cooperation to spread knowledge about the

Holocaust. This group will continue its work, in particular this

conference has acted as an important stimulus for further action.
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 835

Mr. Chairman,

In a year's time, mankind will enter a new millennium. We are

leaving the 20th century and entering the 21st.

What can we learn from the past?

What should we leave behind us 'in the old millennium?

What fundamental values should we take with us into the new

age?

We need to discuss these issues – as individuals, as human

beings, as parents.

We live in an age of rapid transition, Information hurtles around

the globe at the speed of light. In an age such as this we all need basic

values: founded upon simple truths. Simple truths such as, I am worth no

more than anyone else.

No single event can never replace the need for a constant

dialogue about values and ideas, about right and wrong. But as the

present millennium, which gave us the darkest event in the history of

mankind, the Holocaust, draws to an end we should let the new

millennium begin with an event that contains a bright and hopeful

message of humanism. We need an event that deals with the past in a

way that will prevent us from repeating its horrors.

Mr. Chairman,

On behalf of Prime Minister Persson and the Swedish

Government I would like to extend an invitation to governments,

institutions, NGOs and experts dedicated to Holocaust education to

attend an international conference in Stockholm on Holocaust Education,

Remembrance and Research at the turn of the millennium.

This conference will be held under the auspices of high-ranking

political, civic and religious leaders and be devoted to all aspects of

Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research. Politicians,

historians, educators, curators, artists, authors and other experts shall

meet in work-shops and seminars to discuss how they can contribution to

Holocaust education, and to share their experiences. I propose that the

Task Force serve as a kind of preparatory committee for this conference

on Holocaust Education in Stockholm,

The aim of the Stockholm Conference will be to manifest our

common commitment to teaching our children that there is always a

choice, there is always an alternative. It is our responsibility to endow

them with the ability to distinguish between good and evil.

I would like to conclude by quoting one of the finest educators of

young children - Swedish author Astrid Lindgren, “mother” of Pippi
836 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

Longstocking and Karlsson on the Roof. Through her characters, she has

untiringly taught children about the right choices in the complex world of

adults, adults who sometimes fail to fulfill a child's expectations of care

and guidance.

"Sometimes we have to do things, even though we don't really

dare. Otherwise we aren't human, just a speck of dirt."

Thank you.
Dr. Avner Shalev

CHAIRMAN OF THE DIRECTORATE, YAD VASHEM

ISRAEL

Break-out Session: Goals of the Task Force for International

Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research

The International Task Force on Holocaust Education,

Remembrance and Research, was established at the initiative of the

Swedish Government. It is an exciting new undertaking which the

Delegation of Israel, a member of the Task Force, enthusiastically

supports.

Yad Vashem, in co-ordination with other Israeli institutions

dealing with the legacy of the Holocaust, looks forward to sharing with

other countries the experience it has gained over several decades and

agrees to coordinate future international meetings of educational experts,

with the Task Force.

Yad Vashem will cooperate with the Task Force in its efforts to

spread programs on Holocaust education through the Internet and other

media and will put the educational principles developed in Israel,

(including those achieved at its international teacher training courses) at

the Task Force's disposal.

We welcome the idea put forward by the United Kingdom to

establish a national day in every country to commemorate the Shoah.

We add our voice to those who believe that the Holocaust,

because of its Jewish specificity, should serve as a model in the global

fight against the dangers of racism, anti-Semitism, ethnic hatred and

genocide.

Together with our fellow Task Force members, Israel will do its

utmost to advance our common goals in this important and promising

endeavor.

Dr. Albert Spiegel

DEPUTY HEAD, CULTURAL SECTION, FOREIGN OFFICE

GERMANY

Break-out Session: Goals of the Task Force for International

Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research

This conference deals with the most terrible chapter of German

history: the Holocaust, the persecution and extermination of European

Jews by the National Socialists. I welcome the fact that this task force

has been set up within this conference to deal with the important problem

of how the Holocaust can be portrayed above all to young people more

than 50 years after the end of National Socialism.

Today's democratic Germany admits full responsibility for the

guilt which Germans burdened themselves with during the years of

National Socialist control of large parts of Europe and their own country.

Hence, imparting knowledge of the terrible events of this period to

today's and future young generations is an indispensable task of the

education system.

Today's Germans cannot draw a line under the past. We can only

learn from it and thereby ensure that such a crime does not happen again.

We gladly accepted the invitation for Germany to participate in

establishing international cooperation in imparting knowledge of the

Holocaust. In Germany, we also see this as significant recognition of our

long-standing efforts to make teaching about the Holocaust a focal point

of the educational work on the agendas of the German federal states

responsible for education as well as the related areas of general youth

work, adult education, teaching about memorials and educational

research.

1. What could be the aim and object of increased international

cooperation over and above the initial steps which have already been

taken in this area?

The imparting of knowledge of the Holocaust is a topic which

each country must approach in a particular way. Israel, as the country

built up by survivors of the Holocaust, and Germany, as the country

where the Holocaust started and which today bears responsibility for it,

inevitably have to tackle this question differently from countries which

were less or only indirectly involved. In Germany, we face the challenge
840 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

of teaching young people about crimes of which their forefathers were

either perpetrators or passive observers.

The Holocaust raises questions which are crucial for every

civilization and every culture. Why did civilized, often educated people

become murderers? How did an effective and modern state machinery

come to be abused as an almost perfect instrument of state mass murder?

Why did a whole country, and to a certain extent neighboring countries,

turn a blind eye?

An important task for all of us today is to find answers to such

questions and draw conclusions for our future together.

The differing situations of countries as they approach the issue of

Holocaust education are reason enough for fruitful international

cooperation. It would be important to devise joint programs for young

people from different countries who, on meeting others, would have the

opportunity to exchange their various national viewpoints. What

possibilities would be opened up by organizing teacher training in this

field at international level? If Holocaust education is viewed as a truly

international task, then we must learn from one another and with one another.

The original scenes of the Holocaust, in Germany and the

neighboring countries to the east, are to be included directly in teaching.

More intensive use should be made of teaching about memorials within

the framework of international cooperation. As well as imparting

knowledge, carefully prepared bilateral or multilateral events at the

places themselves could be useful for portraying the essential emotional

elements of the Holocaust subject.

Vast opportunities are contained in the initiative to make

Holocaust education an international issue. International cooperation

should aim to complement national programs and add to them what can

only evolve from different countries comparing views. I am thinking

here, for example, of jointly devising and coordinating curricula and

programs which reflect the various national perceptions.

Much has already been done to this end in Germany, for example

in the development of new schoolbooks in cooperation with experts form

Israel and Poland. During bilateral German-Israeli talks on schoolbooks,

the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research in

Braunschweig, whose first series was completed in 1985, aimed to

develop guidelines for the portrayal of "the other side" in schoolbooks.

Events following the Holocaust, in particular German-Israeli relations as

a whole, are also outlined. The aim is to make it possible for today's

children and young people in both countries to have the same
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 841

unprejudiced knowledge of the Holocaust, as well as of other aspects of

their common history.

2. As we deal with the Holocaust, we also have to ask ourselves

what we want to achieve amongst the people of today who are living

more than fifty years after the crimes of National Socialism and who are

quite often more interested in other things.

I would like to focus briefly on Germany in particular with its

specific situation. In Germany today, we have a generation which no

longer feels directly involved with the crimes which took place in their

grandparents' and great-grandparents' time. Nowadays, young Germans

want to be regarded for the most part as normal Europeans but see over

and over again that the word "German" triggers associations with

National Socialism. Holocaust education has been a part of all school

curricula for decades, just as visits to memorial sites have been. The Day

to commemorate the victims of National Socialism on January 27 (the

liberation of Auschwitz) and the night of the pogrom on November 9 are

dates of remembrance all over Germany.

And yet in Germany today, just as in other European countries,

there are some young people who feel attracted by extreme right

sometimes anti-Semitic ideas, and believe they provide the answers to

today's problems.

In teaching about the Holocaust, it is not a question of bare facts;

it is a question of imparting to people the fathomlessness of a crime

planned at state level, a crime that few teachers are able to understand

properly nowadays. It is also a question of drawing upon the personal experience of the students. In Germany this now includes contact with

fellow citizens of foreign origin as well as the experience of a globalized

culture and economy.

It must also be remembered that in one part of our country, the

former GDR, the biased analysis of the National Socialism period

centered for forty years on the persecution of political, and above all

communist, opponents of National Socialism. The collapse of

communism has left a particular void of values there.

3. When speaking of the possibilities of international

cooperation on the question of Holocaust education, we must also

consider the qualitative aspect. Imparting knowledge of such a unique

crime must not be ticked off as material for lessons, or a burdensome

duty. Education about the Holocaust remains ineffective unless teachers

manage to portray the deep emotional side of the Holocaust as well as

the feeling for the unwarranted, dreadful suffering of millions of victims.

And of course it also depends on the environment for teaching about the
842 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

Holocaust. What do parents say and think of the problem, what

influences have youth culture trends? How does it happen that many

young people feel it is somehow "cool" to express ideas on the far right

of the political spectrum? These trends can be seen the world over, and I

believe this to be an obvious starting point for international cooperation

on teaching about the Holocaust. Because it is not just lack of knowledge

of the facts of the Holocaust which leads to people's indifferent attitude

to events. Now and then, there is also the view that the Holocaust is

history while we ourselves live in the present. This is a point for our

efforts to start.

It also must not be forgotten that teaching about the Holocaust

cannot be better than general standards of education and of imparting

knowledge and values in a particular country. We have all heard the

discussions on the quality of education which have been going on in

many countries for years. It is important that general education furthers

the aims of the rule of law, human rights and tolerance.

We ought to try to make a valuable contribution to this general

discussion through international cooperation on Holocaust education.

Today in Germany there is a whole array of projects, initiated by

schools and young people to increase understanding of the Holocaust and

show its repercussions up to the present day. Many of these projects are

transmitted all over the world via the Internet. Schoolchildren in Berlin

have tackled the topic of the synagogue destroyed in 1938. Students in

East Frisia are carefully examining how the often difficult and yet

periodically positive coexistence of Jews and Christians in their town has

evolved over the centuries. Other young people erect or maintain

memorials in their local area. The Action Reconciliation Service for

Peace which has been working closely for many years with Israeli

partners organizes many encounters for young people from both

countries.

There is a common element in all these examples: they link the

portrayal of the local area, of the attachment to the town or area in which

the children or young people grow up, with the portrayal of the negative

events that belong to the area. I know that many people who otherwise

show little interest in the Holocaust are very upset when they realize that

such crimes did not take place just anywhere but rather in their town, in

their street or perhaps even in their own house. In Berlin, schoolchildren

have put up names of murdered Jewish citizens on the houses where they

once lived. That is both education and remembrance which touches

many. And it also shows that Jewish life and Jewish culture was not out

of place in Germany as the National Socialists maintained, rather an
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 843

integral part of our own German history and culture; but at the same

time, also an autonomous cultural world, to which Germany owed a great

deal. I believe that anyone who grasps and accepts this has drawn one of

the most important lessons from the Holocaust: Christian and Jewish

people have lived side by side in Germany for centuries. Viewing the

historical roots of the incomprehensible can also help explain on the one

hand why the Holocaust was able to happen in Germany and on the other

hand why it is so difficult to understand.

Such projects carried out in Germany offer a range of

possibilities for cooperation with other countries. Examples can already

be identified. In the large Jewish graveyard in Berlin-Weißensee,

German, Israeli and Polish young people work together on the upkeep of

graves. Particularly in the field of German-Polish relations, there is a

whole array of similar programs.

We have already done a lot in Germany. But I also know that the

issue of the Holocaust will persist for a long time. Holocaust education

also has a topical dimension. Children and young people should be

brought up to cope responsibly with freedom, to be tolerant, to have a

peaceful attitude towards other people and respect others in a spirit of

international understanding. Only such an attitude guarantees that a

crime such as the Holocaust can never be repeated.

This conference could help us to find new ways of doing this.

4. The basis of all education about the Holocaust is the existence

of scientifically supported, high-quality materials. In Germany, our vast

range of documentation and teaching material is constantly expanded

also using modern methods of communication. The discoveries made by

extensive Holocaust research carried out at universities, institutes and

other research centers in Germany influence the further development of

the curricula directly through teacher training and new editions of

textbooks.

Perhaps our long experience and the discoveries made from

teaching the children and grandchildren of the generation in whose

younger days the atrocities actually took place could serve as an example

and a stimulus for education in your country.

On behalf of Germany, I can assure you that we are keen to work

actively in the task force and in so doing hope to make a further

contribution to strengthening tolerance and human rights for the future.

Ms. Regina Wyrwoll

HEAD OF MEDIA DIVISION, GOETHE-INSTITUT, MUNICH

GERMANY

Learning from History: The Nazi Era and the

Holocaust in German Education

A CD-ROM edited by Annette Brinkmann, Annegret Ehmann, Sybil Milton,

Hanns.Fred Rathenow, and Regina Wyrwoll

Break-out Session: Best Practices and Future Projects in Holocaust

Education, Remembrance and Research: Remembrance

The CD-ROM “Learning from History” presents (both in

English and in German) 50 projects that show the varieties of ways that

the Holocaust is taught in Germany’s sixteen states since 1990. The fifty

projects were selected from an extensive survey of Holocaust education

activities in Germany. These projects originated in primary and

secondary schools, special classes for the learning-disabled, in programs

for apprentices in trade and commercial schools, at memorial sites and

foundations.

The CD-ROM, unique in the world, provides insights into best

practices in classrooms and independent programs for youth in

contemporary Germany.

The CD-ROM provides a significant view of how the history of

the Holocaust is taught in contemporary Germany. It thus offers North

American teachers a rich range of ideas and strategies for helping young

people understand the historical facts and continuing significance of

Holocaust education in the world of today and tomorrow.

This survey is especially important because it allows North

American teachers to enter into direct dialogue with their German

counterparts.

Most projects focus on the fate of the Jews in Germany.

Nevertheless, there are also projects about the fate of the disabled,

Gypsies (Roma/Sinti), the White Rose resistance movement, perpetrator
846 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

biographies, and postwar trials. The projects include children’s music at

Theresienstadt (“Brundibar”), songs of the political resistance written in

the early concentration amps (“The Peat Bog Soldiers”), student literary

texts after a visit to the memorial at Natzweiler-Struthof, plays about

Janusz Korczak and deportation to Auschwitz performed by students,

and materials about the treasury and tax departments’ role in the

persecution of Jews. There are also projects about archeological digs by

students at the Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen

memorials, as well as apprentice stonemasons and construction workers

assisting in the repair and restoration of buildings at the Sachsenhausen

memorial.

The projects are interdisciplinary, combining history, German

language and literature, social studies, music, art, law, and ethics,

originating in formal classroom instruction and students activities in

independent projects in non-school settings. The CD-ROM includes the

teacher’s lesson plan and reports as well as student products (artwork,

literary and historical texts, theater and musical pieces, videos made by

students), extracts from memoirs written by victims and survivors, as

well as interrogations from postwar trials.

The CD-ROM contains extensive supplementary materials,

including maps, a list of memorials, a glossary of historical terms,

addresses of all institutions in Germany that deal with Holocaust

education, lists of media available for teachers for use in schools, and a

bilingual booklet with background about the German educational system

and how to use the CD-ROM.

A complementary website will be launched by Spring 1999 with

information about significant new projects, activities, current and

planned exhibitions in Germany, as well as links to existing websites at

German and foreign institutions that provide or produce significant

material for Holocaust education.

Scholarly advisory groups from both Germany and the United

States have overseen the projects, including Annegret Ehmann (House of

the Wannsee Conference), Professor Hanns-Fred Rathenow (Institute for

Didactics, Technical University Berlin), Sybil Milton (former Senior

Historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). The CDROM was tested by North American teachers and benefited greatly from

scholarly expertise provided by the Association of Holocaust

Organizations and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington

D.C.
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 847

The CD-ROM has been produced with the support from the Archive for

Cultural Policy, Bonn, The Fund for Cultural Education, Bonn, The

Goethe-Institut, Munich, The Robert Bosch Foundation, Stuttgart, and

the Press and Information Office of the German Federal Government,

Bonn.

Mr. Kenneth Jacobson

ASSISTANT NATIONAL DIRECTOR , ANTI-DEFAMATION LEAGUE

UNITED STATES

ADL’s Holocaust Programming:

Education, Reconciliation, Atonement

Break-out Session: Best Practices and Future Projects in Holocaust

Education, Remembrance and Research: Remembrance

In a society and Jewish community where there is a large amount

of activity concerning the Holocaust, ADL tries to focus its work on

those areas which are consistent with the mission of the organization and

which reflect and intermesh with our programmatic strengths in other

areas.

ADL’s mission for 85 years has been to fight anti-Semitism and

to combat other forms of hatred. Our Holocaust programs serve to meet

those challenges, educating how the history of anti-Semitism culminated

in the Shoah and how this tragic history has relevance to broader issues

of bias and intolerance in today’s world.

ADL’s Holocaust programming is filtered through our Braun

Holocaust Institute. Education, remembrance and research are the three

major facets of the Institute, and they are carried out in conjunction with

and strengthened by a unique range of institutional programs including

ADL's Youth Services, our Interfaith Affairs and our Civil Rights work.

The work of the Braun Holocaust Institute utilizes the

professional and lay leadership services of its 31 Regional Offices across

the U.S. and in Austria and Israel. Thus, the Holocaust Institute is able

to outreach and effectively channel its centralized services and programs

to serve the needs and interests of a particular community.

Programmatically, the work of the Braun Holocaust Institute

takes several approaches emphasizing the strengths of ADL.
850 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

EDUCATION OF YOUNG STUDENTS

The ADL’s Youth Programs including A World of Difference

and Children of the Dream (which brings Ethiopian Jews from Israel to

meet with inner city youngsters) target high school age youth. Across

the U.S., thousands of teachers and students (through peer training) and

teachers through (Train the Trainer Programs) incorporate Holocaust

Education as a significant component in lessons on anti-bias. Through

one chapter in the Anti-Bias Curriculum, through supplementary

holocaust discussion and curriculum guides, films, and first hand

survivor testimony, the Braun Holocaust augments the work of these

programs by demonstrating the lessons of the Holocaust as one extreme

manifestation of hate.

Particularly successful is the National Youth Mission to

Washington, D.C. This program combines the work of community

service, civil rights, Holocaust education and diversity anti-bias

programs by bringing together 80 students from around the U.S.,

students of a diverse ethnic and racial background to the USHMM in

Washington, D.C. For four days they not only learn about the Holocaust,

but they learn about its lessons and relevance to contemporary society.

INTERFAITH

ADL’s interfaith programs, both in the U.S. and abroad, have

particular strength in training Christian teachers and seminarians about

the way to educate about Judaism in order to reduce and eliminate

religious anti-Semitism. Our Holocaust programming takes advantage of

these strengths by developing services, commemorations and

symposiums stressing atonement, reconciliation, and coalition building.

While acknowledging the silence of most of the world, rare acts

of courage on the part of individuals and nations are remembered

through programs from The Jewish Foundation for Christian

Rescuers. For example, the National Holocaust commemoration

program “From Shoah to New Life: Honoring Italian Rescuers” (Last

year, honored Albanian Rescuers.) Each year this program, along with

“Courage to Care” commemoration will look at the rare and noble

Christians and Moslems who assisted Jews during the

Holocaust...individuals who made a difference.

A particularly impressive interfaith effort regarding the

Holocaust is ADL’s ‘Bearing Witness Program.’ This program targets
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 851

Catholic School educators and works in conjunction with the USHMM,

The National Conference of Bishops, and The National Catholic

Education Association. For five days Catholic teachers from all over the

U.S. came to D.C. to learn about ways they can implement Holocaust

education in their schools and community. In addition to providing

overall instruction on the Holocaust, the content of this program is

geared specifically to the needs and interests of parochial school teachers

and students. It sees the Holocaust in the context of Christian antiSemitism and other biases. It is a program which reflects the vast

improvement in Catholic-Jewish relations (such a program could not

have happened decades ago), and fosters continued openness.

EDUCATION OF COLLEGE STUDENTS

ADL has extensive programs around the country to help

students, faculty, and administrators deal with anti-Semitism and bias.

Our Holocaust programming directs itself to editors of campus

newspapers who are repeatedly confronted by efforts of Holocaust

deniers to get their hateful message to the students. While being a

staunch defender of free speech, ADL makes clear to editors that they are

under no First Amendment obligation to publish advertisements

advocating denial of the Holocaust, which are intrinsically hateful and

inaccurate. In our further effort to educate editors, we sponsor an annual

Mission to Israel, which includes a stop in Poland to experience firsthand the camps where Jews were murdered.

CIVIL RIGHTS AND HOLOCAUST DENIAL

A major task of ADL’s civil rights programs is to prevent

extremist, anti-Semitic groups from gaining credibility and legitimacy.

We recognize that a major obstacle to the resurgence of Nazism and

Fascism over the past 50 years has been the taint of the Holocaust.

Extremist groups see Holocaust denial as a key ingredient for their goal

of renewed respectability; convince enough people that the Holocaust

didn’t happen and the road is open to winning renewed respectability.

That is why we take seriously our work to combat Holocaust denial,

including reports and investigations on the movement and the groups that

foster it, as well as monitoring and countering such activity on the

Internet.
852 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

THE JEWISH FOUNDATION FOR CHRISTIAN RESCUERS AND

THE HIDDEN CHILD FOUNDATION

While keeping the focus of the Holocaust on its evil and the

absence of enough courageous people to stand against the Nazis, we also

try to impart the lessons of what happened when individuals acted to

save Jews. We give a Courage to Care Award to highlight those who

rescued. We have established a Sugihara Essay Writing contest, first in

the New York City Publish School System, now in San Francisco and

Japan, which looks at the example of the rescuer Chiume Sugihara and

asks the students to look at their own lives and depict an occasion where

they made a difference.

The Hidden Child Foundation brings together those survivors

who had been hidden as children from the Nazis. Through the ADL

Braun Institute, a National Speakers bureau has been formed and a

Hidden Child Discussion Guide developed. The Foundation works with

educators at Teacher Training and Student Workshops on the Holocaust

and organized conferences and gatherings for Survivors and Second

Generations.

PUBLICATIONS AND MATERIALS

Consistent with our broader educational effort, the Institute

provides and develops a number of educational materials on the

Holocaust including discussion guides, curriculums, and background

primers. Dimensions: A Journal of Holocaust Studies reaches out to a

broad community in providing a forum for debate on topics that are both

controversial and extremely relevant to contemporary society. Each

issue focuses on one aspect of the Holocaust – the churches, rescuing

science, culture, historiography, etc. – and provides wide-ranging

perspectives from top scholars and thinkers, which make for excellent

educational tools in and out of the classroom.

A new vehicle to educate, is “The Lasting Impact of the

Holocaust on the Arts,” a series that seeks to spur a new public

awareness of the Holocaust through presenting creative and artistic

works of survivors, second generation, and others who are profoundly

impacted by the Holocaust.

Educating about the Holocaust will be a continuous challenge as

we move further and further away from that great tragedy. As one

thoughtful political leader in Germany has recently said, we must find
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 853

new and creative ways to teach each new generation as the years make

for greater distance. We are committed to using the many strengths of

ADL to participate in this challenging mission in the years ahead.

Kenneth Jacobson

Assistant National Director

Anti-Defamation League

823 United Nations Plaza

New York, NY 10017

Mrs. Vladka Meed

AMERICAN GATHERING OF JEWISH

HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS

Life and Resistance during the Holocaust

Break-out Session: Best Practices and Future Projects in Holocaust

Education, Remembrance and Research: Curricular Education

There is a growing awareness in our country, as well as in other

countries, of the need to transmit the events and the lessons of the

Holocaust to coming generations. More and more studies about our

shattering past are making their way into the American public school

system. And we, the survivors, the last eyewitnesses, are concerned.

How will our people be remembered? Will history do them justice? Will

myths and half-truths prevail? Or will the young only learn the

frightening numbers of deaths, the clinical aspects of planned

destruction? Or will they be able to see beyond the numbers of mass

murders the victims as people -- as individuals who struggled to remain

human in a world which was so inhuman? Will they be able to

understand the life of the individual who was ground to dust in the

gigantic murder machine and is still waiting to be raised out of the abyss

of death, to be seen in full light?

For the last 14 years I have been privileged to lead an

educational program – a three-week Summer Seminar on the Holocaust

and Jewish Resistance for American high school teachers, who

implement Holocaust studies in their schools. The program embraces all

aspects of the Holocaust era with special emphases on Jewish resistance

in all its forms. We travel to Israel, with a stop in Poland. The teachers

go to the former death camps. In Auschwitz they see the heaps of hair,

eyeglasses, valises with the names of the victims, the blown up

crematoria in Birkenau. And in Majdanek, they see the mountain of

shoes. In Treblinka they walk on the road which lead to the gas

chambers. They touch history. Everything around them speaks of torture
856 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

of death I walk with them and want so much to show them a glimpse of

the Jewish life which once existed -- and is no more.

Splinters of memory – I see again and again my home in the

Warsaw Ghetto; my worn-out mother, with eyes puffy from starvation,

hiding a piece of bread from us hungry children - the payment for the old

tutor who was preparing my brother for his Bar Mitzvah, which he never

lived to see. I see our neighbor selling saccharine and watching for

approaching Germans, while upstairs her daughter holds illegal classes. I

see Jews, with faces covered to hide their beards, rushing to secret

synagogues. I see the faces of friends, both young and old, whom I met

at secret meetings -- the organizers of illegal cultural, social and political

activities in the ghetto - until they all were caught up in the Nazi vise and

sent to the gas chambers of Treblinka. Yes, this was resistance – to

survive as a people and a spirit that refused to be crushed. This was the

soil in which the seeds of armed resistance took hold.

Now after 50 years, historical facts connected with organized,

armed resistance, mostly carried out by the idealistic Jewish youth from

various political groups, are more or less known. And it seems to me that

a primary task today should be to individualize the young fighters, to

elaborate more about their lives, their homes, their thoughts and beliefs

which shaped their personalities and their actions in decisive times and

which helped shape our history.

Despite the vast body of Holocaust literature, still little is known

of the remarkable life that was destroyed. Yes, beyond starvation, terror,

fear and killing, there was life – life filled with meaning, with loyalty,

with sacrifice, with hope. Documenting this aspect of Jewish life in

Europe, before and during the era of Nazi horrors, is a fundamental

challenge facing scholars, writers and educators today.

The teachers in the program on "Holocaust and Jewish

Resistance" learn about this remarkable world. They learn as well about

all forms of Jewish resistance through lectures by prominent scholars at

the renowned Holocaust Center at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and at the

Study Center of Lohamei Haghetaot; through testimonies by survivors,

through workshops and trips to historic sites. We try to give them a

deeper understanding of the life before and during the Holocaust. And

this chapter of history should not only be written by historians basing

their knowledge on documents and books, but they should include more

about the experiences of the survivors who lived this history with their

own flesh and blood.

Yes, teachers have a special warm relationship with survivors

whom they meet at the conferences or in their classrooms when they give
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 857

testimony. They respect them and our survivors leave a deep impression

on their students.

The experiences which our teachers share during the intensive 3-

week seminar, forge deep and lasting bonds. An alumni family was

formed by our program. Alumni Conferences, co-sponsored by the U.S.

Holocaust Memorial Museum, are being organized featuring lectures and

workshops. An alumni Newsletter is being regularly published. Our

teachers maintain contact with each other as well as with the program

leaders. They are recognized in their communities and states as respected

advisors on Holocaust education. They serve on Holocaust commissions,

organize seminar, write curricula. It is impossible to list all their work

and achievements.

Permit me, finally, to share with you a few lines from John Iiori,

a teacher from Jacksonville, FL. He wrote to us: "The unique program in

which I participated in 1990 changed the way I look at every day life.

For 3 years I checked boxcars as an employee for a railroad company.

Today, as a teacher, I cannot see a railroad track without seeing

Treblinka and the gate at Birkenau. The bond we teachers now have will

not break. We will continue to teach, to bear witness, long after the

survivors are gone. This is the mission we educators have accepted."

Yes, these teachers are the link between our past and present.

They can transmit our memories, our warnings, our fears and our hope

for the future.

Dr. Robert Sigel

JOSEF EFFNER HIGH SCHOOL, DACHAU

GERMANY

Holocaust Education in Germany

Break-out Session: Best Practices and Future Projects in Holocaust

Education, Remembrance and Research: Curricular Education

Ladies and Gentlemen,

As a teacher of a German High School in Dachau and as a

historian who works on the educational guidelines as a part of the

reconceptualization of the Dachau concentration camp memorial site I

will present a short survey on the subject.

In the international guidelines on Holocaust Education - a British

draft for the Task Force declaration - one can read in point 4 concerning

the age of the students:

“Teachers tend to favor age 10-14 as the best time to introduce

the subject, in terms of the students’ educational and emotional

In the Internet you were able to find the outline on the

curriculum of the New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education. This

outline covers the age group Kindergarten up to 12th grade students.

The Holocaust Human Rights Center of Maine has developed a

guide titled, “Teaching about diversity, Prejudice, Human Rights and the

Holocaust. For Grades Kindergarten through Four.”

If you ask teachers in Germany if it was reasonable to teach

children in Kindergarten or ten-year-old students about the Holocaust,

most teachers would reject the idea.

Considering these different attitudes, one should ask oneself

what is understood by Holocaust Education.

• Is Holocaust Education moral education in general?

• Is it teaching tolerance?

• Is it a kind of peace education?
860 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

• Is it imparting values to the students?

• Is it instilling a sense of understanding for diversity?

If you understand all of these by Holocaust Education, there is

no reason why you should not start as early as Kindergarten.

In Germany of course all these values are part of education, of

any kind of education, but Holocaust Education in Germany means

something different. Holocaust Education in our country is mainly

“teaching about the Holocaust.” It means teaching and studying the

historical period of National Socialism in Germany and Europe and the

persecution and extermination of European Jewry.

In Germany as a federal state it is the 16 Länder that are

responsible for education, schooling and research. The curricula on this

subject however are not very different from each other.

Holocaust Education in Germany takes place mainly and

primarily in the history lessons. At the age of about 15 years the students

learn the history of the 20th century and the period of National Socialism

and in this context the Holocaust is given ample space. The fact that this

subject is taught again on the secondary level shows what emphasis is

laid on teaching about the Holocaust.

The main focus of these lessons is on cognitive studies. We

believe that the accurate and detailed knowledge of what happened and

how it happened is the indispensable basis.

• The basis for a lasting emotional empathy.

• The basis to immunize against all attempts to deny the

Holocaust.

• The basis to resist racism and neonazism.

Being the country of the perpetrators Germany has a great

number of memorial sites, the former concentration camps Dachau,

Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen etc.

A guided tour of these authentic places, where the traces of

persecution and terror can still be seen, has a powerful impact on visitors.

Such a visit is strongly recommended to school classes by the

ministries of education. During these visits the guide and the teacher

have the opportunity to show individual biographies of prisoners, to

show how they were humiliated, tortured and often murdered, to

visualize the prisoners living conditions in a concentration camp, at the

roll call place, in front of the barracks, inside the crematorium.

Whenever it is possible to include former concentration camp

prisoners, eyewitnesses, and survivors of the Holocaust in the guided

tours, in a conversation with the students, in a workshop, this opportunity
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 861

is certainly taken. Apart from the history lessons and the visits to a

memorial site the Holocaust is also a topic in lessons of religious

education, literature and civics.

Since the founding of the German Federal Republic the

Holocaust has always been part of the curriculum. It goes without saying

that the treatment of this topic has been different and more intensive

since the late seventies.

The results of scientific research have found their way into

schools; new aspects have been introduced: rescuers, conditions in

concentration camps, perpetrators.

My synopsis would therefore be:

• The Holocaust is an important topic in curricula, lessons,

schoolbooks and other teaching materials on all levels.

• Holocaust Education in Germany means teaching the

Holocaust as a specific historical event, the consequences of

which have an impact in the present and will have one in the

future.

• We do, of course, expect that studying the Holocaust leads to

attitudes and perceptions which are important for a

democratic society and prevent similar events from

happening in the future.

• Holocaust Education in the wider sense as defined at the

start of my talk does not exist as a term or as a curriculum in

itself in Germany, but it contents are of course taught.

• International cooperation will be useful and helpful in the

following areas:

• Exchange of teaching materials and teaching approaches.

• Exchange of experience between educators and teachers of

different countries and international teacher training.

• Student exchange programs with joined workshops and

projects on the topic.

German educators, teachers and institutions are certainly

prepared to share their experience and knowledge with colleagues abroad

and are eager to learn and profit from the experience of their colleagues.

Margot Stern Strom

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR,

FACING HISTORY AND OURSELVES NATIONAL FOUNDATION

UNITED STATES

Break-out Session: Best Practices and Future Projects in Holocaust

Education, Remembrance and Research: Curricular Education

Thank you so much for inviting Facing History and Ourselves to

participate in the Washington Conference on Holocaust-Era Assets. I am

honored to be among such a distinguished group of panelists and

participants. I would like to assure you that Facing History and Ourselves

is eager to be involved in this innovative, precedent-setting international

approach to Holocaust education. It would be a great honor to work with

the committee and such scholars as Yehuda Bauer.

Facing History and Ourselves provides a nationally and

internationally-recognized educational program that focuses on the

events that led to the Holocaust as well as the Holocaust itself. In so

doing, we explore the universal themes that connect that history to the

moral choices young people confront each day. We are positioned to

reinforce and strengthen our outreach in Holocaust education, both in

communities we already serve and in those where this vital education has

been overlooked. Our core work builds public awareness of the

Holocaust through professional development for with middle and high

school educators – both in the US and in Europe. Our work is informed

by our experience in adapting our materials and approaches to the needs

of particular nations.

Facing History and Ourselves is a non-profit educational

organization whose mission is to promote democratic citizenship through

curriculum and strategies for teachers, students and communities.

Through workshops, institutes and public events, educators learn to

engage students in a study of history and ethics.

With a national office in Brookline, Massachusetts and regional

offices in New York, Memphis, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San

Francisco, Facing History annually conducts more than twenty 5-day

institutes, over two dozen advanced seminars and workshops, and

ongoing, technical assistance to teachers. Our Resource Center makes

available to educators books, films, slides, articles and videotapes that
864 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

are integrated into classroom instruction. Founded in 1976, Facing

History serves a growing network of over 10,000 educators in the US

who reach one million students each year.

Facing History and Ourselves has written and published Facing

History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior (now in its

second edition), which is the key resource book for the program. In

cooperation with the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies

at Yale University, we developed videos for classroom use and an

accompanying resource guide, Elements of Time. We have also published

the writings of a member of our survivor network, I Promised I Would

Tell by Sonia Schreiber Weitz. Our latest resource book is The Jews of

Poland, which describes the rich life of the Jewish community in Poland

before World War II and leads young people to an examination of their

own personal identities.

Facing History and Ourselves produces materials that support

multi-media projects in classrooms including a study guide to Steven

Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, and educational materials for the Survivors

of the Shoah Visual History Foundation’s recent CD-ROM Survivors:

Testimonies of the Holocaust. This summer, Facing History and

Ourselves was selected by Public Affairs Television, Inc. to produce and

disseminate a study guide to accompany Bill Moyers’ upcoming PBS

broadcast, Facing the Truth, which documents the work of South

Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Facing History brings Holocaust survivors into classrooms to tell

their stories and to inspire young people to learn from history. We are

actively involved with survivor networks in the Boston area and in our

regions as well as with One Generation After. We work closely with

leading Holocaust scholars, including Dr. Lawrence Langer and Dr.

Michael Berenbaum, to ensure the accuracy and timeliness of our

materials. Each year, members of Facing History’s program staff

undertake an intensive month-long study of the Holocaust at Yad

Vashem.

For nearly 15 years, Facing History has explored the efforts of

individuals and nations to respond to collective violence and heal the

wounds of widespread atrocities. Our first Human Rights and Justice

conference in 1985 was on the Nuremberg trials. Our most recent Annual

Human Rights and Justice Conference in 1997, entitled Collective

Violence and Memory: Judgment, Reconciliation, Education, was cosponsored by the Harvard/Facing History Project and the Graduate

Program at Harvard Law School. These conferences have been an
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 865

important vehicle for promoting awareness of these issues not only to

educators but also the greater community.

At this most recent public forum, Dullah Omar, Minister of

Justice of South Africa and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, member of the

Human Rights Violation Committee of South Africa’s Truth and

Reconciliation Commission, joined fellow panelists in an examination of

the judicial, religious, psychological and political themes inherent in the

varied responses to collective violence. As a result of the conference,

Harvard Law School Professor Martha Minow’s book, Between

Vengeance and Forgiveness: Facing History after Genocide and Mass

Violence, was released this fall from Beacon Press. Next week, we will

host Choosing to Participate: A Global Perspective, a symposium which

introduced Justice Richard Goldstone, the first chief prosecutor of the

United Nations International Criminal Tribunals for the former

Yugoslavia and Rwanda, to 400 community members in an examination

of our role as citizens in an increasingly global society.

The Facing History and Ourselves program has repeatedly

demonstrated its effectiveness. Since its inception, the program has

undergone continuous external and internal evaluation. As a member of

the National Diffusion Network, evaluation research was regularly

submitted to an independent panel convened by the US Department of

Education for validation. A current study sponsored by the Carnegie

Corporation of New York followed 400 students in Facing History and

Ourselves classrooms as well as in comparison classes and found that

students in our programs achieved greater gains in relationship maturity

while reported violence decreased. The thinking of Facing History

students moved towards more differentiated, complex, and reflective

perspectives, while reported incidents of fighting went down.

In 1996, Facing History launched a new program to aid law

enforcement personnel in connecting the Holocaust to the moral choices

they face on the job daily. The project is designed to help officers better

meet the diverse needs of the neighborhoods they serve and the goals of

community policing. In a Department of Justice-funded project, the

Boston Police Department and Facing History are partners with other

local institutions in conducting regional community policing training

institutes designed to advance community policing nationally. Facing

History is also providing programs for other law enforcement agencies

based on its educational model, including immigration officers, housing

and school police forces. Recently, Senior Associate for Police and

Community Programming Bill Johnston received the first-ever Civil

Rights Award from the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
866 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

For the past twenty years, members of the Facing History

program staff have traveled abroad to conduct workshops, deliver

presentations at conferences, and study with scholars and local

organizations at the site of the history about which we teach. In addition,

educators from all over Europe continue to attend Facing History’s

professional development programs—both in the United States and in

Europe—and meet with program staff and other scholars. To enrich this

professional development, Facing History maintains strong connections

to European educators, scholars and other experts who both learn from us

and teach us about democracy and civic participation.

Facing History’s full-time representative based in Switzerland,

August Zemo, who is also in attendance at this conference today,

develops and oversees our European activities. Beginning in 1992,

Facing History’s materials and methodologies have been adapted for use

in schools in Western, Central and Eastern Europe. In those eight years

we have held a series of teacher training seminars in Europe; held

seminars on tolerance for students from state and international schools in

Europe; participated in three study tours in Eastern Europe (a fourth is

upcoming in spring, 1999); established working relationships with major

research institutes in Europe including the Memorial House of the

Wannsee Conference (Berlin), the Fritz Bauer Institute (Frankfurt am

Main), Stichting Sintiwerk Best (the Netherlands), Auschwitz-Birkenau

State Museum (Oswiecim), the Center for Human Rights Education

(Prague), and the Musee memorial des enfants d’izieu (France). We have

also established ties with the International Romani Union and the

Landelijke Siniti Organisatie. Our resource book has been translated for

adoption into Hungarian state schools and we have recently been

approached by the Slovak Republic to develop school textbooks and the

Ministry of Education in Romania to integrate Facing History systemwide.

In Sweden, Facing History has recently conducted an institute in

collaboration with Hedi Fried, a psychologist and Auschwitz survivor

who is also in attendance today. The institute was sponsored by the

Teachers College in Stockholm and the Teachers for Peace organization.

Plans are underway for a similar institute in Norway.

Facing History has promoted public awareness of the Holocaust

in the national and international media including NBC’s Today Show,

ABC’s American Agenda, CNN and many local television outlets.

Articles about Facing History have appeared in The Boston Globe, The

Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The London Times, and Le

Monde, as well as in a number of educational journals, including
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 867

Columbia Teachers College Record, Harvard Education Review,

Education Week, Educational Leadership, and English Journal.

Internationally, we have been cited in UNESCO’s Human Rights journal,

and educational journals in Germany and Hungary. Currently, Facing

History is working with a Today Show producer on a new segment about

our work, tentatively scheduled for an April broadcast.

The work of Facing History and Ourselves has been supported

by the Charles A. Dana Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T.

MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation

of New York, the Charles H. Revson Foundation, the Surdna Foundation,

the Crown Family Foundation, the Covenant Foundation, state and

federal government agencies, other major foundations and corporations,

as well as individual donors. In 1994, we were awarded a National

Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grant, which helped to build

our endowment, which totals approximately $2 million. The Facing

History budget for fiscal 1998-99 totals $7.9 million to support its

programs and operation. Our current staff totals 74, both at the national

office and in our regions.

Facing History and Ourselves was selected as a model program

by the U.S. Department of Education’s National Diffusion Network and

for sixteen years received funding for national dissemination. Harvard

University has recognized Facing History’s expertise and joined with us

in a multi-year project to address intolerance and violence among young

people through research and the development of new curricular

materials.

In 1997, I received the 12th Annual Charles A. Dana Award for

Pioneering Achievement in Education for Facing History’s “role in

creating an innovative curriculum on moral development.” The

Foundation recently awarded Facing History a two-year grant for its

work in the area of academic standards in K-12 education. A recent

citation from Northeastern University recognized that Facing History has

“enable(d) millions of students to study the Holocaust; investigate the

root causes of racism, anti-Semitism and violence and realize their

obligations and capabilities as citizens in a democracy.”

Facing History and Ourselves was selected by the President’s

Initiative on Race to appear on the White House web site under the

heading, Promising Practices. Last year, First Lady Hillary Rodham

Clinton spoke with Facing History and Ourselves students at Orchestra

Hall in Chicago where she had heard Martin Luther King, Jr. speak in

1962. We have also been invited to serve on the National Advisory
868 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

Board of The Television Race Initiative, which is bringing national

attention to issues of race in America.

As a non-profit organization with a proven capacity for

dissemination nationally and internationally, Facing History and

Ourselves would be happy to collaborate with or assist those who are

working on Holocaust education issues. We stand ready to share what

we know about developing and supporting teachers so that they can

effectively address the critical issues raised by this history.
Dr. Marcia Sachs Littell

DIRECTOR, NATIONAL ACADEMY FOR HOLOCAUST AND GENOCIDE

TEACHER TRAINING

RICHARD STOCKTON COLLEGE, NEW JERSEY

UNITED STATES

Holocaust Education in the 21st Century:

Breaking the Silence in 1945,

Avoiding Premature Closure in 1999

Break-out Session: Best Practices and Future Projects in Holocaust

Education, Remembrance and Research: Curricular Education

In the years directly following liberation - there was silence --

stunning silence. From the Jewish Community, from the churches, from

government agencies. During this time, the majority of Americans were

comfortable with the silence. Even the word "Holocaust" did not come

into current use until the 1960's.

The growing awareness in America of the significance of the

Holocaust can be marked with the date 1960, with the publication and

wide sale of the English edition of Elie Wiesel's classic: Night, which

after four decades remains one of the most influential publications about

the Holocaust.

Complementing this literary work was the first edition of Raoul

Hilberg's scholarly work: The Destruction of the European Jews. This

landmark work, using sources then available, carefully recorded the mass

Nazi genocide of the Jews.

The trial of Adolf Eichmann and his execution on June 1, 1962

aroused intense interest all over the world. The trial was a major

landmark of Holocaust awareness and education, although in different

contexts for Americans than for Israelis. A major public and political

breakthrough was delayed in the USA.
870 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

Americans received their first real jolt of awareness at the time

of the Six Day War (1967) in Israel, when "a Second Holocaust" seemed

threatened. With the realization that Jews might be destroyed in their

homeland, not only Jews in the Diaspora were aroused: Christians

friendly to Jewish survival were also moved to act.

Within three years, three important organizations resulted from

Christian initiative in the United States: the National Christian

Leadership Conference for Israel, the Christian Study Group on Israel

and the Jewish People, and the Annual Scholars' Conference on the

Holocaust and the Churches. Of greatest outreach among the three was

the Annual Scholars' Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches.

The Annual Scholars' Conference - interdisciplinary, interfaith and

international - brought together for the first time Christian and Jewish

Scholars to examine issues raised by the Holocaust and the response of

the Churches - before, during and after the tragedy.

In March of 1999, in its 29th consecutive year, the conference

will bring together c600 registrants from c25 countries. In recent years

the Conference has also expanded to embrace teachers, clergy, survivors,

community leaders and graduate students. It has each year rotated

geographic location and academic co-sponsorship around the United

States. At first the Annual Scholars' Conference was small, with a few

dozen professors. Attendance doubled in the late 1970s with an influx of

primary and secondary school teachers. Since 1990 participation has

numbered in the hundreds, and the 29th Annual Conference will bring in

another major constituency - the Community Colleges, increasingly

important in American higher education. The university, college and

community college campuses have become centers of Holocaust

awareness.

If the 1967 war paved the way for changed attitudes towards the

Holocaust and the formation of a major interfaith conference, the 1973

Yom Kippur War served to shake loose the last reservations held by the

American Jewish communities. Initially, the Jewish defense agencies had

stood aloof from the Scholars' Conference and intense Holocaust

education, counting such work counter-productive to amicable ChristianJewish relations. But the Yom Kippur War propelled them to a greater

readiness to clearly and directly confront the Holocaust and its lessons.

In 1975 community Holocaust Resource Centers were launched -

the first by Professor Yaffa Eliach in Brooklyn. Six weeks later the

Philadelphia Center was started by Professor Franklin Littell on the

campus of Temple University. The growth of local Holocaust Resource

Centers has flourished in recent years. Holocaust education is now a
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 871

major commitment of Jewish communal education programs, in all major

cities. There are now 122 centers in North America.

The Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and the United

States Holocaust Memorial Museum have added powerful dimensions to

the education of the public.

In spite of large numbers of individual courses on the campuses,

programs toward the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees have been slow to emerge.

For high quality Ph.D. work in the Holocaust, American students have

for years made the trek to study in Hebrew University with the group

around Yehuda Bauer and Yisrael Gutman. There was a short spring in

1975 at Temple University, with a doctoral program of which Dr.

Mordecai Paldiel - now of Yad Vashem - was the first Ph.D., but it did

not outlast its relegation to a section of the Jewish Studies program.

Since the 1970's teacher interest in presenting the Holocaust in

the middle and high schools has flourished. The growing interest in

America in ethnic and minority studies has helped. So too has the work

of Lawrence Kohlberg at Harvard in creating the "moral education and

values clarification movement." The major media event during the

1970's was the 1978 television production "Holocaust." It was an

antiseptic, soap opera type presentation of genocide, dramatic with love

on the run and a happy ending. It received high ratings from the

American public if not from the critics. Some specialists found it set their

teeth on edge, even though it was useful in exposing millions of viewers

to the basic facts of the Holocaust. With all its flaws, it played a major

part in opening the door to the public-at-large and in stimulating public

support for Holocaust education in the United States.

President Jimmy Carter's interest in memorializing the Holocaust

led to the establishing of the President's Commission on the Holocaust.

By 1980, through an act of Congress Yom HaShoah became a regular

calendar day in America. The President of the United States, the

governor of every state and the mayor of every major American City

now declares it an official Day of Remembrance.

Documentary films flourished in the 1980s. Among the most

notable was Sister Carol Rittner's documentary based on rescuers, "The

Courage To Care." Pierre Sauvage's "Weapons of the Spirit" told the

story of the Trocmés and Le Chambon, the latter the village of rescuers

where he had been an infant. Claude Lanzmann's nine and one-half hour

"SHOAH" was widely viewed in America, and is still used in schools.

In the 1990s Schindler's List, Jon Blair's Academy Awardwinning Anne Frank Remembered, and Gerda Klein's All But My Life

have brought major attention to the Holocaust. As we prepare to enter a
872 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

new millennium a new genre of film is appearing on the scene, beginning

with Roberto Benigni's remarkable, sensitive "Life is Beautiful."

Monuments, memorials and Holocaust centers continue to

abound. The Holocaust Centers provide varied services, including

museums, resource centers, archival facilities, family memorials,

research facilities, libraries and depositories of oral and video testimony.

Numerous states have established Commissions on the

Holocaust and recommendations to teach. Five states have mandated

Holocaust Education in the schools1. More have vigorously

recommended that teachers deal with the subject2. There are estimated to

be several hundred courses at the college and university level, although

no recent or precise study of them throughout the entire USA has been

conducted. Dr. Margaret Crouch's study, which covered "The Holocaust

in Undergraduate Education in the Middle Atlantic Region,"3 discovered

a continuing growth of course offerings in the region.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum presents the story for all

Americans of conscience – Jew and non-Jew, young or old. The opening

of the Museum encouraged public discussion of the Holocaust. It has

been responsible for an avalanche of events, one-time conferences and

new courses on the campuses, with a rush to include Holocaust

Education in the secondary and college curricula.

We now have a dual set of problems to deal with, one on the

secondary school level and another at the college and university level.

At both levels of instruction we lack properly trained master

teachers and professors. This problem now has become acute in the

secondary school arena, where more and more states are mandating or

recommending the teaching.

In both cases there is a funding problem. Still lacking are the

endowments to create interfaith chairs of Holocaust studies in the

universities. Currently there are chairs in the U.S. at the University of

California: Los Angeles, at Santa Cruz, Yeshiva University, Emory,

Clark, Florida Atlantic University, and at the Richard Stockton College

 

1.

 The States mandating Holocaust Studies are California (grades 7-9 & 10-12),

Florida, Illinois, New Jersey (grades k-12), New York.

2.

 The states recommending Holocaust instruction are Connecticut, Indiana,

Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and

Washington. Beginning in September of 1997, Wisconsin has recommended

Holocaust Education in secondary schools.

3.

 Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation at Wilmington College; Dr. Crouch's address is

604 Norman's Lane, Newark DE 19711.
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 873

of New Jersey. The first endowed chairs in a community colleges have

been announced, at Monroe Community College, Rochester NY. and

Brookdale Community College (New Jersey). Only at The Richard

Stockton College of New Jersey however, is there a deliberate effort to

assure that the study and the teaching remains truly interfaith. The

endowed chair for a Visiting Distinguished Scholar rotates between a

Christian and a Jewish Scholar year by year.

A problem of recent years in the United States has been a

marked tendency to place Holocaust Studies, and now the new chairs, in

Departments of Jewish Studies. This insulates the topic from having any

general impact.

Training teachers at the secondary and primary school level

points up an additional set of problems. Grass roots support is important,

as is individual teacher initiative. However, we have passed the point in

the development of Holocaust Education where the training of teachers

can any longer be delegated to the "ad hoc" method - occasional inservice workshops, voluntary summer institutes or faculty development

seminars.

In order to achieve sustainability and quality control in the

curriculum and meet the needs of a pluralistic society, we need degree

programs for teachers within colleges and universities. These programs

must be closely linked - on an interdisciplinary basis - with content

departments. Teachers need to receive college credit - with concrete

consequences in salary increments - for their advanced work in

Holocaust Studies. In order to accomplish this, a top level commitment is

required with appropriate funds for resources and graduate training for

teachers.

With the emphasis in some K-12 programs on diversity,

tolerance, and prejudice reduction we must be very clear about the goals

and objectives of Holocaust Education. One of the problems is that

presently we have so many curricula that teachers find it difficult to

know what and how to select units to use in their classrooms. Sometimes

the factual information is not dependable. We need active cooperation

between the historians and the professors of methodology to achieve a

better integration of pedagogical and content expertise. In the United

States, however, we have a decentralized educational system that leaves

requirements to the individual states. There is no one standard, no

national curriculum for the Holocaust. This leaves Holocaust Education

vulnerable to parochial interests.

On the university level we now face the danger of premature

Closure, of an administrative solution that slides Holocaust Studies into
874 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

Jewish Studies, rather than maintaining it as a discrete field or an interdisciplinary program. This is as dangerous as the widespread

indifference or denial of earlier years. In fact Franklin Littell refers to

this administrative solution as "soft" denial. Merging Holocaust Studies

into Jewish Studies is the wrong approach. It simply sends the wrong

message. That the Holocaust is the most traumatic event in the death and

life of the Jewish people since the destruction of the Second Temple goes

without saying. But study of the Holocaust is also to study the pathology

of Western civilization and its flawed structures. It must not be hidden

away by false bracketing of courses.

For university administrators, attuned to public opinion, the

solution of subsuming "Holocaust" under Jewish Studies is attractive. It

keeps the subject under control. In the several disciplines, we academics

all face the same temptation to render antiseptic the story and lessons of

the Holocaust. Sociologists are tempted to put the message in the box of

"racism." Political Scientists are tempted to put the message in the box

of "war and dictatorship." Psychologists find it congenial to talk about

the special cases of survivors and perpetrators. Theologians find the

Holocaust a neat illustration of the Problem of Evil: "theodicy."

Sectarians - both Jew and gentile - pigeon-hole it as "a Jewish affair."

Within recent months - and here I shall conclude - major

breakthroughs have occurred at Clark University and the Richard

Stockton College of New Jersey. In the former, with Professor Deborah

Dwork taking the lead, a Ph.D. program of study, research and

dissertation defense has been initiated. In the latter, a Master of Arts

program at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey has been started,

primarily to help school teachers. Among the more than fifty who

applied for admission to the program there are a few who expect to go on

for the Ph.D. The large majority, however, are teachers of various

subjects who under the New Jersey mandate are directed to teach a topic

on which they need help in building lessons, locating videos and books,

and in attaining a general competence in the subject.

These school teachers, flocking to a degree program in

Holocaust studies at Stockton College, remind us that the dialogue with

the past is alive. And we are reminded that, above all else, we must

strive to avert premature closure in Holocaust Studies. The big questions

are still open, and they are vital to the mind and spirit of every student

whatever his or her "major." For some time to come, the Holocaust will

require the vigorous attention of minds and consciences for whom

history is not the dead past, but rather a part of our present awareness,
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 875

and above all a topic where careful study and teaching are an arrow

pointing in the direction of a future without genocide.

Dr. David Singer

DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH, AMERICAN JEWISH COMMITTEE

UNITED STATES

Knowledge and Remembrance of the

Holocaust in Different Countries:

Data from American Jewish CommitteeSponsored Surveys

Break-out Session: Best Practices and Future Projects in Holocaust

Education, Remembrance and Research: Curricular Education

INTRODUCTION

Beginning in June 1992, the American Jewish Committee

launched a series of public opinion surveys in various countries probing

issues related to knowledge and remembrance of the Holocaust. The

countries covered in this research effort include the United States (1992;

1994), Great Britain (1993), France (1993), Slovakia (1993), Australia

(1994), Germany (1994), Austria (1995), Poland (1995), and Russia

(1996). A number of key questions were asked in all of the countries,

providing a wealth of comparative data. Other questions explored in

detail Holocaust related concerns specific to individual countries.

The tables which follow present the full set of findings from the

American Jewish Committee-sponsored surveys. For those engaged in

Holocaust education the data are of immediate relevance in that they

make clear the base line of knowledge that exists at present. Clearly,

much work needs to be done to overcome the knowledge gap that

prevails in many countries with regard to the Holocaust, including the

United States.

In the year 2,000, the American Jewish Committee will conduct

follow up surveys in all of the countries included in the initial effort, plus
878 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

others. This follow-up round will make available, for the first time, trend

line data on knowledge and remembrance of the Holocaust. The

information generated should serve as a valuable yardstick for measuring

progress in the area of Holocaust education.

Questions Asked in Multiple Countries

1. "As far as you know, what does the term `the Holocaust' refer to?"

(in percents) (OPEN-ENDED)

Extermination/

murder/

persecution/

treatment Exterof Jews mination

by Hitler/ murder/ Other

Nazis/ persecution relevant

Country Germans of Jews responses Others DK/NA

Germany (1994) 59 23 5 3 10

W.Germans

(1994) 59 27 5 3 6

E.Germans

(1994) 58 11 4 2 25

France (1993) 35 21 12 12 20

Great Britain (1993) 33 18 5 35 18

Australia (1994) 39 17 17 15 12

United States (1992) 24 30 7 10 28

United States (1994) 24 35 9 12 19

Poland (1995) 3 32 6 11 48

Austria (1995) 10 49 23 2 20

Russia (1996) 3 3 1 2 91

Note: In the French and American surveys, if an incorrect

response was given, respondents were told, "To be precise, the Holocaust

was the Nazi extermination of Jews during the Second World War." In

the Australian survey, all respondents were so informed. In the British

survey, multiple answers were allowed.

"Other relevant responses" may include: concentration camps,

German death camps, Hitler, Nazis, Germans, World War II, and the

1940s. "Others" may include: death/murder/slaughter, destruction/

disaster/tragedy, war/nuclear war, cataclysm, the end of the world,

starvation, or other answers.

The low figures in Poland and Russia for correct/partially correct

responses reflect lack of usage of the English term "the Holocaust."
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 879

2. "From what you know or have heard, what were Auschwitz,

Dachau, and Treblinka?" (in percents)

Concentration Other

Country camps responses DK/NA

Germany (1994) 92 3 5

W.Germans (1994) 91 4 5

E. Germans (1994) 95 3 2

France (1993) 90 4 6

Great Britain (1993) 76 4 20

Australia (1994) 85 4 13

United States (1992) 62 11 27

United States (1994) 67 4 28

Poland (1995) 91 8 1

Austria (1995) 91 4 6

Russia (1996) 50 2 49

Note: This question was closed-ended in the French, Australian,

and American surveys, and open-ended with codes in the British,

German, Polish, Austrian, and Russian surveys. Australian respondents

were not given the option of answering "other."

3. "Approximately how many Jews were killed in the Holocaust?" (in

percents)

25, 100, 1 mil- 2 mil- 6 mil- 20 mil- DK/

Country 000 000 lion lion lion lion NA

Germany (1994) 2 5 13 15 36 8 21

 W. Germans (1994) 1 5 12 14 36 9 23

 E. Germans (1994) 3 5 16 19 36 6 16

France (1993) 2 4 11 14 45 12 12

Great Britain (1993) 2 4 5 9 41 13 26

Australia (1994) 2 9 12 10 47 6 14

United States (1992) 1 4 7 13 35 10 30

United States (1994) 1 5 6 9 44 7 28

Poland (1995)* 1 2 10 25 34 6 22

Austria (1995) 1 3 12 19 31 8 26

Russia (1996)* 1 2 8 12 21 5 52

* Respondents in Poland were asked, "Approximately how many

Jews were killed by the Nazis during the Second World War?"

Respondents in Russia were asked, "Approximately how many Jews in

all of Europe were killed by the Nazis during the Second World War?"
880 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

4. "Many Jews in Europe were forced to wear a symbol on their

clothes during the Second World War. What was it?" (in percents)

Yellow star/

Jewish star*/ Other

Country star of David* responses DK/NA

Germany (1994)** 91 1 8

 W. Germans (1994) 90 1 9

 E. Germans (1994) 98 1 1

France (1993) 88 9 3

Great Britain (1993) 56 9 34

Australia (1994) 72 17 12

United States (1992) 42 30 29

United States (1994) 42 24 33

Poland (1995) 74 8 18

Austria (1995) 84 1 17

Russia (1996) 34 7 59

Note: This question was closed-ended in the French, Australian,

and American surveys, and open-ended with codes in the British,

German, Polish, Austrian, and Russian surveys.

* This response was not included in the Australian, French, and

American questionnaires.

** In Germany, Poland, Russia, and Austria, "yellow star,"

"Jewish star," and "star of David" were accepted as responses.

5. "In addition to the Jews, which of the following groups, if any,

were persecuted by the Nazis?" (in percents)

HomoCountry Gypsies Poles sexuals Aryans Other DK/NA

Germany (1994) 74 43 68 7 24 14

 W. Ger. (1994) 75 40 66 6 21 15

 E. Ger. (1994) 70 55 78 8 37 8

France (1993) 57 52 33 8 4 7

Great Britain (1993) 51 63 51 9 14 20

Australia (1994) 49 75 47 9 -- --

United States (1992) 26 50 25 7 10 30

United States (1994) 27 47 26 4 9 34

Austria (1995) 75 41 61 5 14 17
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 881

Note: Australian respondents were not given the option of

answering "other," and they were asked to answer "yes" or "no" for each

response; respondents from the other countries were asked to specify

their responses from the list.

6. "Some people claim that the Nazi extermination of the Jews never

happened. Have you ever heard this claim, or not?" (in percents)

Heard this Have not heard

Country claim this claim DK/NA

Germany(1994) 60 30 9

 W. Germans(1994) 62 29 9

 E. Germans(1994) 56 34 10

France(1993) 67 33 0

Great Britain(1993) 50 46 4

Australia (1994) 70 28 3

United States(1992) 38 54 8

United States(1994) 49 44 7

Poland (1995) 29 70 2

Austria (1995) 59 21 20

Russia (1996) 13 81 6

7a. "Does it seem possible or does it seem impossible to you that the

Nazi extermination of the Jews never happened?" (in percents)

It seems It seems

Country possible impossible DK/NA

Germany (1994) 8 80 13

 West Germans (1994) 7 79 14

 East Germans (1994) 10 82 8

France (1993) 5 94 1

Great Britain (1993) 7 84 9
882 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

7b. "Does it seem possible to you that the Nazi extermination of the

Jews never happened, or do you feel certain that it happened?" (in

percents)

It seems Feel

possible certain

it never it

Country happened happened DK/NA

United States (1994) 1 91 8

Australia (1994) 4 93 3

Poland (1995) 1 96 2

Austria (1995) 7 88 6

Russia (1996) 2 90 8

Note: In Australia, the question was asked of a half-sample.

8. "Please tell me whether you strongly agree, mostly agree, mostly

disagree, or strongly disagree: `The Holocaust is not relevant today

because it happened almost 50 years ago.'" (in percents)

Strongly Mostly Mostly Strongly

Country agree agree disagree disagree DK/NA

Germany (1994) 11 26 33 20 10

 W. Germans (1994) 12 28 32 17 10

 E. Germans (1994) 5 17 37 31 11

France (1993) 8 12 15 64 1

Great Britain (1993) 5 13 20 53 9

Australia (1994) 7 9 23 57 4

United States (1992) 8 13 17 46 15

United States (1994) 8 13 17 48 14

Poland (1995)* 6 22 43 25 4

Austria (1995) 10 18 26 29 18

*Respondents in Poland were asked about "the Nazi

extermination of the Jews."
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 883

9. "In your view, how important is it for Germans [for the French/for

the British/for Australians/for all Americans/for all Austrians/for

all citizens of Russia] to know about and understand the

Holocaust--is it essential, very important, only somewhat

important, or not important?" (in percents)

Only

Very somewhat Not DK/

Country Essential important important important NA

Germany (1994) 18 50 19 7 7

 W. Germans (1994) 17 48 20 7 8

 E. Germans (1994) 20 55 14 6 5

France(1993) 45 43 11 1 0

Great Britain (1993) 33 39 20 4 4

Australia (1994) 29 43 23 3 2

United States (1992) 33 39 13 2 13

United States (1994) 39 37 12 2 11

Poland (1995)* 17 69 11 1 3

Austria (1995) 20 42 17 5 16

Russia (1996)* 31 31 22 8 8

*Respondents in Poland and Russia were asked about "the Nazi

extermination of the Jews during the Second World War."

10. "Please tell me whether you strongly agree, mostly agree, mostly

disagree, or strongly disagree: `The Holocaust makes clear the

need for the State of Israel as a place of refuge for Jews in times of

persecution.'" (in percents)

Strongly Mostly Mostly Strongly

Country agree agree disagree disagree DK/NA

France (1993) 19 32 19 23 7

Great Britain (1993) 24 33 14 6 23

Australia (1994) 17 42 17 10 15

United States (1992) 28 32 8 5 27

United States (1994) 25 33 11 6 25
884 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

11a. "For each of the following, please tell me if you think it is a lesson

to be learned from the Holocaust or not: (a) Firm steps need to be

taken to protect the rights of minorities." (in percents)

Country Is Is not DK/NA

France (1993) 87 10 3

Great Britain (1993) 89 3 8

United States (1992) 83 6 11

United States (1994) 76 13 10

11b. "For each of the following, please tell me if you think it is a lesson

to be learned from the Holocaust or not: (b) There is no hope for

the human race." (in percents)

Country Is Is not DK/NA

France (1993) 38 57 5

Great Britain (1993) 34 51 15

United States (1992) 21 67 13

United States (1994) 18 73 9

11c. "For each of the following, please tell me if you think it is a lesson

to be learned from the Holocaust or not: (c) People must speak out

against oppression so that another Holocaust will not happen." (in

percents)

Country Is Is not DK/NA

France (1993) 92 6 2

Great Britain (1993) 92 2 6

United States (1992) 84 4 12

United States (1994) 81 9 10
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 885

11d. "For each of the following, please tell me if you think it is a lesson

to be learned from the Holocaust or not: (d) In relations between

people and countries, what counts is power and not morality." (in

percents)

Country Is Is not DK/NA

France (1993) 57 35 8

Great Britain (1993) 29 48 23

United States (1992) 29 55 16

United States (1994) 22 66 13

11e. "For each of the following, please tell me if you think it is a lesson

to be learned from the Holocaust or not: (e) It is important to stand

by what you think is right instead of going along with everyone

else." (in percents)

Country Is Is not DK/NA

France (1993) 76 18 6

Great Britain (1993) 94 1 5

United States (1992) 85 4 11

United States (1994) 84 7 9

12. "In your view, how likely is it that the Jewish people could be

subject to another Holocaust somewhere in the world in coming

years - - very likely, somewhat likely, or not very likely?" (in

percents)

Very Somewhat Not very

Country likely likely likely DK/NA

France (1993) 7 31 59 3

Great Britain (1993) 16 31 40 13

Australia (1994) 15 34 48 4

United States (1992) 13 28 43 17

United States (1994) 13 29 41 17
886 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

13. "Are there any situations similar in nature to the Holocaust going

on in the world today?" (in percents)

Country Yes No DK/NA

France (1993) 86 10 4

Great Britain (1993) 77 9 14

Australia (1994) 77 16 7

United States (1992) 47 26 27

United States (1994) 52 25 23

14a. “Some people say that 45 years [50 years] after the end of World

War II, it is time to put the memory of the Holocaust, Hitler's

extermination of the Jews, behind us. Others say that we should

keep the remembrance of the Holocaust strong even after the

passage of time. Which opinion comes closer to your opinion?"

(in percents)

Country Behind Remember DK/NA

Hungary (1991) 28 61 10

Czechoslovakia (1991) 21 71 9

Poland (1991) 13 81 6

Poland (1995) 10 85 5

Russia (1996) 6 78 16

14b. "With the opening of a new chapter in German history, 45 years

after the end of the Second World War, it is time to put the

memory of the Holocaust behind us." (in percents)

Agree Agree Disagree Disagree

Country strongly somewhat somewhat strongly DK/NA

Germany (1990)30 28 20 14 8

 W. Ger (1990) 34 31 18 9 8

 E. Ger (1990) 21 23 26 21 9
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 887

14c. "Recently someone said: "Today, in the aftermath of German

unification, we should not talk so much about the Holocaust, but

should rather draw a line under the past." Would you say this is

correct or incorrect?" (in percents)

Country Correct Incorrect DK/NA

Germany (1994) 52 34 14

 West Germans (1994) 56 29 15

 East Germans (1994) 36 54 10

14d. “Now, 45 years [50 years] after the end of the Second World War,

it is time to put the memory of the Holocaust behind us." (in

percents)

Agree Agree Disagree Disagree

Country strongly somewhat somewhat strongly DK/NA

Austria (1991) 34 19 15 13 20

Austria (1995) 13 20 26 24 16

14e. "Some people say that 48 years after the end of World War II, it is

time to put the memory of the Holocaust, the deportations and

extermination of Jews, behind us. Others say that we should

preserve these remembrances. Which opinion comes closer to

your attitude?" (in percents)

To stop remembering To preserve

deportations and the DK/

Country extermination of Jews remembrance NA

Slovakia (1993) 38 42 20
888 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

15. "Jews are exploiting the National Socialist Holocaust for their own

purposes." (in percents)

Agree Agree Disagree Disagree

Country strongly somewhat somewhat strongly DK/NA

Germany (1990) 11 28 27 15 20

 W. Ger (1990) 13 32 25 11 19

 E. Ger (1990) 4 16 34 21 25

Germany (1994) 15 24 27 14 20

 W. Ger (1994) 18 26 25 13 18

 E. Ger (1994) 4 15 36 20 24

Austria (1991) 13 19 21 15 32

Austria (1995) 8 20 24 20 28

16a. "What is your opinion about `revisionist' statements which assert

that there was no such thing as gas chambers and the Nazi

extermination of the Jews? (a) We must forbid these statements

and penalize those who spread them. (b) We must allow these

statements and writings to be freely expressed." (in percents)

Country Forbid Allow DK/NA

France (1993) 54 43 3

16b. "If people say that there were no such things as gas chambers and

Nazi extermination camps, do you think we should forbid these

statements and penalize those who spread them or allow these

statements and writings to be freely expressed?" (in percents)

Country Forbid Allow DK/NA

Australia (1994) 12 81 7
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 889

17. "From which of these sources, if any, have you learned about the

Holocaust?"* (MULTIPLE ANSWERS ALLOWED) (in percents)

United United

Poland Australia States States

Response 1995 1994 1994 1992

Books 75 68 43 42

Television - 82 58 50

The movies- - 62 33 24

Newspaper and magazine

 articles - 73 35 31

Mass media: TV, radio,

 newspapers, magazines,

 movies 92 - - -

School 67 44 48 37

Churches/synagogues - 9 15 10

Church 29 - - -

People I know - 43 26 20

Your own experience,

 that of a family

 member, or people

 you know 47 - - -

Other (SPECIFY) - - 4 5

This is the first I've

 heard of the Holocaust 1 1 4 6

DK/NA - - 4 5

Note: Australian and Polish respondents were asked to answer

"yes" or "no" for each response; American respondents were asked to

specify their responses from the list.

*In Poland, respondents were asked where they had heard of "the

Nazi extermination of the Jews."
890 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

18. "Who was the leader of Nazi Germany?" (in percents)

United United

Australia States States

Response 1994 1994 1992

Joseph Stalin 1 1 2

Adolf Hitler 96 89 87

Hirohito 1 0 1

Winston Churchill 0 0 0

DK/NA 3 10 10

Questions Asked in Individual Countries

Germany (1990)

1. "Do you think that the German government should, after the

unification of the two German states, teach about the Nazi period

in history lessons in the schools?" (in percents)

Country Yes No DK/NA

Germany (1990) 73 16 11

 West Germans (1990) 69 20 12

 East Germans (1990) 84 7 9

2. "Do you think that the German government should, after the

unification of the two German states, prosecute Nazi war

criminals?" (in percents)

Country Yes No DK/NA

Germany (1990) 55 36 9

 West Germans (1990) 48 43 10

 East Germans (1990) 74 20 6
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 891

3. "Do you think that the German government should, after the

unification of the two German states, pay reparations to Jews?" (in

percents)

Country Yes No DK/NA

Germany (1990) 22 66 12

 West Germans (1990) 15 75 11

 East Germans (1990) 40 44 16

Germany (1994)

1. "A proposal has been put forward to establish a national Holocaust

memorial museum in Germany. Do you approve or disapprove of

this idea?" (in percents)

Country Approve Disapprove DK/NA

Germany (1994) 37 37 26

 West Germans (1994) 33 42 25

 East Germans (1994) 52 20 28

Soviet Union (1990)

1. "Have you heard or not heard about the mass extermination of

Jews during the Second World War?" (in percents)

Yes, No,

Country I have I haven't

Soviet Union (1990) 89 11
892 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

2. "How many Jews do you think were exterminated by the Nazis in

those years?" (OPEN-ENDED) (in percents)

Response Percent

1,000,000 or less 10

1-3,000,000 (including 3) 7

3-4,000,000 (including 4) 1

4-5,000,000 (including 5) 2

6,000,000 (or about) 2

7-8,000,000 (including 7 or 8) 1

8-10,000,000 (including 10) 1

greater than 10,000,000 0

no response 73

Commonwealth of Independent States (1992)

1. "Do you think history classes should talk about the mass

extermination of Jews during WWII?" (in percents)

They They Difficult

Country should shouldn't to say

Russia (1992) 66 15 19

Ukraine (1992) 78 8 14

Belarus (1992) 60 24 16

Estonia (1992) 78 9 13

Latvia (1992) 75 6 22

Lithuania (1992) 69 15 16

Moldova (1992) 88 5 7

Azerbaijan (1992) 38 30 32

Kazakhstan (1992) 65 10 25

Uzbekistan (1992) 51 25 24
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 893

Austria (1991, 1995)

1. "With which of the following statements do you agree? `We

Austrians, too, lost the war in 1945.' `We Austrians were liberated

by the Allies in 1945.'" (in percents)

Country Lost Liberated DK/NA

Austria (1991) 48 43 10

Austria (1995) 42 49 9

2. "Was Austria in 1938 the first victim of Hitler's Germany or also

responsible, as a participant, for the events up to 1945?" (in

percents)

Country Victim Responsible DK/NA

Austria (1991) 34 39 33

Austria (1995) 28 29 43

3. "It is often asserted that Austrians must especially stick up for the

Jews, because Austrians participated in the crimes against the Jews

during the Hitler era." (in percents)

Agree

Country Agree partly Undecided Disagree DK/NA

Austria (1991) 4 19 30 41 6

Austria (1995) 5 28 33 31 3

4. "Do you think that the Austrian government should prosecute Nazi

war criminals?" (in percents)

Country Yes No DK/NA

Austria (1991) 38 56 7
894 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

United States (1992 and 1994)

1. "In which country did the Nazis first come to power?" (in percents)

United States United States

Response 1994 1992

Belgium 1 1

France 1 1

Germany 81 78

Russia 2 3

Other (SPECIFY) 1 1

DK/NA 14 16

2. "Where did you hear this?" (MULTIPLE ANSWERS ALLOWED)

(in percents of respondents who have heard the claim that the Nazi

extermination of the Jews never happened)

United States United States

Response 1994 1992

Books 9 14

Television 71 59

The movies 5 5

Newspaper and magazine

 articles 35 37

School 6 4

Churches/synagogues 2 2

People I know 15 14

From neo-Nazi groups 10 12

Other (SPECIFY) 1 4

DK/NA 4 5
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 895

Slovakia (1993)

1. "The atrocities committed against Jews during World War II must

be condemned." (in percents)

I abso- I I I absolutely rather rather lutely

Country agree agree disagree disagree DK/NA

Slovakia (1993) 71 20 2 1 6

2. "Slovak political representatives also take their share of

responsibility for the extermination of the Jews." (in percents)

I abso- I I I absolutely rather rather lutely

Country agree agree disagree disagree DK/NA

Slovakia (1993) 19 28 14 8 32

3. "President Tiso saved the lives of thousands of Jews and the

Jewish people should therefore be grateful to him." (in percents)

I abso- I I I absolutely rather rather lutely

Country agree agree disagree disagree DK/NA

Slovakia (1993) 8 16 17 16 43
896 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

4. "What do you think of the sharing of responsibility and guilt of the

ordinary Slovak population for the fate of the Jews?" (in percents)

Response Percent

Everybody was trying to save the Jews to the best of their

 possibilities; nothing more could have been done 35

More could have been done to save the Jews 26

Don't know 39

France (1993)

1. "Would you say that the French state led by Marshal Pétain

between 1940 and 1944 was responsible for the deportation of

Jews to the extermination camps, or not responsible?" (in percents)

Yes, it No, it was

was re- not responCountry sponsible sible DK/NA

France (1993) 57 29 14

2. "In your view, is the remembrance of the Holocaust necessary so

that it doesn't happen again, or dangerous because it risks a revival

of anti-Semitism?" (in percents)

Country Necessary Dangerous DK/NA

France (1993) 74 23 3
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 897

Australia (1994)

1. “And in your view how likely is it that any other people could be

subject to an event similar to the Holocaust somewhere in the

world in coming years? Would you say it was ...? (in percents)

Very Somewhat Not very Not likely

Country likely likely likely at all DK/NA

Australia (1994) 41 40 13 4 2

2. "Do you think that the topic of the Holocaust is sufficiently

important to warrant it being taught as a special subject in

Australian secondary schools?" (in percents)

Country Yes No DK/NA

Australia (1994) 41 55 4

Poland (1995)

1. "In your view, who was the main victim of the Nazis during the

Second World War?" (OPEN-ENDED) (in percents)

Response Percent

Poles/Poland 26

Jews 28

Poles/Poland and Jews 28

Russians/Russia 1

Europeans/several nations 2

Everyone/every country suffered about the same 5

Other 7

Don't know 3
898 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

2. "What percent of Poland's population before the Second World

War was Jewish?" (in percents)

Response Percent

Less than 2 percent 1

2-9 percent 10

10-19 percent 26

20-29 percent 29

30-49 percent 17

50+ percent 3

Don't know 15

Note: Historians agree that Jews constituted 10 percent of Poland's

population prior to the Second World War.

3. "What happened to most Polish Jews during the Second World

War?" (OPEN-ENDED) (in percents)

Response Percent

Killed 77

Emigrated 3

Some were killed, some emigrated 13

Survived 1

Other 4

Don't know 2

4. "Which group suffered more from Nazi persecution during the

Second World War: Poles or Jews?" (in percents)

Response Percent

Poles 28

Jews 29

Both groups suffered about the same (volunteered) 40

Other responses (volunteered) 1

Don't know 3
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 899

5. "What percent of Polish Jews were killed by the Nazis during the

Second World War?" (in percents)

Response Percent

Less than 10 percent 3

10-49 percent 31

50-79 percent 38

80+ percent 13

Don't know 15

6. "There are now many fewer Jews in Poland than there were before

the Second World War. Is this good for the country, bad for the

country, or neither?" (in percents)

Response Percent

Good 35

Bad 5

Neither 51

Other 1

Don't know 8

7. "Were there any Poles who participated in rescuing Jews during

the Second World War, or not?" (in percents)

Response Percent

There were many such Poles 67

There were few such Poles 28

There were no such Poles 0

Don't know 5
900 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

8. "Were there any Poles who participated in the persecution of Jews

during the Second World War, or not?" (in percents)

Response Percent

There were many such Poles 11

There were few such Poles 62

There were no such Poles 14

Don't know 13

9. "Did Poles do enough to help Jews during the Second World War,

or not?" (in percents)

Response Percent

Did enough 49

Did not do enough 15

Did as much as they could

 under the circumstances

 (volunteered) 26

Other (volunteered) 1

Don't know 8

ADDENDUM

The data appearing in this document are taken from the

following American Jewish Committee-sponsored surveys:

Bashkirova, Elena. Current Russian Attitudes Toward Jews and the

Holocaust. New York: American Jewish Committee, 1996.

Bútorová, Zora, and Martin Bútora. Attitudes Toward Jews and the

Holocaust in Independent Slovakia. New York: American Jewish

Committee, 1995.

Cohen, Renae, and Jennifer L. Golub. Attitudes Toward Jews in Poland,

Hungary, and Czechoslovakia: A Comparative Survey. New York:

American Jewish Committee, 1991.
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 901

Cohen, Renae, and Jennifer Golub. Current Austrian Attitudes Toward

Jews and the Holocaust. New York: American Jewish Committee,

1995.

Golub, Jennifer. Current German Attitudes Toward Jews and Other

Minorities. New York: American Jewish Committee, 1994.

Golub, Jennifer, and Renae Cohen. Knowledge and Remembrance of the

Holocaust in Poland. New York: American Jewish Committee,

1995.

Golub, Jennifer, and Renae Cohen. What Do Americans Know About the

Holocaust? New York: American Jewish Committee, 1993.

Golub, Jennifer, and Renae Cohen. What Do Australians Know About the

Holocaust? New York: American Jewish Committee, 1994.

Golub, Jennifer, and Renae Cohen. What Do the British Know About the

Holocaust? New York: American Jewish Committee, 1993.

Golub, Jennifer, and Renae Cohen. What Do the French Know About the

Holocaust? New York: American Jewish Committee, 1994.

Gudkov, Lev, and Alex Levinson. Attitudes Toward Jews in the 

Commonwealth of Independent States. New York: American

Jewish Committee, 1994.

Gudkov, Lev, and Alex Levinson. Attitudes Toward Jews in the Soviet

Union: Public Opinion in Ten Republics. New York: 

American Jewish Committee, 1992.

Jodie, David A. United Germany and Jewish Concerns: Attitudes

Toward Jews, Israel, and the Holocaust. New York: American

Jewish Committee, 1991.

Charmin, Fritz. Austrian Attitudes Toward Jews, Israel, and the 

Holocaust. New York: American Jewish Committee, 1992.

Smith, Tom W. Holocaust Denial: What the Survey Data Reveal. New

York: American Jewish Committee, 1995.

Stuart E. Eizenstat

UNDER SECRETARY OF STATE FOR ECONOMIC, BUSINESS AND

AGRICULTURAL AFFAIRS

UNITED STATES

Report of the Task Force on Holocaust

Education, Remembrance and Research

Plenary Session: Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research

At the initiative of Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson, the

Swedish, UK and U.S. governments, together with experts from our

countries, gathered in Stockholm last May to launch an unprecedented

international initiative -- the Task Force for International Cooperation on

Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research. Our countries and

many others -- Germany among the first and most consistent-- have

engaged in Holocaust education efforts at home for many years. But for

the first time, heads of government agreed to cooperate directly with

other countries, through diplomatic and other channels, to strengthen

Holocaust education efforts on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond. On

September 25, Israel and Germany joined the Task Force, and have since

contributed very substantially to its work.

On behalf of the Task Force, I would like to give special

recognition to the Prime Minister of Sweden, Goran Persson, for

developing and giving life to the idea of international, intergovernmental

cooperation to promote Holocaust education. I would also like to

commend Professor Yehuda Bauer of Yad Vashem, one of the great

Holocaust scholars and educators in the world, for his intellectual

guidance as Personal Advisor to the Task Force.

As Prime Minister Persson said so eloquently in May, and as did

so many speakers at the remarkable half-day breakout session held at the

Museum yesterday, Holocaust education and remembrance can help

ensure that the crimes of the Holocaust are never forgotten nor repeated.

As this century comes to a close and we enter the new millennium, our
904 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

international cooperation can encourage and reinforce work in many

nations to strengthen Holocaust education efforts, to create new ones and

to finally begin such efforts where they have been overlooked.

During the U.S. tenure as Task Force Chairman, we have built

on Sweden’s excellent work in focusing the initiative on a number of

priority areas agreed to at the May 7 meeting in Stockholm. These

projects, some of which are works in progress to be completed in the first

half of next year, are highlighted in the Report that the Task Force is

presenting to the Washington Conference.

Let me now summarize very briefly the projects that the Task

Force has undertaken to date.

First, an effort is underway to assemble a directory of

organizations engaged in Holocaust education and remembrance and a

survey of current efforts in the field of Holocaust education worldwide.

We expect that the directory, itself a gold mine of information, will

become the basis of a much more comprehensive survey of such efforts

that can be helpful to countries seeking advice and assistance as they

consider ways to improve their own efforts. Sweden has also just

completed a series of videotapes for use in their school system.

Second, as part of a domestic initiative, Sweden produced a book

on the Holocaust that was made available to every family with high

school children. At the request of the Task Force, the book’s authors

have created an insert demonstrating how an international version and

individual national versions of the book can be prepared, should other

countries wish to draw on it as part of their own Holocaust education

efforts.

Third, the Chief Historians of the U.S. Department of State and

the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office will produce a guide to

finding and using Holocaust-related archives with the intention that it be

employed as a tool by researchers and educators. Making these archives

more accessible is a key Task Force goal. Contained in the Task Force

Report is a brief proposal as to how activities in this area should proceed

over the next year. We highlight in particular a website which is

becoming a nexus of information for research in virtually every

dimension of the Holocaust-era assets issues discussed at the London and

Washington Conferences.

Fourth, in close consultation with Yad Vashem and the U.S.

Holocaust Memorial Museum, the UK has led the development of a set

of internationally applicable guidelines, or best practices, for use in

teaching about the Holocaust. The guidelines are intended to serve as a

starting point to facilitate the work of educators both in places where
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION, REMEMBRANCE AND RESEARCH 905

programs exist and in those where they are yet to be developed. They are

based on the experiences -- both positive and negative -- of two

generations of Holocaust educators.

Fifth, the Task Force has considered and accepted a British

proposal to encourage each of our nations to designate a Day of

Remembrance for Holocaust victims. In Israel and in the U.S., Yom

HaShoa serves this purpose. In Germany, January 27, the day of the

liberation of Auschwitz, is recognized. We hope other nations will

designate their own Day of Remembrance as well. These acts of

remembrance will reinforce awareness of the events of the Holocaust and

reach a large audience, while demonstrating solidarity in the fight against

anti-Semitism, racism, prejudice, persecution, and hatred.

In addition to these projects, the Task Force has made

commitments in the form of two declarations: one concerning archival

openness and the other the promotion of Holocaust education efforts.

We invite all Washington Conference governments to join us in

endorsing these goals.

The Task Force Declaration on the opening of Holocaustrelevant archives presents as our aim the opening of “all public and

private archives bearing on the Holocaust and the fate of Naziconfiscated assets by December 31, 1999.” We call on all that possess

such material to open it to as many researchers as possible on an urgent

basis and commit ourselves as governments to do everything possible to

ensure that this important target is met.

The second declaration and final element of the Task Force

Report to the Conference emphasizes our common conviction that urgent

international attention be paid to Holocaust education, remembrance and

research to reinforce and spread the historic meaning and enduring

lessons of that tragic event. In the declaration we commit our

governments to “reinforce Holocaust education, remembrance and

research in our own countries, with a special focus on our own countries’

histories.” We also pledge to strengthen existing programs or launch

new ones, and encourage other countries to do likewise.

We have pledged our governments’ commitment to this

endeavor, and to our diplomatic cooperation to advance its objectives,

principally to ensure that the lessons of the Holocaust are not forgotten

and its horrors never repeated. We have full confidence that when the

U.S. chairmanship concludes at the end of the month, the UK will serve

the Task Force admirably in the role of Chairman. We furthermore hope

that Conference participants will find the report of the Task Force a
906 WASHINGTON CONFERENCE ON HOLOCAUST-ERA ASSETS

valuable and useful contribution to the cause of Holocaust education,

remembrance and research.

Most important, whether by working with us through the Task

Force or through other mechanisms, we hope that all countries

represented at the Washington Conference will choose to embrace our

goals and strengthen their Holocaust education and remembrance efforts.

We are delighted that France and the Netherlands have just indicated

their interest in joining. Because our effort is an inclusive one, we also

urge other countries to consider working directly with us in the Task

Force. Nothing could be more important than to honor the many victims

and to prevent such tragedies in the future. Thank you.