Decades Have Been Spent Teaching about the Holocaust — but What Have Americans Been Learning?
By: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Tags: Holocaust, Education, Surveys, Ideas, Data

A recent survey put forward troubling findings about young Americans’ knowledge about the Holocaust. Almost half of the respondents could not name a single concentration camp, and more than a third thought fewer than two million Jews were killed. Even more disturbing, 11 percent said Jews caused the Holocaust. However, 80 percent said it is important to teach about the Holocaust, in part so it doesn’t happen again.

The study reinforces the critical need for reliable and rigorous research, which the Museum’s William Levine Family Institute for Holocaust Education has begun to address. For decades, we have worked with a community of experts, educators, and local Holocaust organizations to expand and improve Holocaust education, urgent efforts as we confront rising antisemitism and hatred. But the world is constantly changing and so is how we educate our children — our approach to Holocaust education must adapt to these new realities.

Long before the recent study, and long before COVID-19 forced America to change how we educate our youth, the Museum has been bringing together experts and practitioners in the field to share insights into how and why we teach about the Holocaust. They have helped us understand the many challenges they face and their changing needs.

Dr. Charlotte Decoster of the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum speaks with counterparts from around the country during the 2020 Conference for Holocaust Education Centers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. —US Holocaust Memorial Museum

“I’ve been so lucky to interface with the people here to think about problems that new teachers face,” said one educator attending the Museum’s 2020 Conference for Holocaust Education Centers. “One of the most challenging things to do is to get people who are completely unfamiliar with the subject to know what kinds of questions they need to ask in order to be able to teach the subject with rigor and respect.”

As our country’s national Holocaust memorial, the Museum must now lead a systematic effort to collect, conduct, analyze, and disseminate reliable and rigorous research. We will look at how to teach the Holocaust effectively and at the impact that teaching has on young people. Our initial focus will be the first, in-depth, national empirical research project on teaching and learning abut the Holocaust in the US that we plan to undertake in 2021.

One Museum study is already underway. Of more than 700 participants in our virtual 2020 Arthur and Rochelle Belfer National Conferences for Educators, more than a third responded to a survey asking such fundamental questions as why they teach the Holocaust, what they think students are learning, and what challenges they face. The initial findings indicate they see Holocaust education as teaching critical concepts, such as individual responsibility, and that they need more specialized resources, such as materials to support English teachers using Holocaust-related texts. Follow-up interviews with 27 educators will help illuminate the findings.

Our goal is to share these results and future Museum research broadly — with Holocaust institutions and professionals in the United States and worldwide as well as experts in the field of education so that we can help our partners in communities across the country make sound decisions on how to engage students in learning about the Holocaust. Together, we will make sure the important and enduring questions raised by this history help students think critically about their own roles and responsibilities in society today.