Educational Mandate for the Future

ORF, March 24, 2025

German original: https://science.orf.at/stories/3229432/

Holocaust education seeks to commemorate the murder of six million Jews in an educational way. 80 years after the end of the Nazi regime – in the age of TikTok and Co – the methods have changed, but not the goal of “never again”.

But what exactly does Holocaust education mean? The term itself is controversial. “Holocaust” is derived from the Greek and means “utterly burned”. Many Jewish organizations – including Yad Vashem in Jerusalem – prefer the Hebrew term “Shoah”. This means “catastrophe” and makes it clear that this was a unique crime: the systematic murder of six million Jews.

An international obligation

The increased focus on the Holocaust in the 1990s led to the founding of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). In 1998, Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson, together with British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President Bill Clinton, initiated the International Task Force on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research. Almost simultaneously, several European countries began to critically examine their own Nazi pasts.

Two years later, 46 states agreed on the Stockholm Declaration at the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust – the document is still regarded as a policy paper for Holocaust education today. Since 2013, the task force has been called the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). It is an intergovernmental organization to promote Holocaust education, research and remembrance, of which Austria is also a member. “The idea that international member states send delegations and enter into dialogue is the strength of the IHRA,” says Patrick Siegele, head of Holocaust Education at ERINNERN:AT and a member of the Austrian delegation to the Education Working Group. ERINNERN:AT is the OeAD program for teaching and learning about National Socialism, the Holocaust and the prevention of antisemitism through education.

Critical reflection in the age of TikTok and Co.

Holocaust education is aimed at teachers, students, and schoolchildren. At a time when fewer and fewer Holocaust survivors are able to tell their stories, the internet and social media are becoming important sources of information. Holocaust denial and distortion have increased massively online in recent years, as shown by the “History under attack” study conducted by the UN and UNESCO.

“That's why it's important that young people learn not to believe everything they see on TikTok,” says the educator. The Holocaust was the result of social processes, political decisions and individual actions. This is precisely where Holocaust education comes in, shedding light on the victims, the perpetrators, the bystanders and the helpers. The multi-perspective approach promotes understanding of these interrelationships. The teaching goes far beyond the mere learning of facts.

Committed to “never again”

What is taught depends on the teachers. There is no single history lesson. In Austria, World War II, National Socialism and the Holocaust are dealt with in an interdisciplinary way: in history lessons and in subjects such as German, ethics or religion. The aim of learning about National Socialism at school is to promote critical historical awareness in order to do justice to the motto ‘never again’. The aim is to give students the tools they need to make ethically and morally enlightened decisions. After all, “history is always used for contemporary needs,” explains Ljiljana Radonić, deputy director of the Institute for Culture Studies at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

This is particularly evident in the way the Holocaust is dealt with and the sensitive issues surrounding national co-responsibility. The skills acquired in class help young people to understand that the way history is told can change as a result of new findings. One example is the increasing focus of science and Holocaust education in recent years on the genocide of Roma and Sinti. However, the findings are only slowly being incorporated into history lessons.

Instead of disturbing...

Today, the Holocaust is covered more comprehensively in schoolbooks than it was 20 years ago. Shocking images of piles of corpses and other deliberately disturbing teaching methods are no longer used. “In the past, these images and reports were intended to evoke emotional consternation. Today we know that this is more likely to trigger defensive reactions,” says Gudrun Blohberger, head of the education department at the Mauthausen Memorial. Visiting a memorial site clarifies the content of Holocaust education. However, Gudrun Blohberger warns that this cannot be a “vaccination against forgetting”....

Orientation towards life stories

Holocaust education addresses young people through so-called biographical learning, with eyewitness accounts and private photos or personal objects. Engaging with the everyday lives of Jewish children is also intended to draw attention to their own lives. By searching for clues, schoolchildren can learn about the effects of the Nazi regime and the crimes of the Shoah in their local area. These child-friendly learning materials offer emotional access points to inspire empathy for the victims.

Digital offers are also increasingly being used. For example, a learning app was developed for the ERINNERN:AT program with escape stories from children and young people. They tell how they came to the United States, Great Britain or Palestine via Kindertransport or other routes. Many students have also experienced escape, racism or antisemitism.

Compare yes, equate no

The way the Holocaust is dealt with has developed from a national to a European and global culture of remembrance, which poses challenges for Holocaust education. For example, Anne Frank is very popular in Japan, but she is not remembered as a Jewess, but as a childlike, innocent victim at a universal place of horror: Auschwitz. This narrative is completely detached from the context of the Shoah.

The Shoah is also instrumentalized as a universal symbol for genocides, dictatorships and state violence for ideological purposes. Experts such as the pedagogue Patrick Siegele warn that the Holocaust is becoming an empty metaphor. “There is no crime against humanity in which a group of people were persecuted and murdered with this will to destroy. Holocaust education does not reject comparison, but it does reject equating.”

This equating of other victim groups with those of the Shoah is present in European remembrance culture. Political scientist Ljiljana Radonić points to the crimes of Stalinism and state socialism in former Eastern European countries. “In the museums that have been opened in post-socialist countries since 1990, the fates of national victims are told with private photographs and touching stories, while the victims of the Shoah remain anonymous numbers.” This leads to hierarchies of victims.

“Talking about all victims”

“The demand that Auschwitz not happen again is the very first demand of education,” wrote the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno. Holocaust education is therefore also a social obligation. In Europe, a recurring resentment against Holocaust remembrance is evident. Many want to finally “close” the subject. This so-called demand for closure has been around since 1946. “You can't say, we've talked enough about Jewish suffering, we should now talk about all the others, no, we should talk about all together, about all marginalized victims,” says Radonić.

International days of remembrance such as January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, are important for this political and social examination of the Shoah. “Holocaust education, however, must not stop at these symbolic dates,” emphasizes pedagogue Patrick Siegele. “It must create the conditions for each generation to answer for itself the question of what history has to do with the individual and the present.”

Barbara Volfing, ORF Wissen