Published: 18 April 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
Studies show Holocaust education doesn’t change stereotyping of Jews. DARA HORN discusses why using dead Jews as symbols is not the way to help living ones.
A focus on Holocaust education can excuse current antisemitism by defining antisemitism as genocide in the past.
When antisemitism is reduced to the Holocaust, anything short of murdering six million Jews — like, say, ramming somebody with a shopping cart, or taunting kids at school, or shooting up a Jewish non-profit, or hounding Jews out of entire countries — seems minor by comparison.
But a larger problem emerges when we ignore the realities of how antisemitism works. If we teach that the Holocaust happened because people weren’t nice enough — that they failed to appreciate that humans are all the same, for instance, or to build a just society —we create the self-congratulatory space where antisemitism grows.
One can believe that humans are all the same while being virulently antisemitic, because according to antisemites, Jews, with their millennia-old insistence on being different from their neighbours, are the obstacle to humans all being the same.
One can believe in creating a just society while being virulently antisemitic, because according to antisemites, Jews, with their imagined power and privilege, are the obstacle to a just society.
To inoculate people against the myth that humans have to erase their differences to get along, and the related myth that Jews, because they have refused to erase their differences, are supervillains, one would have to acknowledge that these myths exist.
To shatter them, one would have to explain the content of Jewish identity, instead of lazily claiming that Jews are just like everyone else.
Instead of holograms of Holocaust survivors, I want a VR of Sabbath dinners. I want a VR of bar mitzvah kids in synagogues being showered with candy, a VR of weddings with flying circles of dancers, and a VR of mourning rituals.
There is no empathy without curiosity, no respect without knowledge.
READ MORE
Is Holocaust education making antisemitism worse? (Atlantic Monthly)
First-ever 50-state survey on Holocaust knowledge of American millennials and Gen Z reveals shocking results (Claims Conference)
What do students know and understand about the Holocaust? Evidence from English secondary schools (Centre for Holocaust Education)
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