JOURNEY COMPANIONS: LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL IDEAS
3.6 Some cases of teaching genocides and controversial issues in post- conflict societies conflict societies
3.6.1 The Holocaust
The study of genocide is a relatively new area in academia. In Western countries the focus on this issue was due to the resurgence of anti-Semitism and the denial of the Holocaust in certain quarters who considered it a myth (Lefebvre & Ferhadjian, 2007;
Waterson, 2009). In this regard, since the 1970s, genocide studies were structured in some countries such as the United States of America, Israel and Australia. In these studies the focus was on the Jews and the Armenian Genocide (Lefebvre &
Ferhadjian, 2007).
In simple terms, the Holocaust refers to the Nazi genocide of European Jewry.
Without returning to the historical causes of this tragedy with its roots in anti- Semitism, the Holocaust was defined by the Imperial War Museum (as quoted by Salmons, 2003) in London as:
… under the cover of the Second World War, for the sake of the “new order”, the Nazis sought to destroy all the Jews of Europe. For the first time in history, industrial methods were used for the mass extermination of a whole people. Six million were murdered, including 1, 500, 000 children. This event is called the Holocaust. The Nazis enslaved and murdered millions of others as well.
Gypsies, people with physical and mental disabilities, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, trade unionists, political opponents, prisoners of conscience, homosexuals, and others were killed in vast numbers” (Salmons, 2003, p.141).
By conceptualising the Holocaust as outlined above, Salmons (2003) does not want to ignore other groups’ sufferings nor create any “hierarchy of suffering”. The blending of Jews’ extermination with other groups killed during the Holocaust is an invitation to recognise the causes of each group’s oppression and to understand their different experiences because of the Nazis. Even if the Holocaust is not
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representative of all cases of racism, one aim of teaching the Holocaust is to understand the consequences of prejudices, racism, anti-Semitism and labelling in any society (Burtonwood, 2003; Salmons, 2003). The acknowledgement of all the victims of Nazi persecution aims to prevent young people from other groups persecuted by Nazis from feeling alienated because their own history has been ignored (Salmons, 2003). Thus, the teaching of the Holocaust aims at valuing diversity in a pluralistic world. Understanding different historical, social, political and economic factors that caused the Holocaust, it is argued, help learners to identify factors that can contribute to the disintegration of democratic values. Consequently, this understanding provides a contextual situation of analysing the dangers of remaining silent and indifferent while others are being oppressed (Burtonwood, 2003).
Ten years ago, when the European Council decided in curricula to include the teaching of genocides the aim was to help the youth to know the recent history of their continent and create a link between the past and the present so as to understand current challenges. Moreover, the European Council wanted to assist young people to identify themselves with a wider Europe. Another objective was to encourage teachers to contextualize European history (Lecomte, 2003; Stradling, 2001).
However, there is a debate about the aims of teaching the Holocaust. Lawrence (2012) returns to Nicholas Kinlock’s position (1998) which initiated the debate about the aims of teaching the Holocaust. In this regard, his argument was that, “the sole aim of history teachers should be to help students become better historians and that the attempt to extract moral lessons from the study of the Holocaust is doomed to failure” (Lawrence, 2012, p.155). Other scholars such as Counsell (2002) are anxious about those who want to use history to serve some or other moral, social or simply curricular agenda.
The aforementioned two scholars stick to the intrinsic value of history teaching as inherent in the subject discipline (McCully, 2012). For Kinlock (1998) teaching the Holocaust should be done in a historical perspective rather than a moral one because many teachers hope that they are preparing learners, in Britain, for
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instance, to live in an increasingly multicultural society (Burtnowood, 2002). Kinlock’s (1998) doubts about the success of combating modern prejudices is based on the fact that learners are comparing two different situations namely genocidal policies of a totalitarian Nazi regime and current racism in Britain. His views are not totally wrong in as much as it is an invitation not to forget the historical aspects of the topic by focusing on moral issues. However, moral issues can also lead to a deep historical scrutiny.
Another challenge related to the teaching of the Holocaust is the controversy about when children should start learning it. Scholars such as Totten (1999) discourage teaching the Holocaust to young children. In his view the topic is too complex for them to understand and it is also too horrific. Piagetian models of cognitive development suggest that young children are unable to think in the abstract or deal with sophisticated concepts (The Historical Association, 2007). In Britain, a school in a northern city avoided selecting the Holocaust as a topic out of fear for anti-Semitic sentiment and also out of fear of denial of the Holocaust among certain Muslim pupils (Clark, 2007). This decision was based on the role of Western powers in Middle Eastern politics. But an empirical study in British schools showed that a minority of Muslim learners had made anti-Semitic remarks at the beginning of the topic but they stopped doing so as the course progressed (Short, 2012).
Regarding when learners should start learning the Holocaust, there is an assumption that people can be taught anything in an intellectual honest manner at any age. What matters most is not the age but how genocide/Holocaust is taught. For instance, racist incidents have been reported in British schools at primary level. Empirical evidence showed also that learners of 10-11 years of age used negative stereotypes of Jewish people and at the same age learners have heard anti-Semitic myths (Maitles & Cowan, 1999). In the case of Rwanda, according to empirical evidence, learners born after the Genocide face traumatic experiences during the commemoration period (Ntwali, 2015). These examples show that it is better to eradicate racism and anti-Semitism as early as possible starting in the primary school.
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Another challenge is to depict the Holocaust the way it was. There is a challenge of describing the Holocaust so that learners can understand exactly what happened.
The way of communicating what happened, mainly the atrocities which characterised the Holocaust, can also be problematic. There is a need for using appropriate terminologies. For instance, the use of ‘ethnic cleansing’ as a label in the media was disturbing and worrying due to its closeness in sound and positive meaning of
‘cleanliness’ (Blum, Stanton & Richter, 2008; Davies, 2012). Furthermore, the time spent in teaching the Holocaust is also a concern. In this regard, too much time available to teach the Holocaust/controversial issue may create resentment while too short a time could lead to underestimation of the issue (Burtonwood, 2002).
Globally, teaching the Holocaust helps the youth to understand the consequences of prejudices and labelling in any society. In other words, teaching the Holocaust aims at valuing diversity. It helps to understand how the disintegration of democratic values in a society leads to atrocities. Teaching the Holocaust also helps the youth not to be bystanders in face of injustice.