Holocaust survivor, Bonnie Kahane: "Jews in Poland"
Teaching about the Holocaust and the Nazi era is compulsory in German schools and most of the classroom program, almost all students have either visited a concentration camp or a Holocaust memorial or a museum, however, Lars Rensmann, a German educator who teaches political science at the University of Munich and the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European Jewish studies, University of Potsdam, highlights some of the limits on the depth of this education and will how many young Germans reached this interview was conducted May 19, 2005.
What is your understanding of how the Holocaust and the Nazi period is now taught in German schools Can you give a general assessment.
First, you have in Germany a history curriculum that is more limited compared to, say s say the US You have only two regular hours of history classes per week and generally the Holocaust is a topic briefly, at least until the 10th year - which would be 16 years old and only a third of pupils continue at the 11th, 12th and 13th grades equivalent to get an education degree top American in the system German, two thirds of the students actually stop after grade 10 then when you only look at the program, it is not much time to actually teach the Holocaust.
It does, however, you have a lot of very committed teachers introduce students to extracurricular activities including go to museums, even possibly visit concentration camp sites and other forms of education on the Holocaust what happens on a regular basis in German schools, but it depends on the personal commitment of the history curriculum can be and should be improved because the knowledge of the Holocaust is clearly lacking among adolescents.
Over the past 20 years, Holocaust education has certainly grown in importance, partly because of new generations of teachers This is an effect of public discourse and memorization of the Holocaust since 1979 and the first great debates when the television series Holocaust broadcast in Germany and launched a new type of awareness about a subject that was still rather taboo until then.
This TV show actually triggered something important.
He certainly made it aired in 1979 and was really important for all the talk about memory, about memorialization and remembrance of the Holocaust in Germany Before that Nazism was - despite student protests against the generation the author in the 60s and despite the Auschwitz trial in the early 60s - not a matter of social concern at all it was more taboo, both in the public and social sphere, and above all no one spoke in the private sphere in retrospect, the common discourse on sixty years of work in the past is wholly inadequate to describe the development of post-Holocaust Germany institutionally, Germany was in the process of democratization since 1949, but on other political, cultural and social levels, in fact, public discussion really only gained prominence in the last 25 ann are still, however, remains a constant seesaw between learning and forgetting, as Saul Friedlander once said.
However, the television series Holocaust really triggered something and this is also reflected in the generational changes Many young teachers are more attached to the teaching of the history of Nazism and the persecution of Jews, even if it is not a important aspect of the program or policy education and because of that commitment, you have the amount of education for young children and teenagers.
The problem, however, is that it is certainly a lack of time to focus on history in general, and the Holocaust in particular in the German classroom Many students, even when they're the pursuit of higher education, often donating t even hear about the Holocaust in class until the 10th year and after the 10th year, they do not have to take classes any more history this means that the media and private conversations can be more resources and most influential of Holocaust education that German schools.
And what is your sense of priority given to this issue in recent years by the government of Germany - with emphasis on the history and the number of hours given to it in schools.
I still do not see too well as a priority yet despite quite different perceptions of the general public that the Holocaust is allegedly taught too and that the Holocaust is omnipresent in German politics, public and educational system I n see too much of an effort to push the government done this, making it more a part of the curriculum in the other school program, we have a transition to a media culture that shapes more social perceptions of today's teenagers and children often learn about topics in the media, especially the television through, and use of resources such as the Internet the knowledge gained in this process can be questionable and superficial, however, and especially the Internet is an unreliable source.
Compared to most other countries, however, the programs on the Holocaust are certainly an important part of popular media culture here There are historical issues of the Holocaust, shows, etc. Very often, therefore, children in Germany are getting their knowledge in reality through television, but, of course, this is an ambivalent situation because what you learn through television or the Internet and other new media could not be as reliable and might not be as differentiated to the knowledge that you could buy in a school class, active discussion, participation and under the guidance of teachers.
When you discuss this in your classrooms at the university level, how would you describe the reactions and responses Are students engaged How.
You can really see a divide among students both the third and fourth post-Holocaust generational cohorts course, students taking courses on a voluntary basis on the Holocaust are generally more interested in the subject than other students; he Sá auto group already selected because the courses on the Holocaust are not necessary courses in all fields at the university level, so my experiences are certainly not representative, but yet, the cleavage that I see in my class match cleavages observed in qualitative research colleagues and I drove.
There classroom students who are more attached to the learning of the Holocaust, to do more research on the reasons authors and the suffering of victims, as perhaps in any other previous generation of Germans They have the intend to learn more about anti-Semitism, including anti-Semitism of their grandparents, a taboo subject in the debates of previous decades that focused on the guilt of Hitler or modern anonymous bureaucratic structures that are liable Auschwitz therefore, there is a significant amount of students who really want to know how it happened and how it could happen, and who were the perpetrators and victims.
But you also have a good amount of students who are most strongly oppose the Holocaust memory than previous generations They look normal German national identity and feel the Holocaust is too much of a burden, not an important part of German history, and he has over-represented in the media and public discourse Those who are looking for a conventional national German identity or German pride, tend to separate the Holocaust as a general phenomenon similar to crimes all other nations They tend to reject a post-conventional moral understanding of the history and identity that reflects the Holocaust - the unprecedented crime and genocide - is in fact part of a self German collective -identity and self-image, and it must be because you can not rewrite history, nor escape the fact that you are shaped by your arr social and cultural st plan.
The challenge is to self-reflection that criminal aspect of German history, including anti-Semitism Students who fully accept that particular responsibility and old tend to develop ethical values cosmopolitan, universalist and post-national students who say i want to be proud of my country and still proud of our history tends to - and we have very important empirical studies on this subject - not to be interested in the Holocaust, not wanting to learn about it they feel it is a burden which is superimposed on them by others, and they tend to identify more conventional standards, ethnic identity narratives and moral systems.
And if you really have that kind of cleavage, this internal division within this generational cohort is a marked contrast between those who really do not want to hear, and those who are particularly interested in learning about the topic.
The 60th anniversary of the end of World War II was commemorated in the last few weeks and in conjunction with this event, a survey was conducted on German history, and indicated that a young German knows two not what the Holocaust was the survey was conducted by the Forschungsgruppe Wahlen independent research institute for public broadcaster ZDF and the newspaper Die Welt do you think that statistic is connected to your earlier point about the limited amount given time in the history of education.
Yes It is certainly the case where it s insufficient teaching history and insufficient knowledge of the Holocaust among young generational cohorts, and this not only affects teenagers without education policies must increase efforts to change that it needs to be taught in schools more thoroughly It's shame that such a large amount of young Germans do not know that Auschwitz and the Holocaust was, nevertheless lament about an overrepresentation in Auschwitz German media and schools These data are alarming he must finally become a major, if not a central part of education, like other subjects increased efforts in education about prejudice, anti-Semitism and the Holocaust late.
How do you teach the subject in your classrooms For example, move to the Nazi era and the Holocaust in a broader context of historical understanding of how other people were targeted and eliminated over the centuries .
What is very important to me, when I teach, is to display both parallel to other genocides, but also to make them understand the unique dimensions of this crime that was unprecedented in human history, it is important to show what a disastrous effect prejudiced thinking general can have, but there are also significant differences between ethnic prejudice, anti-Semitism, which is a global conspiracy theory, genocide and the Holocaust.
Something that is very common among young Germans is to say, I do not want to hear about the Holocaust Americans have done the same with the Indians and Israelis doing the same with the Palestinians Such generalization claims to be sensitive to bias in general, and pretends to be universalist because it seems to criticize the prejudices around the world, but in fact it is a delegation of guilt on others in order to avoid facing their own history collective universalism, in this case, and the look in the world becomes a token, used to assimilate very different historical events or conflicts to equate the Holocaust and the genocide perspective course, all arguments and also arguments Universalists may be used or used to minimize the specific historical While the history of the Holocaust is very similar to dif ferent levels to other genocides and there are, of course, the general links to biased thinking, at the same time, you must also understand its specific context and dimension This is the challenge for the teacher to overcome these misperceptions General between your students.
There are certain conditions, and aspects of the structure of the agency, and the systematic extermination of European Jews in particular, which show a very specific quality of the Holocaust that occurred in Germany and was especially the fact Germans.
At what age parents or teachers start talking about the time of the Holocaust and Nazi with a child.
I find it important to talk to children about Nazism and the Holocaust at a relatively young age because, in one way or another, they will eventually hear, and it is better that parents or professional teachers educate, rather than just the other children when you live in Germany, you are faced with monuments, you are faced with this story, you can not really escape, of course, and the kids hear about it.
In young children, the Jew is increasingly used to give someone a bad name Other children might say, You look like a Jew, or feel like a Jew, or you fly like a Jew and children often know these things of their parents' Anti-Semitism has not disappeared and dissipated entirely in German society, and it is very often linked to high-Semitism directed against the Jews as representatives of the memory of the Holocaust, as many Germans feel is an unpleasant question they unconsciously delegate about Jews when I was a child in the 1970s, they made fun of me and called me prisoner concentration because I was so thin of other children sang songs praising Hitler the right thing to do as parents and teachers is to be silent on the Holocaust and not to deal with your children with this story just because it is so horrible and want to protect then they could learn bad things about Auschwitz and Nazism.
This does not mean you have to show their drastic images displaying the concentration camps when they are still very young, but teachers and parents are called to deal with this history in education from the start.
It also depends on how you talk and how you face what happened, it is definitely too late to talk about the subject in Grade 10, at least in the German context one way or another, through the media or by what they hear, children face on anyway, even if you wish, you can avoid the subject does and it is really important that you intervene early, but very often also parents lack knowledge and really need education about the Holocaust.
German Jewish History and Holocaust Education in Germany an interview A Jew among Germans, Germans, Jews, history.