The Failure of Holocaust Education in Britain
Pearce said that there is a fundamental problem in the British approach to the Holocaust. The focus wrongly gravitates to Britain’s role in the Allied forces, the liberation of the camps, and to the story of Kindertransport, in which 10,000 Jewish children were brought to the U.K. from the continent in the year before WWII broke out. For Pearce it is a positive and self-congratulatory approach that fails to address the story of the Channel Islands, which were occupied by the Germans, and what the British government knew about the persecution of the Jews and failed to do about it. It is no surprise, he said, that his team found that 32 percent of students in secondary school believe that Britain declared war on Germany because of the Holocaust. In fact, Britain entered the war on Sept. 3, 1939, in response to the German invasion of Poland.'Free Palestine' scrawled on Holocaust educational advertisement in London
Pearce pointed out that teachers who have no support tend to use films and books, like John Boyne’s novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, as teaching aids. The Holocaust Education Trust advises against its use in the classroom because of its historical inaccuracy, yet the UCL team found that over 80 percent of those pupils interviewed who had read a book on the Holocaust had read that one. The main character in the novel is a 9-year-old boy whose father works as a commander of a concentration camp. He has no idea of the tragedy unfolding around him and innocently befriends a Jewish boy in striped pyjamas. Pearce said the narrative reinforces an inaccurate perception of German ignorance of the Holocaust.
The UCL team also examined what teachers hope to achieve by teaching the Holocaust. Pearce noted that educators have “a tendency to slip into rhetoric. There is a belief that if we study the Holocaust it will stop it happening again.” He added, “It is laudable but it reduces and simplifies history and is something that again comes from wider popular culture.” Indeed the recent decision to build a striking new national Holocaust memorial next to the Houses of Parliament in London was described by the Prime Minister’s Holocaust Commission as a “sacred duty” and announced by a government press release as a “permanent statement of our British values.”
In order to tackle these issues, Pearce said, we must totally rethink the way we teach children about the Holocaust. Mike Levy, a Holocaust educator based in Cambridge, sees the passing of the last Holocaust survivors as an opportunity to do this. He said that rethinking needs to start now, before Holocaust education simply stops when the last survivor dies.
Levy said that there is “an atmosphere of fatigue in the air when it comes to talking about the Holocaust and that students and teachers want to learn more about other genocides and contextualize the Holocaust.” Children need to be taught that there is not a competition about which genocide is worse. “The important thing educationally about the Holocaust is it teaches us a lot about the mechanisms because it is so well documented,” he said. “It is the mother of all genocides.”
An educational advertisement for a Kristallnacht exhibit was defaced in London's Russell Square, social media images showed on Tuesday.
The subway advertisement, circulated by The Wiener Library, was written on by a passer-by, inscribing the words "Free Palestine" with a heart drawn to the side of the statement.
Displayed within the elevators at Russel Square Train Station, the Wiener Library has said that the posters are, "Definitely vulnerable to vandalism (it has happened multiple times in the past) but as the vast majority of people who visit us do so because they see the posters ceasing would be hugely detrimental to us."
The Wiener Library has expressed their disdain and sadness with the vandalism of the poster. The poster was purposed to advertise an exhibit on Kristallnacht, the "Night of Broken Glass" recalling the pogrom that occurred against the Jewish community in Nazi Germany November 9th-10th, 1938; a topic related closely with the Holocaust.
New York Times Depiction of Moynihan as ‘Anti-Trump’ Ignores Jerusalem Embassy
An article by a New York Times reporter uses the release of a new documentary about Daniel Patrick Moynihan to describe the former senator from New York as, according to the Times headline, “the anti-Trump.”
The article ignores ways that Moynihan and Trump are similar.
President Trump moved the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, implementing the Jerusalem Embassy Act that was introduced by Senator Moynihan. Moynihan’s aides used to describe this as Moynihan’s “signature issue.”
A front-page article in The New York Times itself from 1984 reported on President Reagan’s threat to veto the Moynihan Jerusalem embassy legislation, and reported, “The bill, introduced by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, a Democrat, has more than 30 sponsors in the Senate and more than 200 in the House.”
Senator Bob Dole’s press release introducing the Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act of 1995 said, “Today, I am introducing S. 1322, the Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act of 1995. I am pleased to do so with the distinguished senior Senator from New York, Senator Moynihan, as the lead co-sponsor. As the Senate knows, Senator Moynihan has been the expert and the leader on Jerusalem for his entire career.”
Moynihan was famous for defending Israel at the United Nations as America’s ambassador there in 1975 when the General Assembly passed its infamous resolution describing Zionism as racism. Trump too has been a staunch defender of Israel at the United Nations, as has his ambassador there, Nikki Haley.