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Holocaust Education in OntarioHigh Schools: An antidote toracism?Geoffrey Short aa School of Humanities and Education , University ofHertfordshirePublished online: 01 Jul 2010.

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Cambridge Journal of Education, Vol. 30, No. 2, 2000

Holocaust Education in OntarioHigh Schools: an antidote toracism?GEOFFREY SHORTSchool of Humanities and Education, University of Hertfordshire

ABSTRACT The premise underpinning this article is that if the Holocaust is taught well itcan help to promote anti-racist goals. The need to realise the Holocaust’ s anti-racist potentialis self-evident, but is arguably greatest where conventional anti-racism (aimed at enhancing thelife chances of visible minorities) is under threat. Such a situation currently obtains in Ontario,where the right wing Progressive Conservative party was elected to of® ce in June 1995. Theuncertain future of anti-racism in the province provides the background to this article. Itexamines the teaching of the Holocaust in Ontario high schools and reports the ® ndings of asurvey carried out among history staff in May 1998. Various ways are suggested in which theteachers involved (and others elsewhere) might alter their approach to the Holocaust in orderto strengthen its contribution to anti-racist education.

INTRODUCTION

The Holocaust, if taught well, can make a valuable contribution to anti-racisteducation (Short, 1997). Among other things, it can broaden students’ under-standing of stereotyping and scapegoating, make them aware of some of thepolitical, social and economic antecedents of racism and provide a potentillustration of both the bystander effect and the dangers posed by an unthinkingconformity to social norms and peer group pressure. Most importantly, perhaps,learning about the attempted annihilation of European Jewry allows students toappreciate where racism can lead if left unchecked. These potential bene® ts,however, are by no means guaranteed. As Ronnie Landau (1992) makes clear:

If the Holocaust is taught properly, [it] can civilise and humanise ourstudents and perhaps more effectively than any other subject [can]sensitise them to the dangers of indifference, intolerance, racism andthe dehumanisation of others. But if taught badly, it can titillate,traumatise, mythologise and encourage a purely negative view of allJewish history, of Jewish people and indeed of all victim groups.(Landau, 1992, p. 12, original emphasis)

0305-764Xprint/1469-3577online/00/020291-15 Ó 2000 University of Cambridge School of Education

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292 G. Short

The distinguished historian Lucy Dawidowicz (1990) has shown that thepossibility of teaching the subject badly is not just a theoretical one. Herbroadside against Holocaust education followed an investigation of 25 curriculain the USA in which she noted inadequate coverage of the history of anti-Semitism, role play exercises likely to provoke trauma and the drawing ofinappropriate parallels with other genocides. The latter point was subsequentlyhighlighted by Deborah Lipstadt (1995) in her critique of the well-knownAmerican curriculum Facing History and Ourselves (Stern Strom & Parsons,1982). Problems have also arisen in the UK, where a study by Carrie Supple(1993, p. 21) revealed serious lacunae in secondary school textbooks. Theywere found to contain little information about Jewish people other thananti-Semitic stereotypes ¼ no explanation of the roots of anti-Semitism ¼ littleon the treatment of minorities ¼ other than Jews ¼ no mention of resistance orrescuers [and] no mention of the role or responsibility of the free world’ .

Although not writing from an anti-racist standpoint, the criticisms levelledby Dawidowicz, Lipstadt and Supple are germane to the anti-racist project, forstudents will not deepen their understanding of racism through misleadingcontent and inappropriate pedagogy. Indeed, such shortcomings can renderHolocaust education counter-productive to the aims of anti-racism; speci® cally,they can result in a reinforcement rather than a weakening of racist attitudes. If,for example, Jews are inadvertently depicted in an unfavourable light, anti-Semitism is made comprehensible and, via a process of generalisation, all formsof racism become more acceptable.

Clearly, pedagogic interventions that have the potential to distance stu-dents from the victims of Nazism are a matter for concern. They ought to be amatter of special concern to contemporary anti-racists, for failures’ in Holo-caust education threaten to undermine any gains that may otherwise accruefrom the movement’ s legitimate preoccupation with the problems of visibleminorities. Proponents of anti-racist education might, therefore, be expected toshow more than a passing interest in how the Holocaust is taught in schools.However, in Canada this seems not to have happened. Anti-racists have provedreluctant to embrace anti-Semitism (Reed, 1993) and it may be no coincidencethat in a recent analysis of anti-racist education in Ontario and British Colum-bia, the authors make no mention of the Holocaust (Carrington & Bonnett,1997). Despite this neglect, a body of Canadian literature on teaching theHolocaust has accumulated over the past 15 years or so, some of whichrefers explicitly to combating racism (see for example Wells & Wingate, 1985;Reed & Lass, 1995). Most of it, however, is concerned with issues that donot extend beyond the Holocaust itself. Thus, the Summer 1995 issue ofCanadian Social Studies, which had the Holocaust as a major theme, containedarticles on, amongst other things, appropriate pedagogy and content (Bialy-stock, 1995), the value of narrative (Marmor, 1995) and the need to apprisestudents of the role of the Christian church in the history of anti-Semitism(O’Reilly, 1995).

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Ensuring that the Holocaust is taught in ways that will enhance and notdetract from the aims of anti-racist education is self-evidently important underany circumstances. It is, arguably, of particular importance when `conventionalanti-racism’ (concerned with ameliorating the situation of visible minorities) isunder threat, for at such times teachers of the Holocaust necessarily shoulder agreater share of the responsibility for promoting anti-racist values. This is thesituation that currently prevails in Ontario where, in June 1995, the right wingProgressive Conservative party was elected to of® ce, pledged to reduce publicexpenditure. One of the ® rst casualties of its economic programme was theOntario Anti-Racism secretariat, a body set up by the previous (NationalDemocratic) administration and which had been `an object of scorn and ridiculein the rightist press for four years’ (Harney, 1996, p. 35). In light of the changeof government and the assault on anti-racism that accompanied it, the need foreffective Holocaust education in Ontario has become that much more urgent. Itis against this background that in May 1998 a survey was undertaken of highschool history teachers in Toronto and the surrounding region with a view togaining insight into their attitudes and practices with respect to the Holocaust.It was intended to use the data as a basis for assessing the contribution made byteachers of the Holocaust in Ontario to the attainment of anti-racist goals.

THE SURVEY

The Sample

Twenty-three history teachers (of whom 15 were Heads of Department) partic-ipated in the survey. There were 13 men and 10 women, ranging in experiencefrom 5 to 25 years, and all taught the Holocaust, as part of the compulsoryCanadian history course, to students aged 13± 16 (Grade 9 or 10). The teacherswere drawn from 17 randomly selected high schools in and around metropolitanToronto; ® ve were Catholic and 12 non-denominational. The sample includedtwo independent schools: one non-denominational and all girl; the other Cath-olic and co-educational.

The teachers were all volunteers and were guaranteed personal and institu-tional anonymity. Each of the interviews was tape recorded.

Data Collection

A semi-structured interview schedule comprising 14 core questions was theprincipal source of data collection. The questions fell into one of three cate-gories: (1) basic information on matters such as the age of pupils studying theHolocaust, the amount of time spent studying it and the use made of resources;(2) teachers’ views on Holocaust education in general and on speci® c areas ofcontent; (3) pedagogic issues. The questions were as follows.

· Should schools teach about the Holocaust? What do you see as the mainadvantages and disadvantages of teaching the subject?

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· How old are the students to whom you teach the Holocaust? Do you seeany advantages or disadvantages in teaching it to either older or youngerstudents?

· How much time do you spend teaching the Holocaust? Is this adequate?If not, what would you teach, or spend longer teaching, if time permit-ted?

· What materials do you use (for example, textbooks, personal accountssuch as The Diary of Anne Frank, eye-witness testimony in the form ofvisiting speakers, videos)?

· Do you personally feel comfortable teaching about the Holocaust? If not,what are the sources of your discomfort: inadequate knowledge,de® ciency in textbooks and other materials, nature of the subject matter,other?

· Do you relate the Holocaust to contemporary developments?· Do you draw parallels between the Holocaust and atrocities committed

against other ethnic groups in the past?· How much time do you spend discussing the history of anti-Semitism in

Europe and the role of the church in perpetuating it?· Do you do anything to explore and undermine students’ misconceptions

and stereotypes of Jews and Judaism prior to teaching about the Holo-caust?

· Do you deal with rescuers and Jewish resistance?· Have you encountered students who have been traumatised as a result of

learning about the Holocaust? If so, how did you handle such situations?· Would you alter your approach to teaching about the Holocaust depend-

ing on the ethnic make up of your class?· Has Holocaust denial cropped up in any form? If it has, how did you

respond?

As the purpose of the survey was to gain insight into the experience that allstudents have of the Holocaust it was made clear to the participants that everyquestion referred to teaching the subject in Grade 9 or 10.

The other source of data was a content analysis of the history textbooksused by students in the selected schools. The texts were: Canada: a nationunfolding (Eaton & Newman, 1994); Discovering Canada (Kirbyson et al., 1983);Spotlight Canada (Cruxton & Wilson, 1996); Canada: understanding your past(Hundey & Magarrey, 1990); Canada: the twentieth century (McFadden et al.,1982).

THE FINDINGS

Attitudes to Teaching the Holocaust

It is hard to overstate the importance of teachers’ views on whether to includethe Holocaust in the curriculum, for the topic is unlikely to be taught well ifteachers are not committed to it. In an effort to gauge their commitment, the

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Holocaust Education in Ontario 295

teachers were initially asked if schools should embrace Holocaust education.The question was answered tentatively by only one respondent. He said, `Yes,I think so’ , in contrast to the rest of the group whose endorsement wasunequivocal.

The sample was divided when asked to consider the main advantages ofteaching the subject. Predictably, there were some (seven) who talked aboutlearning from history and offered a variation on George Santayana’s (1905)maxim that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’ .A further justi® cation of Holocaust education, voiced by a few teachers, was thathistorical accuracy demands it. As one of them put it: to re¯ ect accuratelytwentieth century history and ignore the Holocaust is a contradiction’ .

Signi® cantly, there were just three respondents for whom the opportunityto learn about the nature of racism and human rights was seen as a majoradvantage. Their view was summed up in the following comment:

[The Holocaust] allows us to move from history into issues of preju-dice, discrimination and ultimately mass extermination. There’ s asuperb opportunity to deal with values education.

If the history of the Holocaust is taught well it cannot help but promote anunderstanding of racism. However, the subject will fail to realise its anti-racistpotential if teachers do not give adequate attention to the psychological andsociological underpinnings of racism. In the light of this imperative it isnoteworthy that in the course of the interviews, there was only one reference toscapegoating, one to stereotyping and a couple to bystander behaviour.

Having considered the advantages of Holocaust education, each teacherwas invited to re¯ ect on possible disadvantages. Just under a third (seven) wereadamant that there were none, other than the limited amount of time availablefor dealing with the topic. Those who felt differently and whose opinions arerepresented below included six teachers (all female) who spoke of the evidentpain caused to students who are unable to cope emotionally.

It can be very disturbing. Some of our 13± 15 year olds get very upset,particularly when we visit the Holocaust Centre.

Some young adolescents are clearly not prepared emotionally to dealwith the horror of the Holocaust. The visual imagery overwhelmsthem.

The disadvantage in the junior classes is that it’ s so depressing. Thestudents get so emotionally drawn and drained. Also, some of theyounger students can’ t take it and they laugh, so we’re very carefulwith the junior grades about the kinds of visuals we show. That’ s theonly disadvantage.

The critical issue of whether the pain was suf® cient to prevent studentsabsorbing the lessons of the Holocaust (c.f. the literature on persuasive commu-nications, for example McGuire, 1969) is discussed below when dealing withthe question of trauma.

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296 G. Short

In the view of some teachers (® ve), a major drawback to teaching about theHolocaust in Toronto is associated with the city’ s position as the most ethnicallydiverse in Canada. According to the 1991 census, visible minorities comprise24% of Toronto’s population (Kelly, 1996) and some students from thesegroups apparently resent the privileged treatment given to the Holocaust whenthe suffering of their own communities is ignored. The importance of suchfeelings is suggested by the following remark from a teacher hinting at thepossibility of internecine tensions among minority groups resulting in a frag-mented opposition to racism.

Toronto is such a multicultural city and as the Jewish population isgetting smaller and other communities getting bigger sometimes theywonder why is this [Jewish] culture getting special treatment.

Anti-racists also need to consider another drawback to Holocaust educationalluded to by a small minority (three) of the sample, namely the danger ofoverkill. In the words of one Head of Department:

I suppose it can be over-done. You get kids who, when you say `we’ regoing to do ¼ ’ say `Oh, not again’ because they’ve got it in English[and] they may have done it before. They may feel they are beingmanipulated, that somehow or other this particular event is beingtaught to death in the case of some kids.

The question, `Do you personally feel comfortable teaching about the Holo-caust?’ was intended to provide further data on teachers’ attitudes towards thesubject. The overwhelming majority said that they experienced no discomfort.However, a couple of women thought that their enthusiasm might createdif® culties. One of them, possibly conscious of the dangers of preaching(Brehm, 1976) said, I have no problem with the Holocaust other than that Ifeel very strongly about it and have to hold myself back’ . The other was moreconcerned about the implications of her strength of feeling on students’ willing-ness to engage in discussion: I have a passionate commitment to teaching it’ sheclaimed, `but sometimes I might come on too strong. [Students] might hold inquestions because they think ª how is this lady going to react to this?º ’

VARIATIONS IN APPROACH

Structure

This section of the paper is principally concerned with the age at which pupilslearn about the Holocaust, the amount of time teachers devote to it and the usethey make of resources.

Just over two-thirds of the schools taught the Holocaust at Grade 10, withthe remainder doing so at Grade 9. For the vast majority of teachers this wasdeemed an appropriate age range in that students were thought to be suf® cientlymature intellectually and emotionally to grasp the central issues. Moreover, as

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Holocaust Education in Ontario 297

one of them pointed out: `Fourteen plus is a good time for social reasons. Theyhave gangs, some of which have a racist component, so it’ s a good time to bringthat up’ .

There was just one discordant voice. A female member of staff in asuburban school that taught the Holocaust at Grade 9 would have preferred towait a couple of years. She said:

What you invariably face with young adolescents, and especially boys,[is] a fascination with the mechanics of extermination and it’ s dif® cultto get beyond that. It’ s not a TV show. This actually happened. Thisis people’ s lives that you’re talking about. To get to that with some kidsis not easy.

Before asking the question, `How much time do you spend teaching theHolocaust?’ , it was made clear to the participants that by the Holocaust’ wasmeant Nazi Germany’s treatment of the Jews between 1933 and 1945. De® nedin this way it was found that the mean length of time allotted to the subject wasjust over 5 hours. However, the average masks a wide variation. Whilst oneteacher claimed to spend up to 12 hours and several others 8 or 9 hours, ahandful took no more than a couple of hours to complete their coverage. Themajority of textbooks used in the schools also give the subject minimal attention(with the Hundey and McGarrey text exhausting its treatment after half a page).The problem with such a super® cial approach is that students may read betweenthe lines and conclude that the limited coverage re¯ ects the relative unimpor-tance of the attempted annihilation of European Jewry and, by extension, ofracism in general.

Nearly half the sample, including some of those who spent an aboveaverage amount of time on the Holocaust, wished to devote more time to it. Theissues they wanted to deal with in greater depth included the causes of theHolocaust (and particularly the history of anti-Semitism) the woeful response ofthe western powers’ and the links between the Holocaust and more recentgenocides. Jewish resistance and the role of rescuers were also mentioned in thiscontext.

As far as resources are concerned, all the schools possessed and made useof videos or ® lm footage. However, it is debatable whether all of them madeoptimum use of such material. The emotionally powerful Night and Fog, forexample, was believed by one teacher to be quite unsuitable for both Grade 9and 10 students. Instead, he preferred videos:

that focus on the war in general rather than speci® cally on theHolocaust, mainly because with the younger students much of thatmaterial is very graphic and I’ve always been wary of showing it. Oneof my colleagues has just shown Night and Fog to Grade 9. ¼ Everytime I see it I cringe, so I’m nervous about showing it to 15 year olds.I don’ t want to scare them to death.

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298 G. Short

The other side of the coin was put by a teacher (one of six) who did show the® lm at Grade 9/10 level.

I show Night and Fog. It’ s quite gruesome and some of the kids are intears by the end of it. But what’ s too horri® c? You’ve got to remindthem that there are people out there saying this didn’ t happen and thisis the video evidence.

Just under half the teachers in the sample (11) reported that they always visitedthe Holocaust Centre in Toronto with their Grade 9 or 10 pupils and a furtherthree had done so in the past [1]. All who took advantage of this opportunity fortheir students to hear survivors speak and then to engage them in a question-and-answer session regarded the experience as particularly worthwhile. A coupleof female teachers made additional use of survivor accounts in the form of ElieWiesel’ s (1960) Night. One of them said: `The students were given Night to takehome and read. It hits home. Some of the girls this year have been in tears, butboys also respond to it very well’ . Generally, however, the use of Holocaustliterature by history staff was very limited. The only other title mentioned, andthen only by two teachers, was The Diary of Anne Frank.

Content

Making connections

In view of the importance of students appreciating the contemporary relevanceof the Holocaust it is essential that teachers make reference to current manifes-tations of racism and to recent racist atrocities. Many of those interviewed drewtheir pupils’ attention to events in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, but there was areluctance on the part of a few to do likewise. In one case this was because thestudents were thought to lack the geographical knowledge required to under-stand the comparison; in another because they’ re not cognisant of anythingthat’ s gone on, so I’d actually have to teach that before I could draw anyconnection’. [That these teachers may have been guilty of holding unreasonablylow expectations of their students’ political literacy is suggested by a growingbody of research, for example Stevens (1982) and Carrington and Troyna(1988).] A third teacher who eschewed comparisons said: I have a certaindiscomfort with comparative Holocaust studies. I think that in the Holocaust ofWorld War II you’re dealing with something historically unique’ . Many histori-ans would agree and go out of their way to emphasise the uniqueness of theHolocaust, but they reject as a non sequitur ruling out all comparisons (forexample Lipstadt, 1995). Pointing to other examples of genocide would cer-tainly seem essential if students are not to conclude that the German capacityfor evil is unrivalled. The vast majority of the sample did make comparisons withearlier genocides, referring most frequently to the Armenian massacres, the fateof the kulaks under Stalin and the treatment of First Peoples in Canada. Whilstone or two teachers might have succeeded only in misleading their students (by

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Holocaust Education in Ontario 299

informing them that the Holocaust was simply `a bigger atrocity’ ) most were atpains to stress the differences as well as the similarities between these variousatrocities and the Holocaust.

Although none of the textbooks made links with other genocides, mostreferred to Canada’s shameful role in the Holocaust (noting, for instance, thegovernment’ s refusal in 1939 to allow refugees from the St Louis to disembark).The texts did not, however, focus on racism in present day Canada. Thistendency to overlook the home front’ comes on top of the ® nding that only asmall minority of teachers raised the issue with their students. One made hispupils aware of right wing groups in certain parts of Toronto who’ve tried torecruit in high schools’ . A couple spoke about the skinhead movement and theHeritage Front and another related the Holocaust to the inequities and dis-crimination within our own society’. Just one of these teachers stated that shelooked at the economy and mention[ed] scapegoats’ . The comparative dearthof teachers keen to discuss contemporary developments in Canada is a matterfor regret insofar as students are more likely to treat the lessons of historyseriously if they are seen as having relevance to their own lives.

The history of anti-Semitism

Knowledge of racism implies, amongst other things, a realisation that it does notarise in a vacuum. Students should know that anti-Semitism, as a form ofracism, is historically embedded and that it did not suddenly emerge inGermany in the 1930s. The Holocaust provides an ideal opportunity to rein-force this point bearing in mind the 2000 years in which Jews have beendemonised in Christian theology. In view of the importance of this issue it isdisquieting to note that nearly half the sample just touch[ed] on the role of thechurch’ and most of the others (nine) did nothing. The reasons were varied. Inone case it was due to curricular constraints: I don’ t have time to do that. Ifthere’ s one thing that I have to cut back on it’ s that’ . In another it was attributedto the religious ethos of the school: It’ s dif® cult being in a Catholic school tomake the association’. In a couple of cases, the problem was said to beignorance, not of church teachings, but of Jewish history. To compound thedisquiet, there was no mention of the historic link between the church andanti-Semitism in any of the textbooks.

Students’ misconceptions and stereotypes of Jews and Judaism

If students enter the classroom believing, for whatever reason, that Jews are insome way `bad people’ , the lessons of the Holocaust will be less likely to registerthan if they see Jews as no more deserving of a terrible fate than any other ethnicgroup. It is for this reason that teachers were asked `Do you do anything toexplore and undermine students’ misconceptions and stereotypes of Jews andJudaism prior to teaching about the Holocaust?’

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Whilst some students’ misconceptions may have been undermined as abyproduct of learning about the background to the Holocaust, none of theteachers set out to explore their students’ beliefs about Jews and Judaism witha view to deconstructing them if necessary. The justi® cation for failing to do sowas that the students did not subscribe to such misconceptions. The followingcomments are representative.

I’ve never run into those misconceptions ¼ . In my experience, thestudents here don’ t have any particularly strong feelings about Jews orany other ethnic group.

We really don’ t have to [explore their views on Judaism] because theCatholic church and its teaching right now see the Jews as the chosenpeople and their religion is deeply connected to ours.

[For the most part I don’ t have to deal with the issue of misconcep-tions] because in every class in this school there are Jewish kids and theother kids can see their normality.

Rescuers and Jewish resistance?

Ignoring or underplaying Jewish resistance during the Holocaust is problemati-cal not just because it constitutes a perversion of history but because itstrengthens the stereotype of Jewish passivity. Presenting Jews in an unheroiclight makes it that much harder for students to identify with them and to holdtheir persecutors in contempt. Most teachers appeared not to recognise thispitfall, for they did no more than touch on’ the Warsaw ghetto and were silenton uprisings in the death camps and in other ghettos. Some, however, didbroach the issue of spiritual resistance, one saying that she addressed resistancein the camps in terms of trying to survive’ . Another did so from the point ofview of resisting the attempts to dehumanise and degrade’ .

Teaching about rescue is equally important from an anti-racist perspective,for the vast majority of rescuers were ordinary people whose very ordinarinessenables them to serve as potent role models. In this context it is regrettable thatthere was only a handful of references to Miep Gies, the woman who cared forAnne Frank’s family, and just a couple of references to the people of Denmark.Not surprisingly, the rescuer named most frequently was Oskar Schindler.

To underline the courage demanded of both resisters and rescuers studentsshould be made aware of the dif® culties of resistance and the penalties attachingto rescue. None of the teachers raised either matter in the course of theinterviews and whilst resistance is alluded to very brie¯ y in one text (SpotlightCanada), the others do not deal with it at all. No textbook made any commenton rescue.

Whilst most of those interviewed referred to both forms of behaviour, fourteachers eschewed any mention of them `because of the time frame’ and therewere a few who claimed to treat them super® cially for the same reason.

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Holocaust Education in Ontario 301

PEDAGOGIC ISSUES

Dealing with Emotions and Taking Account of Ethnicity

If anti-racist education is to be effective it must conform to the canons of soundpedagogy. Among other things, this means ensuring that the emotional impactof resources must not inhibit the learning the resources are intended to facilitate.Although the risk of this happening is manifestly high when teaching about theHolocaust, none of those interviewed believed that any student they had taughthad been traumatised. Many recalled instances where students had been deeplymoved as a result of what they had seen, but this was not considered a problem.On the contrary, it was regarded as a desirable outcome. Teachers generallywarned students of what they were to see (allowing them to opt out if theywished) or presented them with less powerful material.

As noted earlier, sound pedagogy also demands that wherever practicable,students should perceive the relevance to their own lives of what they are beingtaught. In relation to the Holocaust, this requires that teachers take cognisanceof the ethnic make-up of their class. Asked whether they did so, the majorityconcurred with the respondent who said:

I think it’ s important to know my students but I wouldn’ t alter myapproach [so much] as try to relate my teaching to the students’background. I have some black students and they are always deeplyinterested because they feel they are an oppressed minority and theyare very aware of racism. If I’m aware of students’ own ethnicbackgrounds I’m going to be able to relate what I’m doing much moredirectly to their own experiences and if I can tie their experiences oreven their second or third hand knowledge to what we’re doing it willmake a better lesson.

A speci® c example was given by a teacher who works in a school where thestudent body is overwhelmingly Jewish. He said:

After talking about the history of anti-Semitism we discuss issues ofracism and discrimination generally and I ask the students to bring incopies of the Canadian Jewish News to look at how the paper treats theArabs. I wouldn’ t do that in a class that was just 50% Jewish, althoughI would do the same kind of thing.

A more striking example was provided by a teacher who had had experience ofeast European students.

My previous school had a very high east European population (both® rst and second generation). These kids were carrying a culturalhistory that came from their own homes as well as from their ethniclanguage schools and you have to be sensitive to where they’ re atÐwhat they are coming to you with in their minds. I’m not suggestingthat you compromise your historical goals in terms of teaching what

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happened, but you have to be sensitive to the con¯ ict you may becausing in their minds and even in their homes. I know for a fact thatsome of these kids had grown up in homes that were rife withanti-Semitism and it was incumbent on me to be aware of that.

When asked how the presence of such students would affect her teaching, shereplied: I would probably go back more into history and deal with the historyof anti-Semitism and you have to spend more time on the Christian church andmore time on Russian history in terms of the Russian empire’ .

Holocaust Denial

The only teacher to have encountered denial was currently working in aCatholic school with large numbers of Polish and Croatian students. Hedeclared: I’ ve been called a liar and threatened with my life by people fromthese communities because I’ve said there was a Holocaust in their country’ .

Most teachers maintained that they would raise the issue of denial if theirstudents did not and the reason most frequently advanced was that `students aregoing to come across it. They know about Ernst ZuÈ ndel’ [2]. Clearly, if theHolocaust is to function as an effective antidote to racism it is essential tocounteract Holocaust denial. However, the textbooks make no mention of it andone teacher had never done so, believing that `bringing it up might have anegative effect on those who are bordering on the maturity level’ . A couple ofrespondents had discussed denial with their students in the past but did not doso as a matter of course.

According to Dalrymple (1992, p. 207) Holocaust deniers:

share one common theme and one common problem. The theme isanti-Semitism and the problem is the Holocaust. The clear evidencethat upwards of six million Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis standslike a monolithic barrier to [their] ambitions.

In the light of this comment, it would seem that a necessary condition ofcountering denial is to make students aware of the political identity of thedeniers and the motives they have for disregarding or distorting historicalevidence. The majority of the sample claimed to do both, but a few appear tohave failed to prepare their students adequately to deal with the sophistry. Whenone of them was asked if she apprised her students of the neo-Nazi identity ofthe deniers, she replied I hope so, but I don’ t spell it out’ . Another, whenprobed on how she refutes denial, admitted that she did not know how to refuteit. She said, I guess I just hope they have faith in what I’m teaching’ . A thirdteacher makes a point of not informing his students that the deniers areneo-Nazis. Instead, he tells them that `ZuÈ ndel is wrong. Here’ s the evidence ¼ .You can’ t deny video footage, tattoos on arms, people breaking down’ . Sucha response overlooks the fact that some deniers do indeed dismiss all

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such evidence, whilst others dispute its connection with a policy of extermi-nation.

ENDNOTE

There is obviously no guarantee that teachers committed to Holocaust edu-cation will fully exploit its anti-racist potential. To achieve this objective, thesurvey suggests, in the ® rst instance, that teachers ought to be better informedof the possible implications of the Holocaust for anti-racist education. Theyshould, for example, know of the dangers not only of spending too little time onthe subject but also of spending too long on it. Admittedly, the problem ofoverkill was only raised by a small minority of staff. Nonetheless, it is a seriousproblem and one means of obviating it, at least to some degree, may be forelementary schools to refrain from any involvement with the Holocaust. Teach-ers should also be alert to the danger of ignoring the historic suffering of any ofthe minority groups represented in their schools. In relation to this recommen-dation, it will be recalled that the survey showed teachers sometimes avoidingcomparisons with other genocides because of the alleged cognitive limitations oftheir students. Evidently, such teachers need to be informed of research ® ndingsthat have accumulated over the past 20 years casting doubt on the traditional(Piagetian) approach to the development of intellectual competence (see forexample Donaldson, 1978; Wood, 1998).

There are other issues with an important link to anti-racism that wereomitted by some teachers or dealt with super® cially. They include the history ofanti-Semitism and the pivotal role of the church in fostering it. Teachers indenominational schools who bypass this topic out of embarrassment might beless inclined to do so if they are made aware of the apology, issued by John PaulII in November 1997, for Christianity’ s historic persecution of the Jews. Theconcern, however, is not just with anti-Semitism, for other aspects of Holocausteducation that deserve priority from an anti-racist standpoint also receivedunsatisfactory treatment. Jewish resistance, for example, was largely overlooked;the behaviour of rescuers tended to focus on the exploits of Oskar Schindler andthere were few attempts to relate the Holocaust to socio-political developmentsin present day Canada. At a more general level, teachers failed to take advantageof the opportunity to introduce their students to the conceptual underpinningsof racism.

None of the teachers recognised the importance of deconstructing miscon-ceptions and stereotypes about Jews prior to embarking on the Holocaust.Whilst there is a demonstrable need for such preliminary work with students ofeast European origin, it is unwise to assume, as many teachers did, that studentsfrom other backgrounds are free from the misguided notions that can renderHolocaust education nugatory (Short, 1994, 1995). It is not being suggestedthat history staff should necessarily take on responsibility for disabusing theirill-informed students, as the task may be more appropriate for teachers of othersubjects, such as religious studies or personal and social education.

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304 G. Short

With regard to the use of resources, the textbooks examined contributedlittle to combating racism on account of their wholesale neglect of critical issues.The absence of any word on Holocaust denial is especially troubling consideringthe manifest dif® culties that some teachers had in counteracting it. In contrast,the Holocaust Centre was widely acclaimed and more teachers ought to availthemselves of its pedagogic potential. They might also contemplate makingmore use of Holocaust literature, bearing in mind the unsolicited tributes toNight.

One other potential cause for concern that emerged from the survey relatesto the over-enthusiasm displayed by a couple of teachers. The fact that thewomen concerned recognised the strength of their commitment as a problemwill itself have served to contain it. Nonetheless, all teachers of the Holocaustshould know that students are likely to resent and resist anything that smacks of`anti-fascism on command’ (Rathenow & Weber, 1998, p. 107).

This article has not attempted to address every issue pertinent to teachingthe Holocaust in the broader context of anti-racist education. For example, ithas not dealt with the position of the teacher in classroom discussion and, inparticular, with the appropriateness of teachers adopting the impartial facilita-tor’ role (Harwood, 1998). But despite its limitations, the survey has given riseto a number of recommendations adumbrated above. Whilst they are self-evi-dently relevant to high schools in Ontario, they should not be seen as applicableonly to that part of Canada. They are worthy of consideration wherever theHolocaust is taught with a view to promoting anti-racist values.

Correspondence: Geoffrey Short, School of Humanities and Education, Univer-sity of Hertfordshire, Wall Hall Campus, Aldenham, Watford WD2 8AT, UK.

NOTES

[1]The Holocaust Education and Memorial Centre is based in Toronto. High school studentsvisiting the Centre learn about Jewish life in pre-war Europe and about its destruction,through ® lm footage and the personal testimony of survivors. A seminar for teachers is heldannually.

[2]ZuÈ ndel is a Holocaust denier who gained international notoriety following his trial in Torontoin 1985 for dissemination of false information likely to cause injury to the public interest.

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