Is Holocaust Education Feeding Antisemitism?

[Della]

"The dramatic uptick of antisemitism in America is the result of a near-perfect storm of factors. We know some of the major ones: Trump-era hangover, TikTok, and “normalization” thanks to celebrities such as Ye (Kanye West). But Holocaust education in schools may be yet another ingredient in this toxic stew.

Wait, what? How could an effort aimed at educating children of all backgrounds about the most evil result of antisemitism actually be fueling it?

Counterintuitive as it may be, this is the conclusion of well-known novelist and frequent Moment contributor Dara Horn in a new Atlantic magazine piece: “Is Holocaust Education Making Anti-Semitism Worse?” The subhead also is telling: “Using dead Jews as symbols isn’t helping living ones.”

Horn writes: “I have come to the disturbing conclusion that Holocaust education is incapable of addressing contemporary anti-Semitism. In fact, in the total absence of any education about Jews alive today, teaching about the Holocaust might even be making anti-Semitism worse.”

https://momentmag.com/is-holocaust-educ ... isemitism/

[Slimshandy]

[Della]

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I didn't think you would read anything other than the headline.

[Momto2boys973]

If this is the same article I read, the author has a point. Teaching the Holocaust in a vacuum doesn’t help against antisemitism. I don’t agree that it increases antisemitism, though. Something is better than nothing.
As Douglas Murray says, “antisemitism is a shape shifting virus”. Jews have been hated throughout history for various reasons, many contradicting each other. We’re hated when we’re poor and when we’re rich. For isolating ourselves and for trying to assimilate. For being too religious or for trying to fit it. During the Holocaust because we weren’t white, now because we’re “too white”. Again during the Holocaust because we were foreigners and we should “go back to where we came from”, a.k.a the British Mandate of palestine at the time, and now because we are in our land, but still we should “go back to where we cam pe from- Europe
So antisemitism changes and the new excuses for antisemitism have to be addressed as contributing to the rise of antisemitism. Hence why Antizionism is antisemitism. Nowadays that’s the excuse. But just as every other excuse has been false and ridiculous, this one is also. Both from the historical perspective, in the lies that Jews “stole” the land, or that modern Jews are “European” and have no relation to the land, we’re not “real” Jews, and the blood libel perspective, by inventing atrocities and crimes that Israel isn’t guilty of- apartheid, genocide, nakbah, etc. That’s the new form of antisemitism and therefore to fight it, education most include a factual history of Israel from way back to the 9th century BCE to the creation of the modern State of Israel and not perpetuating these myths of violent, Jewish “settlers” and poor innocent “natives” that have no basis in reality.
Also, teach that the Holocaust was one event. In fact, the minority of Israeli Jews are of Ashkenazi descent. They’re about 30% of the population. Just 10% more than the Arab (Muslim and Christian) population. The vast majority of Israeli Jews are Mizrahi Jews- Jews that came from Arab countries from where they were also expelled, persecuted and murdered. The myth of Jews and Arabs living all peacefully in palestine until the evil European Zionists arrived and pushed all Arabs away is just another blood libel.
The lack of teaching those facts about Israel and Jews is what creates rising antisemitism.

[Pjmm]

I can’t read it as it’s behind a paywall. But the way I was taught we learned about the Holocaust and that it can happen again. Like we watched the movie where the teacher did the experiment to show how nazism is born. The factors that led to it. Idk the name of that movie. Point is I agree with Momtwo2boys. It’s better than nothing. This is part of history and it should be taught. Antisemitism can be addressed with the Holocaust or as a separate issue idk. But what else can we do?

[Momto2boys973]

We’re actually seeing it. Some of the things happening now, the recruitment of kids for indoctrination, the tolerance to hate speech, the indifference, the continuous demonization of Jews using Israel as an excuse, all of this happened before.
I never understood how something like the Holocaust could happen. It’s like the world went through a period of lunacy. Gone completely backwards I couldn’t understand how that could happen, defies all logic.
Well, I understand now…

I can’t read it as it’s behind a paywall. But the way I was taught we learned about the Holocaust and that it can happen again. Like we watched the movie where the teacher did the experiment to show how nazism is born. The factors that led to it. Idk the name of that movie. Point is I agree with Momtwo2boys. This is part of history and it should be taught. Antisemitism can be addressed with the Holocaust or as a separate issue idk. But what else can we do?

[Aletheia]

Horn writes: “I have come to the disturbing conclusion that Holocaust education is incapable of addressing contemporary anti-Semitism. In fact, in the total absence of any education about Jews alive today, teaching about the Holocaust might even be making anti-Semitism worse.”

Let us not forget the Slavs and trade unionists (RED), homosexuals (PINK), Jehovah's Witnesses (PURPLE), Roma (BLACK), S*x workers (GREEN) and other groups.

[Della]

I can’t read it as it’s behind a paywall. But the way I was taught we learned about the Holocaust and that it can happen again. Like we watched the movie where the teacher did the experiment to show how nazism is born. The factors that led to it. Idk the name of that movie. Point is I agree with Momtwo2boys. It’s better than nothing. This is part of history and it should be taught. Antisemitism can be addressed with the Holocaust or as a separate issue idk. But what else can we do?

This is what is basically being presented by Horn:

"To be fair, Horn was not advocating curtailing Holocaust education. The author of several well-regarded books (including People Love Dead Jews), Horn argues that too often the subject is taught in a vacuum, with little reference to Jewish history and tradition as well as centuries-old hatred of Jews.

“Isolating the Holocaust from the rest of Jewish history (makes) it hard for even the best educators to upload this irrational reality into seventh-grade brains,” she wrote.

What particularly makes her blood boil is the oft-stated view that Jews “are just like everybody else.” Horn wonders how educators can blandly say Jews are like everyone else “after Jews have spent 3,000 years deliberately not being like everyone else.” Horn also writes that caricaturing the Holocaust as a “morality play” may inadvertently excuse modern-day antisemitism. “When anti-Semitism is reduced to the Holocaust, anything short of murdering 6 million Jews… seems minor by comparison.”

https://momentmag.com/is-holocaust-educ ... isemitism/

[Momto2boys973]

No one forgets them. Yad Vashem also provides information about all other persecuted groups. But fact is, the genocidal machine of the Nazis was created as the “final solution” to the “Jewish problem”. Other groups were indeed caught in it, but the only ones systematically annihilated were the Jews. Up to the point that it’s over 80 years since the beginning of the Holocaust and the world Jewish population still hasn’t reached the numbers of 1939.
All the Nazi atrocities should be remembered because ultimately, what starts with the Jews, doesn’t end with the Jews- something we should be remembering now…

Horn writes: “I have come to the disturbing conclusion that Holocaust education is incapable of addressing contemporary anti-Semitism. In fact, in the total absence of any education about Jews alive today, teaching about the Holocaust might even be making anti-Semitism worse.”

Let us not forget the Slavs and trade unionists (RED), homosexuals (PINK), Jehovah's Witnesses (PURPLE), Roma (BLACK), S*x workers (GREEN) and other groups.

[Pjmm]

I can’t read it as it’s behind a paywall. But the way I was taught we learned about the Holocaust and that it can happen again. Like we watched the movie where the teacher did the experiment to show how nazism is born. The factors that led to it. Idk the name of that movie. Point is I agree with Momtwo2boys. It’s better than nothing. This is part of history and it should be taught. Antisemitism can be addressed with the Holocaust or as a separate issue idk. But what else can we do?

This is what is basically being presented by Horn:

"To be fair, Horn was not advocating curtailing Holocaust education. The author of several well-regarded books (including People Love Dead Jews), Horn argues that too often the subject is taught in a vacuum, with little reference to Jewish history and tradition as well as centuries-old hatred of Jews.

“Isolating the Holocaust from the rest of Jewish history (makes) it hard for even the best educators to upload this irrational reality into seventh-grade brains,” she wrote.

What particularly makes her blood boil is the oft-stated view that Jews “are just like everybody else.” Horn wonders how educators can blandly say Jews are like everyone else “after Jews have spent 3,000 years deliberately not being like everyone else.” Horn also writes that caricaturing the Holocaust as a “morality play” may inadvertently excuse modern-day antisemitism. “When anti-Semitism is reduced to the Holocaust, anything short of murdering 6 million Jews… seems minor by comparison.”

https://momentmag.com/is-holocaust-educ ... isemitism/

I mean yeah we were taught about the Holocaust in a vacuum I guess. I can't even remember being taught about how events after WWI led to Hitler's rise in power plus there had to be antisemitism in Germany already. I read about WWI and the politics much later in life. We were taught in high school how people can turn against a group, re the movie I mentioned. But that was a psychological experiment, not an explanation about how antisemitism brought about the Holocaust or that it could conceivably happen again. Along those lines we also weren't taught about Japanese internment camps or it was brushed over. I learned that later as well. So I get what she's saying. We need to understand events that led to the Holocaust, which were probably decades in the making, so we can see the danger today.