Holocaust Education as National History: Development in the Countries of ‘Bystanders’

Abstract

  This paper deals with the development of Holocaust education in Europe since the 1990s. Along with the growth of Holocaust studies in the field of history and sociology in particular, Holocaust education has been developing not only in Germany and Israel – the very countries concerned with it – but also around the world, particularly in Germany’s neighbouring countries in Europe. The paper examines the processes and the backgrounds of the development of Holocaust education with a special reference to the case of Sweden, a wartime neutral state. It is one of the best examples among former ‘bystanders’ countries in terms of acknowledging and teaching the Holocaust as part of national history, and among the driving forces of Holocaust education in current Europe and beyond.

  The perspectives in which the examination is conducted are two-fold: the conceptual ground and the contextual ground of the development of Holocaust education. Firstly, the paper positions the conceptual perceptions of the Holocaust as an incident of genocide in human history. One way to look at the Holocaust is to underline its ‘uniqueness’ with a sharp distinction from other genocidal cases. As Zygmunt Bauman (1989) argued, it claims the totality of mobilising all aspects of, for example, the bureaucracy, the system of administration and control, state ideology and advanced technology of the modern era. This structuralist or functionalist way of understanding the Holocaust began to be criticised by another intellectual stream. In it, such a clear – and somewhat arbitrary – differentiation of the Holocaust is downplayed with the rise of so-called ‘genocide studies’, which view the Holocaust as a valuable lesson for all humans, like other genocides. All in all, paradoxically, because of the specificities of the Holocaust as a historical incident of genocide, and because of its iconic significance in human history, Holocaust education has taken a firm hold as a universal lesson for humanity.

  Secondly, the paper tries to explain why Holocaust education has been expanded in Europe since the 1990s. It analyses the timing of the development of Holocaust education, shedding light on the contextual changes in international politics and social transformation in Europe. It is argued that historic watersheds in the development of Holocaust education are made in the following three points: the end of the cold war; the political, economic and cultural integration of Europe; and – above all – the continued effort for teaching the Holocaust undertaken by the Federal Republic of Germany since the end of the Second World War. Firstly, after the end of the cold war, Holocaust studies and education began to prosper in former communist countries where such studies and education had long been a ‘taboo’. It was based on socio-cultural traditional and ideological grounds in eastern Europe. In a sense, Holocaust studies and education was set free from communist ideology. A large number of documents related to the Holocaust began to be disclosed from the official archives after the collapse of the eastern bloc where the concentration and the extermination camps of Nazi Germany were concentrated. Secondly, the ‘Europeanisation of Holocaust history’ was possible with the burgeoning of a new political, economic and cultural community, called the European Union. In it, the notions of democracy and respect for human rights are more widely shared than before. Sharing the view of the past is considered to be essential in forming a new European identity and building the common future. Lastly but not least, the basis of Holocaust education has been firmly built by the state policy for education after the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany. This basis has been succeeded in a united Germany with some conceptual changes in currently multicultural German society. (View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)