“Can I Alter the Statement?” – Considering Holocaust Education as a Catalyst for Civic Education in Jewish Day Schools

ABSTRACT

This study investigates ideas about the messages of the Holocaust understood by middle school students in Jewish day schools. Findings explore the conceptualizations students have of the Holocaust as a particular Jewish experience, and in what ways they apply its lessons both particularly and universally. Students in two North American Jewish day schools participated in a fall 2017 Holocaust education unit. Most were able to connect to the particular history of the Holocaust and to engage with universal messages. Their responses suggest a need and opportunity to frame Holocaust education more explicitly in the context of democratic civic education.

KEYWORDS:

• Civic education
• Day schools
• Holocaust education

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ This study explores Holocaust education considering the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's definition of the Holocaust as “the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators. The Holocaust was an evolving process that took place throughout Europe between 1933 and 1945” (https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/introduction-to-the-holocaust).

² The simulation in no way engaged students in physically reenacting the experience of the Holocaust. Under the guidance of their teachers, students chose to represent characters from “across time and place,” Jewish and non-Jewish. They engaged in conversation in the present and online, talking ABOUT the history of the St Louis, whether its passengers should be memorialized, and what form the memorial should take.

³ As will be demonstrated, many of the students in this study were aware of broader aspects of Holocaust history, possibly due to an introduction by their teachers that expanded beyond the St Louis narrative, and most likely due to exposure in school or other institutional Yom Hashoah programming or through family connections. However, comfort with sharing details of the Holocaust with middle school students varies by school community, and as an outside party curriculum provider the simulation designers aimed to support schools’ participation.

⁴ For example, one of the educators in this study has participated in workshops from Facing History, Yad Vashem, and the Unites States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) and is a presenter for the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation. She combines elements from all in her personal approach to Holocaust education. The other educator participated in a Facing History workshop and considers its philosophy as guiding her work, although she does not often teach about the Holocaust as part of her regular curricular responsibilities.

⁵ In some simulation schools, teachers require students to play Jewish characters. Neither of the schools in this study set this requirement. While the simulation topic changes each year and is always based on an incident in Jewish history, simulation designers understand Jewish history from an integrated perspective and thus expect and welcome student characters from a variety of backgrounds “across time and place.”

⁶ Similarity of responses across schools may be due in part to both schools’ self-characterizations as pluralistic, community schools. As noted, some studies suggest that some Orthodox schools privilege more Jewishly particular messaging in their approach to Holocaust education than non-Orthodox schools (Schweber, 2008a). While a comparison between the approaches of Orthodox schools and other Jewish schools to Holocaust education is beyond the scope of this study, there are unlikely to be “one-size-fits-all” recommendations for Holocaust education across the diversity of Jewish educational settings.

⁷ See, for example, local community studies from the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University. They report that, “seven percent of Metropolitan Chicago Jewish adults ages 75 and older are survivors of the Holocaust (n.d.) or are World War II refugees. Among Jewish adults younger than age 75, 24% are descendants of a Holocaust survivor, victim, or World War II refugee.” Aronson, Brookner & Saxe (2021). 2020 Metropolitan Chicago Jewish Population Study, https://www.brandeis.edu/cmjs/community-studies/chicago-report.html.

⁸ While the students explained their lack of personal connection to the Holocaust as a result of their families’ countries of origin, many (survivors, scholars) debate the label of survivor, particularly among those Jews who fled from Nazi-occupied eastern Europe to the Soviet Union. See, for example, “The Holocaust in the Soviet Union” (https://www.ushmm.org/research/about-the-mandel-center/initiatives/holocaust-soviet-union).

⁹ No participants in this study self-identified as Jews of color.

¹⁰ This study was conducted prior to the spring 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and the nationwide protests of police brutality in response to the May 2020 killing of George Floyd. Some Jewish schools are now beginning to explore issues of inequity, systemic racism, and potential for allyship as part of a social justice focus, but these topics were less salient in Jewish day schools just a few years ago (Katz et al., in preparation).