Switzerland and the Holocaust: teaching contested history

Abstract

This study is about a history textbook which introduces the new transnational master‐narrative of Holocaust memory into the classrooms of the German‐speaking part of Switzerland. The script of the book entails a replacement of the formerly dominant view of Switzerland as a neutral nation resisting evil in favour of an image that aligns Switzerland with other nations that accept the Holocaust as part of their national history, and combine their efforts to prevent such crimes in the future. However, this process cannot be seen as hegemonic or total since it is fragmented at various levels. On the level of state power, there is no uniform vision of the nation’s history. Therefore, the book needed to accommodate its critics to a certain extent. Furthermore, there are institutional rules of history education that restrict a direct transmission of knowledge and promote teaching youths to develop their own views. And then there are the teachers, who have their part in shaping history.

Keywords:

• textbook research
• history education
• Holocaust studies
• Switzerland
• teacher thinking

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Béatrice Ziegler and two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments on earlier versions of this paper. We also thank Laura Boudreau for guiding us around the pitfalls of English grammar and helping us with our prose. Peter Seixas, the editor of the Journal of Curriculum Studies strand ‘National history and beyond’ has encouraged us from our first attempts to set out this work.

Notes

1. See the Swiss Historical Dictionary’s entry on the topic ‘Weltkrieg, Zweiter’ (German), ‘Guerre mondiale, deuxième’ (French), ‘Guerra mondiale, seconda’ (Italian) on www.hls-dhs-dss.ch.

2. For example, in 1989 Switzerland was the only nation in the world to officially commemorate the beginning of the Second World War in order to honour its army, which was thought to have successfully prevented a Nazi attack during the war (Zala 2003: 315).

3. For example, Nazi gold, a BBC documentary by filmmaker Christopher Olgiati, was broadcasted in June 1997; it suggested that, in spite of neutrality, Switzerland had allowed trains carrying Jews and other concentration camp‐bound victims to cross its territory. The film received considerable attention in British and US newspapers (see http://www.olgiati.com). However, research by the Independent Commission of Experts (ICE) later showed that these allegations were false. The film nevertheless disturbed many Swiss viewers.

4. Among the non‐Swiss members were Sibyl Milton, Harold James, Saul Friedländer, and Wladislaw Bartoszewski. For the mandate and for further information on the ICE, see www.uek.ch/en.

5. The ICE is viewed critically among academic historians. Since the private archives are closed to regular historians, some of the ICE findings cannot be verified. The ICE’s main research questions did not arise from academic discourse but from political necessities. Consequently, history as an academic discipline has come to be seen in political terms (e.g. as ‘leftist’ from a right‐wing perspective). This can jeopardize its autonomy. See Jost (2007: 166–170) and Zala (2003: 318–321).

6. In German: ‘Eigentlich wären sie so zu behandeln, wie dumme Lausbuben zu behandeln sind: mit einer gehörigen Tracht Prügel!’ Schlüer, Ulrich: Frontkommentar, Schweizerzeit, 2. December 1999, see http://www.schweizerzeit.ch/2699/spalte2699.htm, accessed February 12, 2010.

7. Federal president Kaspar Villiger (Liberal Democratic Party) apologized on 7 May 1995 in front of the two chambers of Switzerland’s parliament; Foreign Minister Flavio Cotti (Christian Democratic Party) apologized on 13 March 1997 in New York; in the same year, federal president Arnold Koller (Christian Democratic Party) expressed the necessity for the present generation ‘to bow in awe in front of the unspeakable pain’ that Switzerland’s refugee policy inflicted on the victims. Federal President Ruth Dreyfuss (Social Democratic Party) used similar wording in 1999 (Zihlmann 2008: 235).

8. The only noteworthy exception is Walther Hofer (Hofer and Reginbogin 2001), an internationally renowned historian of National Socialism. He was formerly professor at the University of Berne, but has been retired for many years.

9. For further information (in German) on the book, see http://www.hinschauenundnachfragen.ch, accessed February 12, 2010.

10. The Canton of Zurich applies three categories to textbooks: ‘obligatory’, ‘provisional‐obligatory’ (obligatory textbooks pending review), and ‘approved’. See: http://www.vsa.zh.ch/internet/bi/vsa/de/Schulbetrieb/Lehrmittel/Kategorien.html, accessed January 26, 2010.

11. In general, history teachers in Switzerland enjoy considerable freedom to choose from a wide range of textbooks and other teaching materials (Furrer 2004: 59–61, Hodel and Waldis 2007). Since the teaching goals and curricula are formulated in rather general terms, teachers are also relatively free to decide which topics they want to teach, and in what way and how thoroughly to teach them.

12. Auszug aus dem Protokoll des Regierungsrates des Kantons Zürich, Sitzung vom 11. Dezember 2003, 1830. Interpellation (Bergier‐Bericht, Einführung als Lehrmittel an Zürcher Schulen); available online at: http://www.kantonsrat.zh.ch/Geschaeft_Details.aspx?ID=f3b43347-654d-4db2-852e-7e7ca11c09dc, accessed January 26, 2010.

13. For a critical introduction to Bourdieu’s thinking in English, see Shusterman (1999); on the concept of rules, see Taylor (1999).

14. The slogan can be translated as ‘To scrutinize history instead of just memorizing it’. It has recently been used in many conferences, newspaper articles, and books; see, e.g. Sächsische Akademie für Lehrerfortbildung (2005).

15. In German: ‘Das vorliegende Buch hat auf diese Fragen keine vorgefertigten Antworten bereit. Es will vielmehr zum genauen Hinschauen auf die Schweiz und die Zeit des Nationalsozialismus beitragen und zum Nachfragen sowohl anregen als auch anleiten’.

16. In German: ‘ob Regierungen, Wirtschaftsunternehmen oder Privatpersonen an den Verbrechen beteiligt waren oder davon profitierten’ (Bonhage et al. 2006: 5; our emphasis).

17. Note that our explanation is not an intentional one. We do not mean to say the authors intended to write a ‘toned‐down’ book. We believe that this was an unintended outcome that needs to be explained by the influence political power struggles had on the authors.

18. In German: ‘Lange Zeit galt der Holocaust als die alleinige Tat der Deutschen, mit der die übrige Welt nichts zu tun hatte. Seit den 1980er Jahren wird jedoch in vielen Staaten vermehrt darüber diskutiert, weshalb man damals nicht mehr unternommen hat, um diese Verbrechen zu verhindern. … Als europäisches Land und als Rechtsstaat steht auch die Schweiz vor der Aufgabe, ihre Geschichte vor diesem Hintergrund zu befragen. Das Buch ist … ein Teil der universellen Auseinandersetzung mit dem Holocaust’ (Bonhage et al. 2006: 5).

19. ‘Es gibt so gut wie keine empirische Untersuchungen über den praktischen Gebrauch von Schulbüchern, also über die Rolle, die sie im unterrichtlichen Lernprozess wirklich spielen, und erst recht nicht darüber, welche Wirkung sie in der Entwicklung des Geschichtsbewusstseins von Kindern und Jugendlichen ausüben’ (Rüsen 2008: 162).

20. A further important concept in Bourdieu’s theory is social, economic, and symbolic ‘capital’. The amount of capital explains the individual’s position with relation to other individuals in a hierarchically organized field. The full formula is, thus, Practice = Field + (Habitus × Capital). Since we will not develop the interactions of teachers within the field of education in this paper, we do not need this concept here. For a further discussion of Bourdieu’s theory, see Bouveresse (1999).