“Breaking Down Barriers” or “Building Strong Christians”: Two Treatments of Holocaust History

Abstract

This essay compares two curricular treatments of the Holocaust, one that resulted from a full-semester, 10^th grade elective course taught at a public high school, the second constructed through a quarter-long, 8^th grade unit taught at a charismatic, evangelical, fundamentalist Christian private school. In brief, the study examines the Holocaust's radically different uses, the narrowing of Holocaust memory and its confinement to Christological terms at the Christian school vs. its “democratic” widening to serve anti-racist aims at the public school. Despite differences between the contents and pedagogies at the two schools, however, profound similarities emerged in their Holocaust treatments.