Overcoming silence : examples of good practice related to education about the Holocaust in Europe

The history of WWII and the Holocaust1 gives many examples of moral dilemmas, hostile attitudes and violence, norms and values that challenged the basic conditions of human existence and the development of civilisation. Nonetheless, vernacular memory does not represent many historical facts and in many European countries disparities grow between family and public memory. The central theme of this text is that there is a growing gap between historiography and education related to the Holocaust predominantly in Central Eastern Europe. The most recent historiographical research in Poland and elsewhere tackles the issue of individual collaboration. The topic of collaboration, challenging collective national identities, is not present in the majority of new textbooks. In those textbooks, written for example in Poland following the 2008 educational reforms, the real context of rescuing Jews in a climate of fear of one’s own neighbours is omitted. A general lack of bad memories should be challenged. The lack of sustained institutional effort to incorporate shameful facts concerning the murder of Jewish co-citizens into curricula and textbooks distorts national identities. Part of the text describes good practice in Sweden at the political, research and educational level and part will deal with feedback from experienced Polish teachers who implement meaningful educational programmes dealing with the Holocaus