Holocaust Remembrance Day, Here's Why Holocaust Education Is Key - Lifestyle

How to teach the Holocaust?

From the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance

), which brings together governments and experts to strengthen, advance and promote Holocaust education, research and remembrance, and to meet the commitments of the 2000 Stockholm Declaration, comes a volume of guidance precise to communicate with the younger generations what happened, to ensure that the memory of the Holocaust is never forgotten.

, says Kathrin Meyer, IHRA Executive Secretary. Here, then, in synthesis are some observations that can help, on the Day of Remembrance, January 27, 2022, to deepen.

A clear definition of the term "Holocaust" (or "Shoah"): it describes systematic persecutions and exterminations of European Jews perpetrated by Nazi Germany and the collaborating states between 1933 and 1945. The peak of the persecution and extermination occurred During the Second World War. Some organizations, even some authoritative institutions, use the term "Holocaust" in a very broad sense, including all victims of Nazi persecution. Yet many scholars of that period use a more precise definition, which recognizes that European Jews were subject to systematic persecution and extermination such as to distinguish their lot from that of others, perhaps with the sole exception of the Sinti and Roma (who, from children to the elderly, were the object of elimination).

it is made up of two Greek words and its meaning suggests offering a sacrifice through fire.

The term may erroneously imply that the mass killings of Jews were a form of martyrdom, rather than the result of genocide.

For this reason, many prefer to use

.

Students should be given the opportunity to discuss terminology critically.

Terms like "Final Solution" or "Jewish Problem" were euphemisms created and used by the perpetrators at that time in history, to articulate their worldview, as opposed to a neutral language that impartially describes the events of the past.

Similarly, terms such as "ghetto" should be deconstructed to reveal the specific meanings used by the Nazis and those before and after Nazi use, as opposed to that found before and after the Nazi era. 

The Holocaust questions many of the certainties young people have about

Students may have defensive reactions, negative feelings, or do not want to delve into the history of the Nazi period or the Holocaust. Students build understanding of the world primarily through their own discoveries and communication with others and not just through the transmission of knowledge from educator to student. In the educational context, respect for Holocaust victims and students requires a sensitive approach and careful thinking about what material is suitable. Using crude images of the Holocaust to shock or impress is humiliating for the victims and can reinforce the stereotype of Jews as "victims". The Holocaust can be taught effectively without the use of photographs or videos, recommends the Ihra

Give students the opportunity to see those who have been persecuted by the Nazis as individuals. Teachers can find a way to take stock of the Holocaust and make the numbers real for students. However, many will find

. Continued references to the "six million" risk including entire communities and individuals in a faceless mass, and attempts to portray the enormity of the numbers could further depersonalize and dehumanize. Instead, when possible,

. Students should be able to provide examples of how each "statistic" was a real person, with a life before the Holocaust, living in the context of family, friends and community. Always emphasize the dignity and humanity of the victims. Avoid reinforcing stereotypes that suggest that all rescuers were heroic, good and kind, all spectators apathetic and all perpetrators sadistic. Above all, emphasize that the "victims" were not helpless, but reacted to difficult and stressful situations in ways conditioned by age, origin and past experiences.

Do not minimize the role of perpetrators as "inhuman monsters": the goal is not to consider their behavior normal, but

.

. The Holocaust was a human event with human causes. Although the perpetrators committed inhuman acts, many of them were not sadistic psychopaths; labeling them as "evil" is not a sufficient explanation of the Holocaust. Instead, educators should try to help students ask a different and more complex question: how was it humanly possible that ordinary individuals guilty of cruel acts and murders of other human beings, including women and children, were also fathers and husbands? loving, devoted wives or mothers? The

The fact that a historical event happened and that it was documented does not mean that it had to happen. The Holocaust happened because individuals, groups and nations chose to act or not to act. Focusing on these choices allows for a better understanding of history and human nature, as well as helping students to reflect critically on the subject. Complex events like the Holocaust often generate more questions than answers

- the Holocaust occurred because individuals did not know how to make the right choices from a moral point of view - and leads to a superficial reading of history.

Instead, Holocaust analysis raises questions about the nature of individual choices,

and the ways in which individuals deal with the past or not.

Explicit denial of

IHRA to teachers - not to unwittingly legitimize deniers through involvement in false debates.

Care must be taken not to provide a sounding board for ideologically motivated deniers.

Do not treat Holocaust denial as a legitimate historical argument, nor do you try to refute the positions of the deniers through normal historical debates and rational arguments.

contempt and hatred of Jews based on religious prejudice.

: “Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews which can be expressed as hatred of Jews.

Verbal and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed towards Jews or non-Jews and / or their properties, Jewish community institutions and buildings used for worship, ”includes eleven examples of some of the ways in which anti-Semitism appears today.

In the run-up to and during the Holocaust, the Nazis and others targeted Jews with various forms of anti-Semitism.

The effects of such anti-Semitism intensified from social prejudice, legal restrictions, mass incarceration, ghettoization, deportation and extermination.

: "A manifestation of individual expressions and acts as well as institutional policies and practices of marginalization, exclusion, physical violence, devaluation of Roma cultures and lifestyles, hate speech directed at Roma and other perceived, stigmatized or persecuted individuals and groups during the Nazi period, and still today, as 'Gypsies'. This leads to the treatment of Roma as an alleged foreign group and associates them with a series of pejorative stereotypes and distorted images that represent a specific form of racism ”.

C

places created in Nazi Germany to imprison political enemies and opponents.

Often located on the outskirts of large cities, the camps were a real indicator of the Nazi regime's propensity for violence and terror.

Concentration camp prisoners lived in inhumane conditions and were subjected to torture, starvation and, in some camps, medical experiments.

After the outbreak of the Second World War, the German authorities expanded the network of concentration camps.

At the end of the war, the network included labor camps for the exploitation of prisoners through forced labor, transit camps to bring together large numbers of victims before deportation, and camps of the pre-1939 type.

large c built for the systematic extermination of Jews and Roma. The mobile gas chambers of Kulmhof (Chelmno) and the camps of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, served exclusively for this purpose. Auschwitz, Majdanek and Maly Trostinets had structures similar to those of extermination camps and also had the role of concentration camps, labor camps or transit camps.

: Non-German regimes and individuals who collaborated with the Nazis, actively supported their policies, and committed actions by order of the Nazis or on their own initiative.

: the definition of Article 6 of the Nuremberg Charter was perfected and completed by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, adopted by the United Nations in 1998. Under Article 7, murder, extermination, enslavement , deportation or forced displacement of the population, detention in violation of fundamental rules of international law, torture, rape and other serious acts that intentionally cause great suffering or serious injury to the body or mental or physical health are considered crimes against humanity, when they are part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population and are aware of such an attack.

rights that affect all human beings, regardless of race, sex, nationality, ethnicity, language, religion or any other condition. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10, 1948, made human rights an important element of international law. Human rights are not, however, only the product of the twentieth century, but are visible in the legal and religious codes which emphasize the individuality and dignity of the individual and which date back to antiquity. Human rights have been an indispensable element of democratic ideas and institutions in Europe since the Declaration of the rights of man and citizen, drawn up in 1789 during the French Revolution.

: The legally non-binding operational definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion adopted by the IHRA refers to a number of examples of attempts to question the veracity of the Holocaust.

These include (but are not limited to only these): the gross minimization of the number of victims of the Holocaust;

attempts to accuse Jews of causing their own genocide;

statements that portray the Holocaust as a positive historical event.

: Orthodox and Reformed Judaism defines a Jew as an individual whose mother is either Jewish or an individual who converted to the Jewish religion;

liberal Judaism also includes in the definition who has a Jewish father.

The Nazis defined Jews as individuals with three or four Jewish grandparents, regardless of their religious belief or affiliation or their ancestors.

It should also be noted that the racial laws were applied at different times and in different ways in the various areas occupied and controlled by the Nazis and their collaborators.

To further complicate the definitions, there were also individuals living in Germany who, according to the Nuremberg Laws, did not fit either the definition of German or that of a Jew, i.e. those who had one or two grandparents born into the Jewish religious community.

These "mixed race" individuals were termed Mischlinge.

They enjoyed the same rights as those of the German "race", but these rights were continually reduced through subsequent legislation.

mobile massacre units of the Security Police and the SS Security Service.

After the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, these units - aided by police units and local collaborators - began systematically killing Jews with shootings or mobile gas chambers.

Article 2 of the Convention for the Prevention and Suppression of the Crime of Genocide (1948) defines genocide as "each of the following acts, committed with the intention of destroying, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic group , racial or religious, as such:

(a) killing of group members;

(b) serious injury to the physical or mental integrity of group members;

(c) deliberately subjecting the group to living conditions intended to cause

its physical destruction, in whole or in part;

(d) measures aimed at preventing intra-group births;

(e) forced transfer of children from one group to another. "

The United Nations General Assembly adopted the convention on December 9, 1948. It entered into force on January 12, 1951, thus making the definition of genocide legally applicable.

For various reasons, scholars have suggested different definitions.

neighborhood where Jews were relegated, separated from the rest of society, during the Second World War. Most of the ghettos were located in central and eastern Europe, but some were created in the territory directly annexed to the Third Reich between 1939 and 1941.

judicial and non-judicial measures put in place to remedy legacies of repression, human rights violations and mass atrocities in times of political transition, by dictatorial regimes or in the context of civil conflicts against democracy, the state of law and peaceful relations. In addition to criminal investigations and prosecutions of perpetrators, transitional justice includes the documentation of offenses, redress and provisions to ensure that such offenses do not repeat themselves.

individuals who participated in the liberation and rescue of those who were imprisoned or forced into hiding by the Nazis and their collaborators.

The term applies in particular to those soldiers, doctors, and military-affiliated religious authorities who entered the liberated concentration camps in 1944–45.

: German and Austrian members of the German National Socialist Workers' Party or active supporters of the Hitler regime.

the legally non-binding operational definition of Holocaust Denial and Holocaust Distortion adopted by the IHRA states: “Denialism is the propaganda claim that denies the historical reality and scope of the extermination of Jews, known as the Holocaust or Shoah, perpetrated by the Nazis and by their accomplices during the Second World War. Denial refers specifically to any attempt to argue that the Holocaust / Shoah did not take place. Denial may include denying or publicly questioning the use of major destruction mechanisms (such as gas chambers, mass shooting, starvation and torture) or the intentionality of genocide of the Jewish people. "

: the systematic state-sponsored persecution and extermination of Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1939 and 1945.

Individuals who actively opposed Nazi policies and programs in various ways.

P

Individuals who planned, organized, promoted and / or carried out acts of persecution and extermination.

: prejudice by individuals and / or institutions, discrimination or antagonism directed against those belonging to a different race, based on the belief that one's race is superior.

activities aimed at preventing or inhibiting Nazi criminal policies and programs. Since the Nazis wanted to exterminate all European Jews, since at least the beginning of 1942 the aid and relief given to the Jews can be considered as forms of resistance. Reference to specific local conditions is essential for understanding this term.

Roma and Sinti communities settled in the countries of modern Europe centuries ago. The term "Sinti" designates the members of an ethnic minority that settled in Germany and neighboring countries at the beginning of the 15th century. The term "Roma" refers to the ethnic minority that has lived in Eastern and South Eastern Europe since the Middle Ages. From the beginning of the 18th century, the Roma emigrated to Western Europe and settled there. Outside the German-speaking countries, the term "Roma" is also used as a collective term for the ethnic minority as a whole. Like the Jews, Sinti and Roma were declared "racially foreign" and therefore excluded from the "community of the (German) people". The Nazis persecuted as "gypsies" those who had at least one great-grandfather identified as such.This persecution escalated to the genocide against Roma living in Nazi-dominated countries.

Hebrew term which means "catastrophe" or destruction.

The word, used in Israeli culture to refer to the Holocaust, avoids the implication that the victims were "sacrificed" or "martyred".

It is also commonly used in France and other parts of Europe and became very popular after the 1985 film Shoah directed by Claude Lanzmann.

individuals who helped Nazi victims in various ways with the intention of saving their lives.

Jewish rescuers, who provided help without personal motivation, are often referred to as "Righteous (Among the Nations)", a title conferred by Yad Vashem, Israeli Holocaust Museum and Memorial which is based on an analysis of testimonies and documents to support that the help was given for altruistic purposes and not for personal gain.

those who lived the events of the Holocaust, understood as the systematic persecution and state extermination of the Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators from 1933 to 1945. Together with the survivors of concentration camps, ghettos and executions by the Einsatzgruppen, this category includes Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria in the 1930s and those rescued in operations such as Kindertransport. It also includes children kept in hiding or given up for adoption to hide their identity. The terms second generation and third generation refer respectively to the children and grandchildren of the survivors.

States and individuals aware of the Nazi crimes, but who decided not to intervene despite having some freedom to act and in this way strengthened the determination of the perpetrators to commit their crimes.

Persons murdered by the Nazis or their collaborators or who have suffered serious losses as a result of their acts of persecution.