The World Council for Torah Education

Educational Programs

Holocaust Curriculum Project

I. The Need

While a surface knowledge of the Holocaust has become widespread among Jewish youth, many students lack a deeper understanding of the background, the events and the implications of this significant chapter in Jewish history. An informal survey of Jewish day schools reveals that in many, the Holocaust is not systematically taught as part of the formal curriculum. Rather, it is touched upon in special programs on days of remembrance and, perhaps, as a small component of a course on Jewish History or Jewish Thought. There are a variety of reasons for this phenomenon:

1. The difficulty of the subject matter

2. The lack of materials suitable for instruction in the day schools

3. The lack of teacher training in this area

4. Curricular demands that preclude the offering of a course or a serious unit on the Holocaust

It is interesting to note that although Yad Vashem has an extensive program in the area of teacher in-service training, a majority of their work is with public school rather than Jewish day school teachers.

II. The Project

The World Council of Torah Education is in the process of developing a program that will effectively address the issue of Holocaust Education in day schools by relating to each of the above listed factors that currently hamper this effort:

1. The development of a program with age appropriate support materials organized on a modular basis in order that it be usable as a separate course or as separate components of other existing courses.

2. The administration of teacher in-service training to familiarize teachers with the program and its implementation.

This project will ultimately be developed in a variety of languages. The first stage will involve the development of an experimental program in English. This program will be ready for field testing and preliminary teacher training by May, 2000.

III. The Rationale

In his recent book, The Disciplined Mind (Simon and Schuster, 1999), Howard Gardner discusses the concept of teaching for understanding. With regard to the study of history in general, and the holocaust in particular, he states:

"Using these (primary and secondary) sources, the historian creates an account of what happened, in most cases going beyond the simple narrative to offer explanations of why events happened in the way that they did. Indeed, many would say that, like the scientist, the scholar enters into the discipline of history only when he or she goes beyond a mere recording of the data and becomes an interpreter of the events."

A survey of 134 text materials on the holocaust conducted at Yad Vashem

indicated that most materials either present the facts without a vehicle for interpretation, present the narrative with a prescribed interpretation, or present a mythological version of the holocaust. In contrast, the program being developed by the World Council utilizes the "hermeneutic" (midrashic) approach to teaching which, consistent with Gardner's research, brings the student into a dialogue with the sources so that he/she may interpret them and find relevance for his/her own life. A goal in this approach is to encourage students to develop an understanding that is personal, complex, well thought out, relevant, and authentic.

IV. The Program Outline

The program will consist of the following six independent modules. The modules will be interdisciplinary in nature, and will be open-ended in order to allow for maximum flexibility for adaptation:

1. Jews Before the Second World War - Students will gain insights into the conditions and issues that were paramount in the Jewish world in the decades preceding the holocaust. What were the issues, problems and dilemmas that they faced ? How similar or different are they from issues facing Jewish communities today?

2. Could the Holocaust Have Been Predicted ? - By examining the events leading up to the final solution, students will try to analyze whether the Nazis worked from a master plan or whether the outcome was the result of developing events. This discussion has implications regarding the reactions of the Jewish communities in Europe and elsewhere, as well as the reactions of the nations of the world

3. Uniqueness of the Holocaust - Students will consider whether the holocaust was a unique event in human history and the implications of this issue for our percetion of ourselves and our place in the world.

4. One Day in the Holocaust - Students will confront three events that took place on April 19, 1943: the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the opening of the Bermuda Conference, and the derailment of a transport train as an act of resistance by the Belgian Underground. The issues of resistance, compliance and complicity will be examined.

5. The Last Months of the Holocaust, The First Months of Liberation - Students will examine the choices, both personal and collective, open to survivors of the Holocaust as they confront an uncertain future. The implications for relations with Germans, attachment to Judaism and the Jewish community, and implications for the future of Judaism will be discussed.

6. Commemoration, Remembrance - By examining various holocaust museums, students will see how different people identify different themes as being at the core of the holocaust. The students will confront the meaning of the holocaust on a personal level.