Teaching and Learning > DOCUMENTS
Issues in Teaching the Holocaust
Bill Campbell
Ideally, teaching the Holocaust should involve an interdisciplinary approach. In full-time education in school, college or university the teaching would take place in the context of a wider curriculum so that, for example, teachers or lecturers can rely on the work of their colleagues in History to contextualize the moral and ethical issues arising. In part-time courses and in Open and Distance Learning, however, this collegiality in approach may not be possible and resultant misunderstandings and misrepresentations may occur. Teaching the Holocaust is in fact such a difficult task that it is still hard to avoid these problems even with full-time on site students.
The most serious misrepresentation occurs when the Holocaust is presented as an instance of religious persecution arising from the strangeness of Jewish religious practice which can then be seen as itself having partially originated the Holocaust. This overlooks the fact that many Jews were neither committed to nor practised their ancestral religion. But this was irrelevant in the Third Reich whose policies, based on racial discrimination, viewed all Jews as one race irrespective of their religious practice. This was most evident in instances where Jews had previously converted to Christianity but died as Jews in concentration camps nevertheless.
Misunderstanding of the Holocaust also occurs when the attention of students is not drawn to the previous history of anti-Judaism in the church across the centuries. Where students remain in ignorance of this religious victimisation, 'scapegoating', of Jews, the ease with which advanced European society accommodated to racial anti-Semitism and Hitler's 'Final Solution' is totally inexplicable.
On the other hand, a different kind of misunderstanding arises when students are not made aware that anti-Semitism, although nurtured by the church's incipient and pervasive anti-Judaism, was actually developed into a full-blown system by post-Christian Europeans using a pseudo-scientific theory of racial and linguistic origins. Whilst there can be no doubt that the church practised discrimination against Jews, it is inaccurate to regard it as responsible for the creation of racial anti-Semitism.
Where the church can clearly be shown to be guilty is in the silence of its leaders when genocide was being practised. The Roman Catholic Church in particular can be criticised for the Concordat signed in 1933 between the Vatican and the Nazi regime. Other churches can also be criticised for their biased theological statements during and after the Holocaust in which even prominent opponents of the Nazis, such as Karl Barth, could still view the Holocaust as divine judgement on the Jews.
Having noted this, it should also be made clear to students how the churches in the last forty years, have revised and publicly stated their theologies in relation to the Jewish people, particularly in such significant documents as 'Nostra Aetate'.
All of the issues noted above are complicated by the fact that in distance learning courses, students may be studying with little opportunity for discussion with similar students. Religious students, for example, may find it hard to accept the fact the churches apparent complicity in genocide. Many students may find detailed study of mass murder a stressful and threatening experience. Provision needs to be made so that their special needs in this area of study are fully recognized and taken care of.
Teaching about any topic normally implies that the teacher is able to comprehend at some depth the intricacies of his subject. This may be open to question in this particular instance. The Holocaust may be viewed as one in a series of racial genocides or as a unique inexplicable event, a 'Mysterium Tremendum' . A combined interdisciplinary approach can provide historical, religious, social and cultural reasons for its occurrence. Its nature, however, is part of the mystery of evil which has for so long been a topic of discussion among philosophers and theologians. To claim to be competent to give a full explanation of it is regarded by some as part of that same Western arrogance of mind which in European history allowed the Holocaust to take place in the first instance. Perhaps as teachers of such a topic it is more beneficial to our students to acknowledge a certain agnosticism at this point. This may enable them to raise their own issues and thus to learn to live with open questions.
This page was originally on the website of The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies. It was transfered here following the closure of the Subject Centre at the end of 2011.
