KEES RIBBENS
Kees Ribbens PhD works as a senior researcher at the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Amsterdam, and as Endowed Professor of Popular Historical Culture and War at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Public history, in the broadest sense of the term, is among his key interests. He is particularly interested in the history, memory and representations of the Second World War and the Holocaust, and the role these phenomena play in political and educational contexts. He has published widely, for example, ‘Exhibiting the War. The Future of World War II Museums in the Netherlands’ (with Esther Captain, 2011), ‘Picturing Anti-Semitism in the Nazi-Occupied Netherlands: Anti-Jewish Stereotyping in a Racist Second World War Comic Strip’ (Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, 2018) and ‘Identity and School History: The Perspective of Young People from the Netherlands and England’ (with Maria Grever and Terry Haydn (British Journal of Educational Studies, 2010).
This month, Holocaust Memorial Day will commemorate the 74th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. While the generation of Holocaust survivors is passing away, the need for Holocaust education is increasing. In order to inform and engage new generations, to make them aware of Europe’s genocidal experiences in the early 1940s, a widespread consensus has developed that a variety of new media should be used to keep the memory of the large-scale persecution of Jews alive – as well as the lessons that can be drawn from this. For this purpose, a new informative website – https://aboutholocaust.org – was launched in November 2018, a joint project of UNESCO and the World Jewish Congress. The aim of this interactive online tool is to provide young people with essential information about the Holocaust and its legacy, ranging from historical facts to video testimonies of survivors and including news updates about Holocaust educational programmes and activities.
During the presentation of the website, UNESCO’S Director-General Audrey Azoulay emphasized the organization’s mission to preserve universal values and fundamental human rights in a changing world “disrupted by the technological revolution […] where access to information and building knowledge are facing new challenges.” Therefore the fight against amnesia and misinformation should also be online, countering ignorance, historical denial, and hate speech, while building “a lively and accessible collective memory”. WJC President Ronald S. Lauder stated more specifically that this critical education project was intended “to ensure that the six million Jews killed just for being Jewish will be remembered by all” as a constant reminder of what can happen when hatred prevails, referring explicitly to the frightening rise in antisemitism and xenophobia in recent years.
It is not the first time that the UN Organization for Education and Culture has been active in this field. In 2017, UNESCO published a policy guide on Education about the Holocaust and Preventing Genocide , preceded by a report in 2015 on The international status of education about the Holocaust. A global mapping of textbooks and curricula published in collaboration with the Georg Eckert Institute, specialising in school textbook research. These activities, of an organization with a worldwide impact, illustrate how much the Holocaust has become a collective memory that is by no means limited to the part of the world where the National Socialists drastically implemented their anti-Semitic ideology during the Second World War. The mere existence of a Centro Ana Frank in Argentina, a Sugihara Museum in Japan and a Holocaust Centre in New Zealand – to name just a few – testify to this.
Yet, whether or not the history of the Holocaust can actually be regarded as a truly global memory remains the question. References to the Nazi persecution of the Jews can be found in various cultures across most continents, but the degree of familiarity with this genocidal history still varies. The extent in which Holocaust memories are valued also differs. The Iranian Holocaust cartoon contests or Western European school class discussions with youngsters of North African descent simplistically mixing up the Holocaust, Zionism and contemporary Palestinian-Israeli issues illustrate this as clearly as a recent Egyptian Twitter comment after the launch of the joint website: “You should focus on the current holocaust in the occupied Palestine not on old incident.”
Aware of politically sensitive interpretations, the new website constructively tries to focus on educational elements, in particular on the way in which textbooks introduce the topic in history education. Irina Bokova, UNESCO’s previous Director-General, emphasised the importance of solid education about the Holocaust and other forms of mass violence to promote peace and mutual understanding in her introduction to the policy guide. To this end, policymakers were offered solutions for a good embedding in curricula of “education about the Holocaust, and possibly broader education about genocide and mass atrocities”. It is striking, but not surprising, that in the political and governmental UNESCO context, Holocaust education is given an undeniable instrumental character: “An understanding of history” and “the complexity of unique historical factors”, while critically studying the Holocaust, should above all lead to “free and just societies” in the contemporary world.
UNESCO’s emphasis on education in a formal setting is not limited to history classes but also includes social sciences, citizenship education, literature and religious instruction. The curriculum, school textbooks and classroom practices play an important role in this. By highlighting the option of using non-formal organisations active in the field of Holocaust education to accompany visits to historical sites, UNESCO’s view extends beyond the classroom. In addition, commemorative days could offer possibilities “to engage learners outside the classroom”. However, “no commemorative event should be considered as a substitute for an education programme.”
What is especially striking is the blind eye for various forms of informal education, a concept hardly mentioned. The fact that “informal factors outside the classroom can strongly influence how people learn about the Holocaust” is considered a challenge, though apparently a dangerous one. The influence of films, museums, family stories and national narratives, it is stated, can fill in gaps that education has left behind. But the policy guide warns that “biases, over-simplified views, political claims, incorrect information or misconceptions […] can have a major impact on how people understand and interpret this complex history”.
The newly launched website, up to a certain extent, seems to take a different approach, granting film a more constructive role. One of the articles now prominently featuring on the educational website focuses on Operation Finale, Chris Weitz’ recently released historical drama about the 1960 capture of Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires. Aboutholocaust.org describes this thriller as “a strong retelling of the historical events” that accurately reflects the atmosphere of those days; “an honest depiction” of the operation to uncover Eichmann. It emphasises how the film addresses the moral issues of this operation while showing “how a normal person’s individual decisions can thrust them towards various degrees of evil.”. Yet, the website does not answer the question regarding what this feature film successfully brings across that a documentary film, or any other representation more strictly limited to factual sources, might not be able to do in an equally convincing and appealing way.
In his film review for The New Yorker, Richard Brody hints at these specific qualities: “Operation Finale gets behind the façade of his pose of passivity at trial and reveals the all-too-human energies of ordinary monstrosity that, then as now, motivate and rationalize official acts of cruelty.” Despite certain risks of simplification and factual adjustments, popular representations of the Holocaust and its legacy can sometimes make viewers, readers and visitors aware of what certain experiences were like and what they meant more strongly than a purely factual approach might achieve.
Popular culture should be dealt with carefully in the framework of Holocaust education, but we need to get a better understanding of the ways in which popular representations of the past can – and cannot – contribute to further interest and knowledge about the Holocaust (and other genocides). Undoubtedly, various kinds of criticism can be expressed concerning, for instance, the 1978 US television series Holocaust, but its contribution to the international awareness of this genocide can hardly be overestimated. Something similar applies to feature films like Schindler’s List or some more recent productions. Theatre productions, movies and graphic novels about Anne Frank, reaching wide transnational audiences, cannot simply be put away as dangerous or meaningless. The fact that Holocaust memory has become a more or less global phenomenon is partially founded on very divergent popular representations and interpretations on which professionals in the field of history, heritage and education only have a rather limited influence. It should be welcomed that major institutions working on Holocaust education integrate popular representations into their views and practices. The potentials and shortcomings of such creative products, as well as their impact and uses, are indeed a challenge and require a critical approach. But making this an integrated element of contemporary Holocaust education will strengthen many activities in a thought-provoking way and can also help young audiences to reflect on fact and fiction, on truth and manipulation.
The British and Irish Association for Holocaust Studies 