In India & China, Learning About the Holocaust is Abstract

February 15, 2015

2 min read

A recently released study by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) sheds some light on how the Holocaust is taught in high schools around the world, and some troubling trends emerge.

According to the report, there are countries that downplay the historical significance of the event, draw inappropriate comparisons to local history or neglect to even identify the Holocaust by name.

The study, entitled “International Status of Education About the Holocaust”, examined 272 government-approved curricula from 135 countries, alongside 89 textbooks from 26 countries published since 2000. It then mapped out portrayals of the Holocaust and generated recommendations for future curricular development based on the results.

In the abstract, the study noted, “The Holocaust is subject to shared patterns of representation, which include selectivity, personalization, appropriation, screening and omission. It is also subject to narrative idiosyncrasies. One of the main trends worldwide is domestication, a process whereby countries place emphasis on the local significance of the event or appropriate them in the interests of local populations.”

The study found that there were four main approaches to Holocaust education in the countries examined. The first was to require the Holocaust be explicitly taught, the second was to include Holocaust education as part of a broader topic (for example, human rights), the third was to include the Holocaust, directly or indirectly, as context in studying World War II, and the fourth was to ignore the Holocaust entirely.

According to Quartz India, which reported on the study, the Holocaust is not mentioned by name in Indian school books. Instead, most of the textbooks focus on how India was affected by World War II, or compare the experiences of the Jews in Nazi Germany to that of Indians under colonial rule. Other textbooks document the events of the Holocaust and World War II in great detail, but do not identify the Holocaust as its own tragedy.

Likewise, the news site pointed out, China teaches the Holocaust in comparison to its own history. Acknowledging the Holocaust as genocide, a Chinese textbook then likens it to the massacre of Chinese civilians at the hands of Japanese invaders in 1937.

Only oblique mentions are made of the treatment of Jews at the hands of the Nazis, including imprisonment in concentration camps, medical experimentation and gassing, though the arrival of Jewish refugees in Shanghai in 1938 receives attention.

In Nepal, Holocaust education is not a part of the curriculum.

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