Holocaust scholar: 'Jew' has become curse word among German youth
By Ofer Aderet, Haaretz Correspondent
German schools are failing in educating students about the
Holocaust,
a new study by a political education center has found, as German youth,
who
one historian said use the word "Jew" as a common curse in daily
discourse,
are increasingly distant from the suffering of the victims of Nazism.
According to a study commissioned by the Federal Agency for Civic
Education, a political education center known by its German acronym BPB,
history courses no longer manage to teach Germany's younger generation of
the horrors of the Nazis.
In the re****t, which appeared in the German educational magazine
Focus-Shula, teachers are quoted as saying that they are having trouble
impressing upon school children the horrors of the Holocaust, and have
stated that their tools for teaching about the Shoah are not effective.
"The entire time we stood before the crematoriums of Auschwitz, the
students took more interest in the types of pipes used to pump in the
lethal
Zyklon B gas, and not the fate of the Nazis victims," a teacher was quoted
as saying.
In their words, this generation's students are less sensitive to the
horrors of the Holocaust than any before.
The research also examines the role that immigrants have played in
the
changing attitudes towards the Shoah. Experts are quoted in the study as
saying that there is a marked rise in the number of Muslims in Germany,
many
of whom see the teaching of the Holocaust as a veiled endorsement of the
policies of the state of Israel.
"Out of fear of the students' reactions, many of the teachers avoid
teaching this chapter of history in order to not be viewed by some
students
as sup****ters of Israel."
"The word 'Jew' has turned into one of the most common curse words
among students in both east and west Germany," said Gottfried Cosler, a
Frankfurt-based Holocaust scholar.
Robert Sigel, a historian who contributed to the study, is of the
opinion that students are taking a great interest in the Holocaust, but
that
the methods in which the subject is taught today are in need of
improvement.
"Often time the teachers, especially the more devoted ones, get
carried away, and demand way too much of themselves," Sigel told Focus
magazine. "They want to teach the facts and at the same time get across a
moral message, call for education and tolerance, deal with the extreme
right
and prevent anti-Semitism. They put all this material into the subject,
and
it's too much."
Susan Orban, a historian at Yad Vashem, says that the Holocaust
should
be taught using methods that have proved successful in the past.
"Today's kids live in different times than that of Anne Frank,"
Orban
said. In order to bridge the generational gap, she submits a different
approach, "for example, asking them to imagine that they have to abruptly
leave their homes and start a new life elsewhere." Such a method,
according
to Orban, would speak more directly to the children's hearts and minds
than
descriptions of the horrors of the concentration camp.
Sigel expressed similar sentiments, adding that the children of
immigrants have shown particular interest to the victims of Nazism given
that many of them suffered from racial persecution, religious intolerance,
and even genocide in their native lands.
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