Hannah Moser, grew up in the very conservative town of Dresden, in eastern Germany. She went to an upper class Christian high school in the early 2010s where she “did not know any Jew[s] in [her] town.”27 In fact, she can remember meeting a Jewish man only once in her childhood. She describes herself as a liberal, explaining that her dad is an architect and her mom is an educator. Her grandparents, however, were part of the Nazi Army in Poland. She says her family never really spoke of it.28
The Holocaust was never a topic among Hannah’s friends, either. Instead, they only talked about “teenager stuff.” That said, she explained that the Holocaust was covered extensively in her school. They read Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl, visited concentration camps, and learned about the history of Nazi Germany. There was a class in every grade that somehow connected to the Holocaust. According to Moser, the education was sufficient, although the reception from the students was variable. In other words, “we had the discourse around the topic.” “The problem was not the school,” she says, but that most “people were not reached by the school education.” Students in Moser’s classes generally failed to connect with the curriculum, no matter how extensive. As a result, she observes that “not everyone fully understood the impact the [Holocaust] had on society.” Her fellow students believed that the Holocaust was “something from the past,” especially as their parents taught them the Holocaust never happened. She recalls a time when her class was assigned a research paper on the Holocaust and a majority of her classmates refused to write the paper, believing that the Holocaust was a conspiracy theory.29
Moser’s recollections suggest that the issue in contemporary German Holocaust education is the countereducation some students are receiving at home. The rising tide of antisemitism throughout the country is reversing the course of any progress made over the past couple of decades. Journalist Emily Schultheis addressed the issue of Holocaust denial in a 2019 article for The Atlantic. Schultheis explains how the rise of the far right has contributed to a mounting attitude of dissent among Germans. She writes about an incident at the former concentration camp Sachsenhausen, in which a group of people representing the far-right populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD) questioned the tour guide about the veracity of the claims that mass murder was committed on the site. As Schultheis explains, “although Sachsenhausen and other such sites seek to stay above the fray politically, in recent years they have been confronted with politics.” As such, “the rise of right-wing populist parties across Europe, coupled with growing anti-Semitism, puts places such as Sachsenhausen in a new and difficult position.” In a disturbing irony, she points out that a group of students on a tour at Sachsenhausen at the same time expressed the importance of the experience they were having. Finally, Schultheis also mentions another difficulty of creating impactful experiences for students, namely that “precious few survivors remain” to tell their own stories.30
Picking up on these themes, Moser reflects that the ongoing conversation about the Holocaust was both ubiquitous and inadequate. “Wherever you go people will ask you about the Holocaust,” she says, “everyone has family members that participated.” And, yet, at the same time, a sense of incredulousness pervaded these conversations: “no one wanted to believe it, but it is a part of our culture.”31 Moser says that within the relatively homogenous white, German culture of her youth, people never truly learned the importance of tolerance and acceptance, not just racial and cultural, but also sexual. To this end, an interview with German political scientist Lars Rensmann of the University of Munich explores how poorly many children are processing the required Holocaust education. First, Rensmann mentions that, since two-thirds of students stop school after 10th grade, there is much less time to dive deep into the history of Nazi Germany. Furthermore, he writes that a dangerous idea floats around in many communities that the Holocaust is, in fact, taught too much. Together, these two issues serve as primary obstacles in teaching young German children about the history of their country.32
Lastly, when discussing her ideas for how Holocaust education could be improved, Moser suggested more experiential opportunities in the curriculum. In fact, there has been a shift in pedagogical approaches in recent years. Bodo von Borries explains that “history textbooks have changed their methodology too… there are substantial additional chapters with selected primary sources (partly texts and partly photos). In these cases, the students are asked to interpret and to decide for themselves and thus to construct their own narrative”33 In other words, a more project-based approach encourages students to make connections to their own lives and also to understand the Holocaust in the context of other historical atrocities, thereby mitigating some of the national shame that might encourage resistance among some students. Moser agrees that “it would be good to focus more on the present” and proposed that students “meet actual Jewish people” or “go to places that show you why it matters to learn about [the Holocaust in the present.”34 She added that too many people simply think, “Oh, it’s from the past we don’t need to learn about.” Ultimately, though, the goal is to create a “more inclusive society where no one has to hide.” Moser’s experiences, the most recent of the interviewees, help to demonstrate the progression of the Holocaust education curriculum in Germany since the 1950s, but also highlights other factors that have hindered its ability to reach resistant audiences.35
For my full interview with Hannah Moser click here: https://youtu.be/Sr-z4A8oJRM