Lassman Writing Contest: ‘How Holocaust Education is Beneficial to Students’

It is crucial that Holocaust education is mandated in the schools of Washington. Teaching about the Holocaust is fundamental for a student’s better understanding of prejudice and its prevalence historically and currently in our society. The Holocaust is a significant event, the teaching of which represents and spreads awareness of prejudice and its repercussions. Fundamentally, mandating Holocaust education in Washington schools will teach students how prejudice progresses to genocide, will promote change to a more open-minded society, and will demonstrate how a weak democracy can cause genocide.  

Spreading awareness of the horrific and consequential events of the Holocaust will prevent history from repeating itself. Antisemitism was deeply rooted in the people of Germany’s beliefs even before the Holocaust started, for they were convinced that Jewish people conducted Jesus’s death. Germany also falsely accused Jewish people as the cause for their economic and political problems at the time, creating a split in society. All of these predisposed beliefs escalated into the widespread discrimination of Jewish people in Germany. The Holocaust was founded on this substantial hatred, resulting in the murder of approximately 6 million Jewish people, and with education on this horrific event still not mandated in schools, antisemitism continues to rise in the U.S. In 2020, a total of 2,024 anti-Semitic incidents across the U.S. occurred, a 62% increase from 751 incidents in 2013. Educating impressionable students about the Holocaust will raise awareness of anti-Semitic incidents, preventing them from inclining as they have been. But will Holocaust education only aid in the recognition of antisemitism in the U.S.? 

Teaching the Holocaust in schools has proven not only to be an effective way of combatting antisemitism, but prejudice in general by teaching students to recognize and avoid bias within themselves and others. According to a survey done by LLC and YouGov, students taught the Holocaust in schools have more pluralistic attitudes, have an open mind to people of a different race or sexual identity, and have a fifty percent less chance of being a bystander of bullying. Overall, as Jesse Tannetta points out in “Echoes & Reflections,” students demonstrate “higher critical thinking skills and greater sense of social responsibility and civic efficacy” after exposure to the Holocaust. In addition to informing students of antisemitism, Holocaust education addresses prejudice as a whole to several other minorities or cultures. The awareness of how negatively discrimination can affect minorities will assist in students’ acknowledgment and prevention of their own everyday biases. With this in mind, let us shift gears to how Holocaust education can affect the future of our democracy.  

Holocaust education demonstrates how easily the government can turn on its country’s democracy and emphasizes to students the causes of silence during unjust circumstances. The Nazis took many steps to disintegrate democracy in Germany. Initially, the issuing of the Reichstag Fire Decree in 1933 subjected anyone who opposed the Nazis to prison, suppressing people’s freedom of speech. Also in 1933, the Enabling Act was passed, which setoff the checks and balances system, to implement dictatorship in Germany, and essentially permitted Hitler to rule in any way he wanted. This infringed on citizens’ rights, and it was a major step in dismantling their say in the government. As Elie Wiesel, a survivor of the Holocaust, reminds us, “None of us are in a position to eliminate war, but it is our obligation to denounce it and expose all its hideousness.” The forced silence upon  Germany’s citizens is what ultimately led to the authorized persecution of 6 million Jewish people. By teaching the ways that the German government turned on its people, it will express to students, as the Anti-Defamation League argued in 2019, “how much the life of a democracy depends on its citizens and their willingness to stand up to anti-democratic forces” and the disastrous aftereffects of their silence.  

When the American Jewish Committee in 2020 asked the question, “(h)ow important do you think it is for schools to teach middle and high school students the history of the Holocaust?” 91%  of Jewish Americans agreed that Holocaust education was substantially important to teach in schools. Teaching the Holocaust is highly supported within the Jewish community, as it not only pertains to historical discrimination, but discrimination in our everyday modern society. Teaching students how racism and antisemitism caused widespread violence, and the implication of this violence, is a crucial aspect in young generations recognition of the weight of their own biases. Essentially, mandating Holocaust education in the schools of Washington will significantly affect student’s understanding of the progression from prejudice to genocide, will advocate and promote change to a more inclusive society, and will demonstrate the delicacy of democracy.