TWO HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAYS
There are two main Holocaust remembrance days:
Yom HaShoah, the Jewish Holocaust remembrance day, was first commemorated in 1951. It is observed on the 27th of the Hebrew month of Nisan and falls on the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day was not established by the international community until 2005 and falls on January 27, on the anniversary of the Soviet liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
These two separate commemoration days are emblematic of two very different approaches to Holocaust education: one which centers the experience of the primary victims of the Holocaust -- Jews -- and another which instead highlights the supposed saviors of the Jews.
HAS HOLOCAUST EDUCATION FAILED?
Holocaust denial, revisionism, inversion, and distortion are widespread today.
Recent surveys show deeply disturbing trends among Gen-Z; for example, a 2020 comprehensive survey by the Claims Conference found that 36% of respondents believe “less than 2 million” Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. In New York state, nearly 20% of millennials and Gen-Z believe that Jews caused the Holocaust.
Likewise, in 2023, the Claims Conference found that 23% of Dutch millennials and Gen-Z believe the Holocaust is a “myth” or “exaggerated.”
According to the latest Anti-Defamation League Global 100 survey of worldwide antisemitism (published in January of 2025), only 48% of people worldwide “recognize the Holocaust’s historical accuracy.” Among the 18-34-year-old demographic, the findings are even worse: only 39% recognize the historical accuracy of the Holocaust.
In the United States, most states do not have mandatory Holocaust education, but even when they do, there exists no standardized curriculum, which means the mandatory education often falls short.
THE PROBLEM
In the first few decades after the Holocaust, there was little interest in the Holocaust. Immediately following liberation, the world responded with shock and horror to the grotesque imagery coming out of the Nazi death camps. But then they moved on quickly, preoccupied by the Cold War and other issues.
Meanwhile, many Jewish Holocaust survivors were afraid to center -- or even talk about -- their experiences. There was great stigma and shame associated with being a Holocaust survivor, including in Israel. Many Israelis resented Holocaust survivors, (incorrectly) believing that the only way they could have possibly survived the Nazi genocide would be if they had collaborated with the Nazis (for example, as Kapos). Others (also incorrectly) resented the Jews in Europe for “not fighting back”). In Israel, this attitude only started to change after the 1961 Adolf Eichmann trial, when survivors spoke publicly of their experiences for the first time when they took the stand.
Some survivors, like famous Nazi-Hunter Simon Wiesenthal, felt that Jews should de-emphasize the intentionally antisemitic nature of the Holocaust in order to get the non-Jewish world to care. In fact, you might’ve heard that 11 million people — 6 million Jews and 5 million others — perished in the Holocaust. This is a fake figure. Frustrated by the non-Jewish world’s lack of interest in the Holocaust, Wiesenthal created a figure to de-emphasize its anti-Jewish nature, knowing that the world would likely be more interested in the plight of others. Historians who knew him say that he chose the figure carefully: 5 million was a large number, but not a number large enough to obscure the 6 million Jewish victims.
NOW, HOLOCAUST EDUCATION OFTEN UNIVERSALIZES THE HOLOCAUST
The Holocaust was the industrialized slaughter of 6 million Jews and over one million Roma and Sinti by the Nazis and their collaborators. While the Nazis targeted many groups, only Jews — and in some countries, Roma — were subject to extermination as per the policies of the Final Solution. The Holocaust destroyed 66 percent of Europe’s Jewish population over the span of less than six years.
Holocaust universalization is the tendency to treat the Holocaust as “public property,” stripping Jews of their unique experience. Instead, the Holocaust is treated as a tragedy that befell onto mankind, rather than a genocide that specifically and intentionally targeted Jews.
According to Holocaust historian Dr. Elana Heidenman, Holocaust universalization turns the Holocaust into “a joke, a mere moment in history that is no longer relevant unless through an exaggerated comparison, [and] terms of reference that have lost all depth and all substance.”
The universalization of the Holocaust erases Jews’ “right” to the memory and understanding of the Holocaust. The world largely treats the Holocaust as a “lesson to be learned,” rather than a genocide that decimated the Jewish community. How many people who invoke the Holocaust actually care about the plight of Holocaust survivors today? How many people who invoke the Holocaust are committed to unlearning their own antisemitic biases? Holocaust universalization almost inevitably always distorts basic facts about the Holocaust. It’s worth noting that Holocaust distortion is a form of Holocaust denial.
WHAT MAKES FOR EFFECTIVE HOLOCAUST EDUCATION?
(1) Effective Holocaust education must center the victims of the Holocaust. Beware of overemphasizing the experiences of saviors over the experiences of victims and survivors.
After all, arguably, for Jews, the most enduring memory of the Holocaust is that the world failed us: not just the Nazis and their collaborators, but international institutions like the Red Cross and the Vatican, our own neighbors and friends, the non-Jewish anti-Nazi resistance, and even the Allies, who ignored the urgency of our plight until it was too late.
(2) Effective Holocaust education must provide specificity and context; it’s important for students to understand the specific historic and social conditions that allowed the Holocaust to happen. Most notably, students cannot adequately comprehend the Holocaust if they do not learn about the 2000 years of systemic European antisemitism that preceded it.
(3) Beware of universalizing the Holocaust. While it’s true that he Holocaust can teach us many valuable universal lessons about issues such as intolerance, fascism, and bigotry, it shouldn’t be taught only as a moral lesson for humanity; instead, students should also learn the lesson of the dangers of unfettered antisemitism.
(4) Effective Holocaust education must prioritize primary sources over fictional accounts.
UNDERSTANDING THE CONDITIONS THAT MADE THE HOLOCAUST POSSIBLE
In order for Holocaust education to be effective, it must always strongly emphasize the antisemitism that led to the Holocaust.
You cannot divorce the Holocaust from the antisemitism that caused it. The Nazis persecuted Jews specifically based on antisemitic tropes and conspiracies that have been ingrained into the DNA of our societal institutions. The Holocaust wouldn’t have been possible without the 2000 years of antisemitism that preceded it.
The Holocaust was possible because the Nazis animated the previously-existing and sometimes dormant antisemitism of German society and the societies of the countries they conquered. There’s a reason many of the worst massacres during the Holocaust were perpetrated not by the Nazis, but by collaborators. The Jedwabne pogrom comes to mind. There’s a reason the institutions that were supposed to protect human beings — ahem, the Red Cross — chose to look away at best and collaborate at worst.
Again: without antisemitism, there wouldn’t have been a Holocaust. It’s imperative for Holocaust education to emphasize this point.
"NEVER AGAIN" MEANS UNDERSTANDING THAT THE END OF THE WAR DID NOT END ANTISEMITISM
Antisemitism did not end with World War II. In fact, after liberation, thousands of Jewish survivors were robbed and even murdered by their former neighbors in Eastern Europe when they attempted to reclaim their old homes. The first post-Holocaust pogrom was the Krakow pogrom, which took place in August of 1945. After that, pogroms spread to 11 other Polish cities.
The most infamous of these pogroms is the Kielce pogrom in 1946, when 42 Jewish refugees were murdered by a mob of Polish civilians following a blood libel. The refugees were horrifically beaten, shot, and even thrown out windows. A survivor of both the Holocaust and the Kielce pogrom later testified, “I would like to mention that as a former prisoner of concentration camps I have not gone through an experience like this. I have seen very little sadism and bestiality of this scale.”
Holocaust education that does not teach students to identify the persisting antisemitism in the world does an injustice to Holocaust victims, survivors, and the promise of “Never Again.” This includes recognizing how ancient antisemitic tropes, stereotypes, and conspiracies manifest today.
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