30 Jan 2021

Fostering true understanding of the Holocaust means changing how we teach about it

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Discussing Holocaust only through lessons we can learn from it turns it into a poorly understood metaphor

Jody Spiegel, Naomi Azrieli · for CBC News Opinion ·

 

Visitors stand beneath the gate of the Auschwitz 1 death camp in southern Poland, where 1.1 million died between May 1940 and Jan. 27, 1945, when Soviet troops entered the camp and liberated it from the Nazis. It is now a Unesco World Heritage site, maintained as a memorial to the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany. ( Janek Skarzynski/AFP/Getty Images)

This column is an opinion by Jody Spiegel and Naomi Azrieli. Spiegel is director of the Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program at the Azrieli Foundation, incoming chair of the Education Working Group to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), and a member of the IHRA Canadian delegation. Azrieli is the Chair and CEO of the Azrieli Foundation. For more information about CBC’s Opinion section, please see the FAQ.

In the first month of 2021, there have been references to the Holocaust from the most unlikely places.

They’ve been on t-shirts worn by right-wing extremists while storming the U.S. Capitol. They’ve been uttered by Arnold Schwarzenegger, who used Kristallnacht as an allegory of the insurrection, and by media commentator Glenn Beck, who likened social media de-platforming to the hardships faced by the Jews of Europe being moved into Nazi ghettos.

Read the full article at https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/opinion-holocaust-education-1.5879750?__vfz=medium%3Dsharebar