Why Holocaust Education and Prevention is Failing

Considering the rise in global antisemitism and the decline in Holocaust knowledge, we must consider whether Holocaust education and prevention is failing. In the light of the Claims Conference survey, statistics regarding antisemitic incidents and what we just feel in our kishkas, it seems evident. Any denial would not be coming from a place of rational consideration but, instead, a place of emotion. How much we wish this fear to be unfounded. That commitment to sentiment - fear, anger, sadness or misplaced trust – teaches us exactly how to change our approach.

Fear is the most prevalent and the most dangerous of the emotions that motivate our Holocaust education. While I will not argue that there are not way too uncomfortable signs that something of the sort could happen again, for the casual observer, it seems impossible. The Holocaust is a movie to them – sometimes quite literally - that exists in a faraway time and place. It is our fear that determines our Shoah teaching, painting the Nazis as horrific monsters, the incarnation of evil, bloodthirsty savages hiding behind every corner. The truth is none of those imaginings are true. While apt as a metaphor for those aware of the horrors, they paint a cartoonish picture for those attempting to imagine the what, whys and hows of the tragedy itself. The true terror of the Holocaust is that the Nazis and their supporters were ordinary human beings who created a vicious tragedy. Monsters and devils are a thing of nightmares, not the ordinary citizen’s reality.

Indicators of antisemitism and Holocaust comparisons are stretched thin and overly broad. The Jewish community seems to treat a swastika drawn in crayon on the last stall in a third-floor bathroom of a community college with the same concern as an ice cream brand’s half-formed political statement with the same concern as the murder of a Jew in Paris and her killer’s acquittal. If everything is antisemitism than nothing is and if (at least in the minds of the very same people we are attempting to educate) we fail to make such a distinction, we become Chicken Little screaming that the sky is falling or, worse, manipulators of manufactured fear.

When confidence in the motives of the Jewish people is shaken, the only thing that is real to the non-Jewish (and, more frequently, even the Jewish viewer) is their interaction with our people. Antisemitism, we yell, is happening again. It is happening in Europe, the Middle East even in the Heartland of America and it is happening right now! We are pointing a finger at this generation and calling them potential monsters, potential devils of the worst kind. Just as insulting and scary as it is for someone to stare in our direction and say we control the world’s wealth or other racist tropes, so too is it to accuse others of a future genocide. Some neo-Nazis might rejoice in our fear and gladly assume the mantle of the next Hitler but a college student who scribbled a hate symbol for shock value, a teenager enjoying a bowl of Chunky Monkey or a young person in Paris, France, with no connection to the murderer or the feckless jurisprudence system that freed him, might feel differently. Shaming someone for something they have yet to do does not build allies and pushes away those who might have been.

If I tell you enough times that you are my enemy, well, I should not be surprised when you feel like you are my enemy.

It is not just the next generation. Antisemitic exhaustion touches older generations too. Artists 4 Israel considered painting a mural in Budapest, Hungary warning of the dangers of a potential new Shoah. The mural was beautiful, intelligent and conceptual. It was also rejected. In the meeting of the tenants of the building where it was to be painted, a number of the older residents spoke up aghast at the idea. “We had nothing to do with the Holocaust, why do you keep shoving it in our face?” “Stop. Enough. Leave us alone with this already.” “Just go away.” At first, we were furious and decided this must be yet another example of modern antisemitism but, then, we sat with one of the individuals who made a similar comment and found him to be a reasonable man, not filled with the hatred we expected. He explained that he cared for the Jewish people and would gladly stand up for a Jew who needed assistance. He felt guilt and repulsion for what those of his generation had done but did not want to be reminded of that every day he took his morning constitutional. Colloquially, it was not his crime so why should he be doing the time? Plus, he reasoned, the Holocaust could never happen again.

“The Jews are powerful now. They have earned wealth and found influence. More, the Jews have Israel, which, according to they themselves, has one of the strongest armies in the world.” I paraphrase…but not by much. Just as unrealistic is the beast of the Nazi to the mind of the average citizen, so too is the mythologized weak, cowering, helpless Jew. To believe the savagery of the predators, one must believe the absolute vulnerability of the victims.

Jews are not weak. The idea of our people as successful, financially and otherwise, educated, politically involved, and part of the greater fabric of the world is in direct opposition to the idea that a genocide could be attempted, much less work, against us. Funny enough, we are the ones sharing these very stereotypes of purported strength even while lolling in the fear of our weakness. What percentage of the global population are we and how many Nobel Prizes have we won? We all know the answers because we readily and pridefully share the information about our great accomplishments. We deserve to be proud but we must consider how that, in direct relationship to our larger than life concerns, influences perception of the Jewish community.

Watching pro-Israel advocacy, we notice two tracks: 1. Israel is beset on all sides by enemies, exists under constant rocket fire, and is fighting an existential battle and; 2. Israel has the greatest army on earth, potentially (wink, wink) nuclear weapons and an unbreakable bond with the other most powerful army in the world, the United States of America. The modern Jew is the same. Strong yet weak. Hopeful yet afraid. The same yet different. Owner yet proletariat. Conservative yet liberal. Hawk yet dove. Victimizer yet victim. To us, this dichotomy makes perfect sense. Psychologists would call it integration. We are, indeed, all those things. But, imagine how this is perceived from without.

Another word for dichotomy is difference. Another is disagreement. Another is disunion. Another is separation. In other words, we are creating a distrust of ourselves. With each new example, this distrust grows to the point where outsiders become concerned with our motives and intentions. Why, the casual observer, would ask, would someone so strong and capable, so unified and potent, declare helplessness? What game is he playing? Are these stereotypes? Yes. But, stereotypes have truth within them and while they may not be accurate, that doesn’t make them any less true in the mind of the potential new antisemite.

Once fear is sedated, comes anger. We’ve already created the divide and the distrust. Now comes the threats and the intimidation. Constantly we say how many have stood against us and fallen. We list the Cananites, the Byzantines, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Persians, even the Nazis themselves and how they have all been wiped from the map. All, except for us. This is the historical equivalent of rolling up our collective shirt sleeves and cracking our knuckles. We have pushed people away, made it quite clear that we don’t trust them and offered a dischordant view of ourselves leading them not to trust us and, now, after all that, we are flexing our muscle. We are calling non-Jews a potential combatant and, now, our potential next victim. Some of us even call on Gd’s power as we intimate a holy war against our yet to be enemies.

Even in this aggressive posture, we do so sadly and with a misplaced trust in others. Furthering the enigmatic nature of our powerful/powerless divide, our interactions with non-Jewish individuals sew further distrust. During Guardians of the Wall, the Jewish community made known its disappointment and collective sadness with the marginalized peoples we have stood behind in their time of need and who failed to speak for us. If, on one hand, we act as if everyone not-Jewish could be the next Himmler, we should not then expect them to stand up for us when antisemitism legitimately rears its ugly head.

Generational trauma could explain a large part of this confusion. More than any other peoples, we have learned of the Holocaust in all its terror, suffering and horror. We have seen the tattoos, visited the Museums, read of the dehumanizing experiments, dreamt the nightmares. For us, the monsters under the bed are real. Without the parents – be they literal caregivers or monolithic organizations pointing a way forward - who can come in, turn on the light, check the closet and dispel our fears, they only increase and until we suffer so much so that project that suffering onto others.

There are many new organizations who are using unique, promising approaches and older nonprofits creating new and exciting programs full of potential that can move the needle in regards to Holocaust education and prevention. In particular, Artists 4 Israel has created the Righteous Persons Global Mural Project that celebrates and models heroism, battling antisemitism from a place of pride, not accusation and which exemplifies what can be done to truly prevent the next tragedy. Yet, with all these new opportunities and with all due respect to those from the massive, legacy organizations all the way down to the most local Hebrew school teacher who have somehow group thought the same methodology described in this article for 50+ years, it is time to adapt. Unfortunately, we know what happens when we do not.