Holocaust Education (international) - German Education Server

Relevant institutions and programmes

The Anne Frank Educational Center offers political education and counseling, located in the cities Frankfurt and Kassel. The Center empowers young people and adults to actively participate in an open and democratic society. Using innovative concepts and methods, young people and adults are encouraged to deal with and stand strong against anti-Semitism, racism and various forms of discrimination.

The Fritz Bauer Institute in Frankfurt, Germany, is dedicated to research, documentation and public activities in the field of informing about National socialism, the holocaust, persecution.

The Education Working Group brings together experts in Holocaust education from around the world to provide expertise, advice, and recommendations about teaching Holocaust education. As the Stockholm Declaration states, “We share a commitment to encourage the study of the Holocaust in all its dimensions. We will promote education about the Holocaust in our schools and universities, in our communities and [...]

Facing History and Ourselves is a nonprofit educational organization whose mission it is to engage students of diverse backgrounds in an examination of racism, prejudice, and antisemitism in order to promote the development of a more humane and informed citizenry. The organization provides school teachers with materials and tools for teaching history, civics, ethics and English. As the name implies, by studying [...]

The Memorial and Educational Site House of the Wannsee Conference presents a 360° panoramic introduction into the rooms of the villa and the permanent exhibition. A  focus is placed  on the so-called "Conference on the Final Solution of the Jewish Question", i.e. a conference held in January 1942. The  only surviving document gives evidence that a systematic extinction of Jews [...]

Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre, offers educational material and teaching concepts for Holocaust Studies and education, including a thematic and chronological narrative.

Teaching guidelines and resources

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) published updated recommendations on teaching and learning about the Holocaust in December 2019, focusing on why  to teach about the Holocaust, what to teach, how to teach. The document outlines aspects from an international perspective, and includes a list of key terms.

In 2009, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Human Rights (FRA) conducted the first EU-wide study of the role that European memorial sites, museums and exhibitions play with respect to educating young Europeans about the Holocaust and human rights. The findings of the study were presented at a Conference in Auschwitz on the 27 January bringing together Education Ministers from across Europe. The findings [...]

The website, which is run by the Wiener Library, a charity based in London, targets 13- to 18-year old students. It is structured into nine thematic areas and subsections focusing on Europe before National Socialism, the persecution and murder of Jewish people across Europe, key concepts (anti-semitism, genocide). A timeline and survivor reports are accessible as well as images.

In its ”How to Teach“ series, the Guardian Education offers resources to secondary school teachers who would like to commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the infamous Nazi concentration camp, on January 27. Resources relate to background history, the second world war and Jewish life in Germany.

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) supports teachers with a comprehensive selection of audiovisual material and related resources in teaching primary and secondary students about National Socialism, e.g. Kindertransporte, internation camps, Wannsee Conference, the Holocaust .

#everynamecounts is an initiative by the Arolsen Archives which aims to establish a digital memorial to the people persecuted by the Nazis. Future generations should be able to remember the names and identities of these victims. To do this, the names and data in scanned historical documents must be digitally transcribed. This is a huge task, because there are around 30 million documents in the archive with [...]

The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust  is a UK organisation, run as a charity, which initiates activities on the occasion of commemorating the Holocaust on and around January 27 each year. The website offers resources for teachers and educators such as films, crafting ideas. 

The Standing Conference of Ministers of Cultural Affairs in the Federal Republic of Germany published these recommendations in 2014  on the occasion of several anniversaries.  A culture of remembrance and commemoration is part of education for democracy in all 16 federal states in Germany, and the recommendations outline the framework for cooperation of schools and non-school institutions, [...]

document from: Ständige Konferenz der Kultusminister der Länder in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (KMK)

In 2013, Yad Vashem and the Standing Conference of Ministers of Culture in Germany signed this declaration of intent to state their desire to collaborate in fostering Holocaust education across school curricula and other institutions (universities, teacher training, museums, memorial sites).

document from: Ständige Konferenz der Kultusminister der Länder in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (KMK)

How do schools worldwide treat the Holocaust as a subject? In which countries does the Holocaust form part of classroom teaching? Are representations of the Holocaust always accurate, balanced and unprejudiced in curricula and textbooks? This study, carried out by UNESCO and the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research, compares for the first time representations of the Holocaust in school [...]

A study of textbooks used in Holocaust education in social science subjects, across countries.

Publications, textbook analysis

UNESCO's publication brings to light the reasons why it is so vital that we keep teaching the history of the Holocaust in today's world, regardless of where we live. Released on the 27 January 2014 - the 69th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the publication gathers the analyses of major historians and educators from all over the world, and explores a variety of approaches to Holocaust [...]

Although the German government has created programs to aid in the transition of refugees, little attention has been paid to how school curriculum, particularly education on the Holocaust, is presented to students for whom the event lacks personal, religious, or social relevance or who may have been taught that it is a fabrication. This study focuses on how classroom material presents the rise of National [...]

Commissioned by the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA), this country report is part of a documentation covering 31 countries. It summarises activities concerning remembbrance, research and education on the Holocaust. Based on a questionnaire, the survey covers the following aspects: general activities, Holocaust research, Holocaust education, remembrance and memorials, denial of the Holocaust [...]

This article examines the relationship between school and cultural knowledge of Second World War in contemporary Poland. Drawing on analysis of 126 student responses to well-known photographs (photo elicitation), the author addresses what it means for schoolchildren to learn about an aspect of a contested past, the Holocaust, within the frame of Second World War in Poland. This research illuminates shared [...]