The Manitoba government has made Holocaust education mandatory in public schools. While I applaud this development, I think our community ought to recognize that there likely will be limits to the effect of this education.
First off, there will not be anyone who is directly in each individual classroom to see how this education is delivered. A high school teacher who teaches that a genocide was perpetrated against the Jews during the Holocaust may go on to tell the class that Israel has committed a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza in the current war against Palestinians in 1948. Provincial Holocaust education will not necessarily inoculate against anti-Israel views which a given teacher may hold.
Yes, we want students to know what occurred in the Holocaust, since many of them believe the Holocaust is exaggerated or may not know it even occurred. But the most significant lesson of the Holocaust is that if had Jews had had their own state in Israel, their ancestral homeland, European Jews would have had a safe haven to flee to during the Holocaust, which would have prevented the Holocaust from occurring. Will each individual teacher teaching the Holocaust curriculum explain this? Some will and unfortunately some won’t, especially those teachers who believe all of Israel ought to be Palestine. Will all teachers teach that many Jews in the Displaced Persons after World War 11 fervently wanted to go to what was then Mandatory Palestine? Or will some teachers teach the view of Mahatma Gandi, for example, who believed that Jews who survived the Holocaust ought to remain in Europe and rebuild their lives there, as opposed to going to Palestine?
A radicalized Muslim teacher, for example, or a teacher with far- left views, may teach that the Nazis committed a genocide against the Jews, but then in the same breadth may accuse Israel for causing the Palestinian refugee problem in 1948 and say this injustice amounts to a genocide.
How will anyone know exactly what is being taught in the classroom? Higher academia in Canada is full of far –left scholars of who are anti-Israel in their views, and who believe Israel ought to be dismantled in favour of a one bi-national state.
There will also be training in public schools about Islamophobia in schools and we do not really know how that will be delivered and how that will interface with the lessons of them Holocaust that are being taught.
