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On Teaching the Holocaust as History

On Teaching the Holocaust as History With the Holocaust we are more intimately connected to the raw, personal side of mass death. Loyalty to the memory of its victims seems to call for a special response in teaching the subject, something more engaged than detached analysis. To add to our burden of responsibility, we are breaking new ground. Concentration on the Holocaust, indeed on the subject of genocide, is a relatively recent trend in universities; courses began to proliferate only in the late 1970s. In the past, historians habitually left genocides in the background, excluding them from the key forces and patterns in history. This may be in part because peoples who have disappeared have usually had few surviving advocates-or the resources-to collect the documents of their destruction. Another important factor in the neglect of genocides has been the Enlightenment faith in progress, favored by historians. This has led them to glide over tragedies or at least to emphasize how tragedies have contributed to positive trends in history. Characteristically the French Philosophe the Marquis de Condorcet, while fully mindful of the mass atrocities perpetrated by the First Crusade, was more concerned with how the Crusade weakened feudalism and brought the West into contact with http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies Purdue University Press

On Teaching the Holocaust as History

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Publisher
Purdue University Press
Copyright
Copyright © Purdue University.
ISSN
1534-5165
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Abstract

With the Holocaust we are more intimately connected to the raw, personal side of mass death. Loyalty to the memory of its victims seems to call for a special response in teaching the subject, something more engaged than detached analysis. To add to our burden of responsibility, we are breaking new ground. Concentration on the Holocaust, indeed on the subject of genocide, is a relatively recent trend in universities; courses began to proliferate only in the late 1970s. In the past, historians habitually left genocides in the background, excluding them from the key forces and patterns in history. This may be in part because peoples who have disappeared have usually had few surviving advocates-or the resources-to collect the documents of their destruction. Another important factor in the neglect of genocides has been the Enlightenment faith in progress, favored by historians. This has led them to glide over tragedies or at least to emphasize how tragedies have contributed to positive trends in history. Characteristically the French Philosophe the Marquis de Condorcet, while fully mindful of the mass atrocities perpetrated by the First Crusade, was more concerned with how the Crusade weakened feudalism and brought the West into contact with

Journal

Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies – Purdue University Press

Published: Oct 3, 1992

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