In this paper, we analyse the Second World War (WW2) and the Holocaust as genocide during WW2 as sensitive topics in history teaching as perceived by 719 teachers from Austria, Belarus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Serbia and the Netherlands. Using the thematic content analysis of open answers to an online questionnaire we…

This article examines the key category defining multiculturalism in Israeli history education: the representation of North African and Middle Eastern Jewry, aka "Mizrahim." Applying Nordgren's and Johansson's conceptualisation, the article explores the changes in this subject from the establishment of Israel to the present day. The…

The review study deals with the presentation of methods of acquainting pupils and students with the Shoah events at various levels of institutional education. Based on the opinions and positions of leading experts on the subject, we summarize the most important methods in the field. In the introduction we present the importance of one line of the…

"After the death of the last witnesses the memory of the Holocaust must not be left to historians alone, now is the time for works of art" Aharon Appelfeld. This study focuses on the role and contribution of monuments to educating about Holocaust commemoration in Israel. Holocaust monuments are located throughout Israel, from north to…

The paper focuses on representations of Shoah and Holocaust terms in selected curriculum documents ("Framework educational program for basic education" and Israeli curricular documents for primary and secondary school education). Emphasis is placed on the Israeli curriculum, which can be considered exemplary in its structure due to the…

The article explores how the Holocaust is represented in history textbooks for Palestinian pupils in the Palestinian and Arab-Israeli curricula from a pedagogical perspective. Since no mention of the Holocaust was found in Palestinian Authority textbooks, the study seeks to explain why this is so, while examining representations of the Holocaust…

Over the course of the 2015-2016 academic year, 12th-grade students at a Jewish high school in Canada participated in a research study that assessed how they integrated morally complex narratives in Israel's past into their own relationship with the country. This article presents material based on how students reacted to learning that some Jewish…

Much of the concern with young people's historical knowledge centres on factual attainment or disciplinary skills. However, relatively little attention is paid to the relevance that young people attribute to history and how they use the past, and various social representations of history, to relate to the present. Research in this realm tends to…

This article considers the role of teacher agency and curricular flexibility as pedagogic features of Shoah education in Israeli state schools. The analysis is based on a recent national study which included a quantitative survey (questionnaires), qualitative methods (focus groups, interviews, observations) and a socio-historical review. As…

Recently, the Israeli Ministry of Education initiated a mandatory nationwide curriculum for Jewish kindergarten children focusing on the study of the Holocaust. This initiative raises general questions regarding the inclusion of sensitive historical issues in curricula for young children. In this article, we use the new Holocaust curriculum as an…

This study explores the applicability of psychoanalytic trauma-centered perspectives and social psychological intergroup comparison perspectives to difficult histories of the Israeli context. The study describes 2 test cases of difficult histories in the Jewish-Israeli context at the levels of curriculum policy, teachers, and learners. The first…

Globalisation and technological advances in the twenty-first century have caused a blurring of national lines, which in the past were the basis of a nearly indisputable model of civic identity. This process has led to a noticeable trend of the globally oriented pressures within the national curricula, on top of the existing locally oriented…

The article provides a critical review of the global scholarship on Holocaust education (HE). Despite the growing body of work on this topic, a search through major academic databases by the authors revealed that no such review of the research literature has been published as of yet. The review focuses on three main themes across the research…

The aim of this article is to analyze the findings of a research project on how the Holocaust is taught around the world. The project analyzes central issues and educational events that occur while teaching the Holocaust "behind the classroom door," in public schools in different countries. Researchers from 10 nations participated in the…

Research has shown the Holocaust to be the primary component of Jewish identity (Farago in Yahadut Zmanenu 5:259-285, 1989; Gross in Influence of the trip to Poland within the framework of the Ministry of Education on the working through of the Holocaust. Unpublished M.A. thesis, Ben-Gurion University, Beer Sheva, 2000; "Herman in Jewish…