Holocaust education pleas as far-right on rise across Europe

The Herald Scotland

04-05-2025

And with the far-right on the march across the continent, leading charities are scrambling to preserve the stories and memories of the 220,000 Holocaust survivors who are still alive.
Laura Marks is the chair of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. The 65-year old is a keen campaigner for interfaith activism and has worked to improve relations between Jewish and Muslim communities.
We spoke last Tuesday, the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp.
Marks has just come from meeting with a group of Holocaust survivors when she picks up the phone.
She has a lot on her mind.
Laura Marks is chair of the Holocaust Memorial Trust (Image: Yakir Zur) 'How will we keep the interest in and the relevance of the Holocaust alive as the people with first hand knowledge fade away,' she wonders. 'There's precious few left.
'It's a very important question. How do you continue telling their stories and how do you tell people about the Holocaust without those stories?'
Marks believes that personal testimony is at the heart of remembering.
'You can be sat with a textbook full of facts and figures', says Marks. 'That is absolutely essential, but it isn't enough. You need to tell the stories, because the stories make you understand and feel it in your gut, as well as your head.
'We have a duty to remember the six million Jewish men, women, and children who were murdered by the Nazis, and the Roma-Sinti, and the people who were disabled and the people who were black, but we also need to ensure that this does not happen again.'
Martin Winstone, senior historical advisor to the Holocaust Education Trust, agrees.
He remarks that despite units on the Holocaust not being mandated in the Scottish curriculum, Holyrood has been very supportive of the Trust's work.
Winstone says: 'There's always more that can be done, but I do feel that Scotland has a very strong Holocaust education infrastructure.
'Successive Scottish governments, both Labour and SNP, have invested a lot into Holocaust education. For example, they fund the Lessons from Auschwitz programme, which we run, and Vision Schools Scotland, which supports teachers.'
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Education is key, Winstone and Marks tell me.
Marks says: 'It's not just children who need to be educated, it's adults too. Children get a certain amount of education about the Holocaust in school, but there's a whole generation of adults who learned nothing at school.
'It's so easy to move from hate speech into intolerance into separating people out — the stages of genocide are the same again and again and again, and our job is to ensure that those stages aren't gone through.
'You have to go a long way down the line until you get to Dachau, and yet it happened.'
Winstone adds: 'It is a societal issue. Education has a role to play. I think that sometimes people think that if we just teach people about the Holocaust, anti-Semitism will be solved. I don't think it will.
'Anti-Semitism is a societal problem, so schools have some role to play in it, but they should not be expected to be the whole solution.
'It's not necessarily in history lessons where those difficult conversations will necessarily take place. It might be in religious and moral education, it might be in modern studies, it might be in tutor time.'
More than six million Jews were killed between 1939-1945 (Image: Newsquest) Sarah Mathieson is a former young ambassador for the Holocaust Education Trust during high school. Now about to graduate university, Mathieson says many of her fellow students only had superficial knowledge of the genocide.
She told The Herald: 'Most people knew what had happened during the Holocaust but had this idea that it was a one off thing. Many had no idea of subsequent events such as the Rwandan genocide and a lot of people I think assumed it happened suddenly.
'The teaching we gave was a lot about everyday prejudice and discrimination and how if left unchecked it can grow and cause widespread harm and I think that was something new that a lot of those who attended took away with them.'
Indeed, a quick vox pop of university students in Glasgow revealed a troubling lack of knowledge about the topic.
One student said: 'It wasn't delved into in much detail at my school. I feel like there could have been a lot more education about the Holocaust when I was in primary and secondary school.'
A woman doing exam preparations said: 'I think it was a pretty big part of history, plus, I suppose, British history. It's important to know about it so it doesn't happen again.'
Her study companion added: 'It's definitely important to know about it, because of all of the stuff around the history, like how big Krakow is to visit.'
Innovative technology and digital recordings are some ways to educate the next generation of students, Marc Cave notes.
Cave is the director of the National Holocaust Centre and Museum and has helped develop the museum's 'Forever Project'.
The project, which draws upon real testimony from eleven Holocaust survivors, uses voice recognition and AI-assisted technology to create digital question and answer sessions.
Cave explains: 'We initially developed the programme in 2016, and this is the Mark III version. It uses AI to create a back and forth conversation, just as if you were talking to a grandparent.
'The survivors, who represent all aspects of the Holocaust, from concentration camps to the Kindertransports to hidden children, recorded testimony for hours. Many of them have become dear friends in the thirty years since the museum was founded.'
Marc Cave runs the National Holocaust Centre and Museum (Image: Supplied)Winstone adds: 'There are a lot of survivors who go and speak across the UK but sadly we know that time is limited. Recordings in different forms will be a part of that, but again, it comes back to the classroom.
'Teachers must be trained and equipped with the right resources. There's no single solution which will replace the survivors.'
Marks, who has spent her much of her adult life working with Holocaust charities, takes a moment for reflection.
She notes: 'I went to Dachau for the first time 50 years ago, when I was a teenager. It was the first time I had been involved in any of this.
'At the time, survivors didn't talk about it. It's only been the last 20 years survivors have talked about the Holocaust at all, and all those years, there was so much shame and guilt and feeling that nobody cared.
'We're trying to make up for lost time.'