Survivor’s story that will stir teachers in Scotland

Although they have found the topic well-taught in some places, “we are also very aware that some of this teaching might have been well-meaning, but wasn’t necessarily effective”.

So four years ago, she and colleagues launched Vision Schools Scotland, where schools can earn an award at level one or the higher level two if they reach a certain standard.

Most recently, they have produced an updated educational resource based on the life of survivor Marianne Grant, which is available free to all Scottish secondary teachers via the General Teaching Council for Scotland website.

Dr Cowan has been active in the field for more than 20 years, the author and editor of books and articles on Holocaust teaching, a founder trustee of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and currently a UK delegate to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

Three factors have helped to make the teaching of the Holocaust more mainstream in Scotland, she said: HMD, the revised Scottish curriculum with a focus on citizenship and the Holocaust Education Trust’s Lessons from Auschwitz trips to Poland.

She works in conjunction with the HET and Vision Schools Scotland (VSS) is partly funded by the Association for Jewish Refugees.

To achieve the award, schools have to meet five criteria. Holocaust teaching has to be supported by a school’s senior leadership, for example, it cannot simply be the preserve of a single teacher; the approach has to be interdisciplinary, so that student might draw on what they have learned in history for a creative performance.

They also have to “show they are not just learning about the Holocaust, but from the Holocaust” — for example how to make it relevant to understanding genocide or antisemitism today.

There have been inspiring results, she said. One school progressed from simply having a one-off commemoration for HMD to a whole month’s programme. Another school took a year group off their regular timetable for an intensive three-day course.

As well as offering a framework, VSS provides teaching support. But it has found that not all schools applying for accreditation have reached the required benchmark so it has introduced a preliminary award of “recognition of commitment to continue their learning and encourage them to reapply later on when they are ready”.

From a pilot three schools, it has built up a network of 40 to 50 schools, with 19 them of recognised as “vision schools”.

Its new teaching resource on Marianne Grant updates the original she brought out for the Scottish executive nearly 20 years ago. It was accompanied by a film produced by the celebrated documentary-maker Rex Bloomstein, but released on VHS “which is now obsolete”: he has now helped to digitise and enhance it.

Marianne Grant, who was born in 1921, survived Theresianstadt and Auschwitz, Neuengamme in Germany before her liberation from Bergen-Belsen. Her father had died before the War but her mother survived too.

She came to Glasgow in 1951, married Jack Grant — a refugee who had come from Germany in 1939 — and died in 2007.

An artist, in Auschwitz she was forced to draw a family tree of dwarves for Dr Mengele, whom she recalled walking forward and backward in his black uniform “ in front of my nose like a clock pendulum”.

Dr Cowan and her colleague Lynn Nisbet have updated the teaching manual so that it is line with the new Scottish schools curriculum. In addition, “all the examples of racism, antisemitism, prejudice were very old examples, we wanted to bring them up to date. We wanted to add a section on the value of survivor testimon and to write a section on Scotland and the Holocaust.

“We also wanted to add a hyperlink to the electronic version of the manual to make everything easy for teachers to access”.

Marianne Grant’s daughter Geraldine Shenkin said, “My mum was a remarkable lady who survived through horrendous times. To tell her story through this educational resource is the most wonderful way to continue her legacy for future generations.”