1,2,3 Jew run or I’ll gas you”; “Hitler was right” – these are the chants to which Jewish pupils at mainstream schools have been subjected by classmates using terms they have learnt in lessons on the Holocaust.
The incidents documented by Parents Against Antisemitism are profoundly disturbing. We must consider that the children’s reaction is at least partly the result of what they have absorbed from the adult world around them – and increasingly from the social media platforms on which they now spend so much of their lives and where antisemitic hate circulates with little restraint and less consequence.
For too long, many of Britain’s educational, cultural and political institutions have preferred to treat antisemitism as something safely buried in Europe’s past.
But today’s antisemitism rarely arrives dressed in jackboots and more often emerges through obsessive demonisation of Israel, the normalisation of anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and the casual assumption that Jews collectively must be held responsible for the alleged misdeeds of the Jewish state.
Too many leaders remain reluctant to confront this contemporary form of antisemitism honestly. Some even inflame the hate with anti-Israel rhetoric.
Since October 7, Britain’s Jews, including pupils, have had to deal with the consequences.
Holocaust education is critical but can only be part of a wider response to antisemitism and its handling must be thoughtfully considered. The former Harvard professor Ruth Wisse has long warned of the limitations inherent in attempting to teach against hatred primarily through exposure to hatred itself.
A curriculum centred exclusively on Jewish victimhood risks leaving students with the impression that Jews exist chiefly as objects of persecution.
British children should also be taught about Jewish civilisation: the history of the Jewish people, specifically in their ancestral homeland, Judaism’s moral and intellectual contributions as foundational pillars of Western and British civilisation, the deep intertwining of Jewish and British history; and the contribution of British Jews to national life. Pupils who encounter Jews only through the prism of extermination are not truly being educated about Jews at all.
This is not an argument for diluting Holocaust education but for setting it within a fuller account. That reality ought now to prompt a serious review of how this material is taught in British schools. It may be that better guidance and better teacher training are required, along with a far clearer understanding of how antisemitism manifests itself today.
The expertise of Holocaust Educational Trust with their internationally recognised teacher training programmes will always be the best starting point for educationalists in the UK.
The determination shown by Jewish families who chose mainstream British education in the hope that their children would flourish as part of wider society deserves admiration. That some are now reconsidering those choices out of fear should trouble the conscience of the country.
A society in which Jewish children feel safe only among other Jews is not a healthy one. And a society in which lessons about Auschwitz become ammunition for playground taunts has reason for serious self-examination.
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