Holocaust education, with all its noble intentions, has long been seen as a moral imperative—a bulwark against hate, antisemitism, and collective amnesia. And yet, after decades of curricular development, museum exhibits, mandatory school programs, and international days of remembrance, we are left asking: has it worked?
The answer, painfully, is: not as we hoped.
Rates of antisemitism are rising across the globe—on college campuses, in political discourse, in online spaces, and even in mainstream culture. In the United States, antisemitic incidents hit historic highs in recent years. In Europe, Jews report increasing fear and alienation. Across the board, the trends are not encouraging. And despite the proliferation of Holocaust education programs—many of which are now mandated by law in various states and countries—there is no conclusive empirical evidence that Holocaust education meaningfully reduces antisemitism or other forms of hate. The assumption that teaching about atrocity will cultivate moral clarity may be more aspirational than factual.
Basic knowledge about the Holocaust is shockingly low—especially among younger generations. Students may know the term, may even have visited a museum—but they often don’t carry a meaningful understanding of what happened, why it happened, and how it reverberates today. We taught dates and numbers, showed grainy footage, shared survivor testimonies—and yet something hasn’t landed.
As pointed out in The Atlantic, Holocaust education has often been treated as a standalone moral inoculation. “If we show them the worst of humanity, they will vow never to repeat it.” But horror alone is not a teacher. Without context, without real engagement, horror can numb. It can even breed distance or confusion. Instead of fostering empathy or vigilance, it can lead to emotional shutdown or simplistic moralizing.
The Jewish Chronicle goes a step further: Holocaust education, when done poorly, can actually reinforce a perception of Jews solely as victims. It can unintentionally alienate students, particularly those from other marginalized communities, who don’t see themselves reflected in the story. When we teach about the Holocaust without teaching about Jewish life—before, during, and after—it becomes a lesson in death, not in resilience, community, and continuity.
National Affairs adds another layer through the insights of Ruth Wisse, a world-renowned scholar of Yiddish literature and Jewish political thought. Wisse argues that when the Holocaust is used to universalize suffering—to teach a broad lesson about hate—it often loses its specificity. Yes, the Holocaust is a warning about where hate can lead. But it is also a deeply particular story about antisemitism, about the consequences of Jewish powerlessness, about the failure of the world to intervene. When we dilute that, we may teach a lesson about hate in general, but we fail to confront antisemitism in particular.
This tension became particularly personal for me as I sent Naama off to Skokie this morning for what I hope will be a transformative experience. I wondered: what will she walk away with? What lessons will take root in her heart? And—being perhaps a bit cynical—I also found myself asking: how many vibrant Jewish institutions of learning could have been built with the millions upon millions of dollars we have spent building beautiful monuments to memory? Would those who perished have wanted a museum, or would they have wanted schools filled with children learning the Torah they themselves fought to preserve?
And perhaps the most sobering challenge we now face is this: in countless cities around the world, we have built magnificent Holocaust museums, endowed with tens of millions of dollars and the most sophisticated educational technology available. We have dedicated immense financial and intellectual resources to the sacred task of remembering our dead. And yet, in those very same communities, the infrastructure for sustaining Jewish life is often underfunded, undervalued, and fragile. Day schools struggle to stay open. Synagogues compete for dwindling membership. Jewish summer camps rely on emergency appeals to balance their budgets. We have excelled at preserving memory, but we have faltered at investing in vitality.
As the writer and scholar Dara Horn so piercingly observes, “The world loves dead Jews”—but what is perhaps more disturbing is that not even the Jewish community seems entirely sure what to do with the living ones. There is a profound irony, and a tragic moral failing, in our collective willingness to romanticize Jewish suffering while hesitating to support Jewish flourishing.
So what have we learned?
We’ve learned that facts alone aren’t enough. That moral outrage isn’t education. That even the best of intentions can miss the mark if we’re not careful about what, and how, we teach. We’ve also learned that the mere presence of Holocaust education—even when well-funded, widely disseminated, and deeply felt—does not inoculate a society against hate.
Where do we go from here?
First, we must reclaim the richness of Jewish life—not just Jewish death—as part of Holocaust education. Second, we must stop asking the Holocaust to do too much. It can’t be our primary tool to fight every form of hate. Third, we must say clearly: the Holocaust is not only a tragedy of humanity, it is a tragedy of Jewish history. That particularity must be preserved, even as we invite others in.
And finally: we must be careful—especially in this post-October 7 world—not to conflate every threat with the Shoah. What happened on October 7 was horrifying, painful, and awakening. But it is not the Holocaust. The moment we confuse the two, we risk losing the unique moral clarity of each. Conflating the Holocaust with October 7 not only does injustice to the singularity of the Shoah—it also fails to grasp the different nature of Jewish power, vulnerability, and response today. No one expected Jews in 1940 to stand up and fight back. The very idea was unthinkable. In 2023, the expectation—indeed, the outrage—was that they did. That difference matters. That evolution matters. And if we don’t acknowledge it, we miss the opportunity to teach a new generation what it actually means to be strong, resilient, and responsible.
Furthermore, we must resist the urge to rank suffering, or to flatten historical specificity in the name of universal lessons. The Holocaust does not require comparison to Islamophobia, to the Rwandan genocide, or to any other horror in order to assert its relevance. There is no hierarchy of oppression. Each atrocity stands on its own, demanding its own moral reckoning. When we treat the Holocaust as interchangeable with every other form of hatred, we dilute its unique warning—and do the same to the others as well.
Holocaust education still matters. But it needs to be honest, grounded, and particular. Only then can it do what it was meant to do: not just teach about hate, but help build a generation strong enough to stand against it.
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