The Pain of Knowledge: Reflections on Holocaust and Genocide Issues in Education - In Israel and Elsewhere

This book focuses on the wide range of considerations and concerns relating to how the Holocaust is discussed and taught in schools in Israel and around the world. It examines how Israel’s education system views lessons that should be drawn from the Holocaust, the relative importance it attributes to them and the degree to which the education system influences the attitudes of Israeli youth.

In this context, the book also surveys the differences in teaching the Holocaust in various sectors of the educational system: state-schools, religious-state schools, Arab state schools and independent (Jewish ultra-orthodox) schools, and in schools in France, England, the US and Germany.

Chapters deal with philosophic and theological reactions to the Holocaust; constructing the memory of the Holocaust; Holocaust studies in Israel over the years - historical processes; teaching the Holocaust in Israel - didactic aspects; curricula in Israel; Holocaust memorial day; youth journeys to Poland; Israeli-Arabs and the Holocaust; attitudes of Israeli youth towards the Holocaust; teaching the Holocaust around the world; a separate chapter is devoted to teaching about genocide.

2003, 248 pp., cat. # 12019

Dr. Yair Auron is Senior Lecturer in the field of contemporary Judaism and genocide at the Open University of Israel and the Kibbutzim College of Education. He is author of The Banality of Indifference: Zionism and the Armenian Genocide (Transaction, 2000) and The Banality of Denial: Israel and the Armenian Genocide (Transaction, 2003).

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