A Typology for the Development of Holocaust Education Scholarship: Coping with a National Trauma

This article proposes a typology that conceptualizes a chronological approach to Holocaust Education and suggests that we focus on identifying the stages and shifts in the development of the curriculum and the scholarship. I attempt to organize existing knowledge on the subject by conducting a meta-analysis of the foundations and basic premises of Holocaust education in Israel based on a survey of the textbooks and the major literature in the field. My basic assumption is that this typology and these stages of development of Holocaust education are structurally the same all over the world, as they reflect the way a nation copes with a national trauma. In today’s world, where Holocaust education has become a globalized phenomenon, this typology can serve as a basis for comparative analyses worldwide. As the Holocaust has become a metaphor for atrocity and genocide, Holocaust education is relevant all over the world and has become integral part of global human-rights and antiracist education.