Shoah – Course for Teachers

Teachers in the German-speaking part of Switzerland can benefit from a two-part course on the Shoah and on methods of teaching about it in class. In the first part, the SIG and the Platform of Liberal Jews in Switzerland PLJS conduct a day-trip to Auschwitz. This is followed by a practical training day at the teacher training college (Pädagogische Hochschule) in Lucerne. The offer is intended primarily for teachers at lower and upper secondary school level.

Impressions of the Auschwitz trip 2018 (in German)

Teaching about Shoah

The Shoah, also known as the Holocaust, is a part of the collective memory and historical culture of Switzerland, and is undisputedly an important topic for teaching at schools. However, uncertainty remains as to how this subject should be conveyed to students. Should the focus be on teaching the facts, should skills such as critical thinking be enhanced, or should attitudes be probed, changed or emphasised? Especially if the subject is to be broached in an in-depth way, the personal experience of the teacher is a crucial factor. Reading books about the Shoah and the related crimes can never replace personal experiences such as a visit to the sites of the concentration camps.

Goal of the visit to the Auschwitz memorial site

Tendencies and manners of marginalising certain social groups is a subject frequently taught at schools. The Holocaust shows the extremes of crime and tragedy that any trivialisation or toleration of such discrimination can lead to. The Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp has a large symbolic value in highlighting the Nazi crimes during the Second World War. Industrialised extermination, the so-called Final Solution, was perfected here. Hundreds of thousands of Jews, travellers, homosexuals and opponents of the regime were murdered there. The visit to the memorial sites is intended to provide teachers with impressions that will help them to convey in the classroom that the crimes of the Nazis and the suffering of the victims must never be forgotten, relativised or repeated. This is all the more important because it is almost impossible today to invite eyewitnesses and survivors of the Shoah into the classroom.