Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research in Switzerland
The study of the Holocaust provides a context for exploring the dangers of remaining silent in the face of Evil. Historical remembrance and respect for the victims are therefore not just a moral duty rooted in past events, but also an educational tool designed to ensure that such unspeakable horrors never happen again. Wishing to further develop its existing information materials and activities in the area of Holocaust education, Switzerland thus joined the ITF in December 2004.
Head of the Swiss delegation to the ITF
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A national ITF support group was created in 2004, and joint meetings with the delegation are held twice a year. This group is composed of some 20 institutions and individuals and includes federal and cantonal government agencies that are regularly involved in activities covered by the ITF. The existence of a support group has proved crucial in various respects: by covering activities and topics that simply cannot be covered by the delegation alone, by letting the responses to the various questionnaires of the ITF reflect the real activities and the real difficulties within the country, and by keeping the delegates and the grassroots organisations updated about activities and projects in the country and internationally.
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Members of the delegation have been particularly active in the following fields:
- Improvement of ITF communication tools: Organisation of the first meeting of a sub-committee of the CWG in October 2006
- Publication of educational materials: Scientific coaching (EWG) of the bilingual CD-Rom and educational book about Holocaust survivors published by the Swiss Federation of Jewish communities; book about the Swiss Righteous among the Nations (MMWG).
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Support given since 2006 to the efforts of the F.Y.R of Macedonia to join the ITF. An ongoing project to create a "Holocaust Memorial Center of the Jews from Macedonia" in Skopje was presented to the MMWG in 2007.
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Education
The Holocaust is a mandatory topic in Swiss schools. The Cantonal education departments are committed to implementing the guidelines and to reaching the goals defined by the Cantonal teaching curricula.
At the primary and secondary school level (ages 7-16) the teaching of Holocaust remembrance is oriented toward the goals of civic and citizen education, and aims to help students become active and responsible citizens.
On a higher level (Gymnasium/Lycée and vocational training), the teaching of Holocaust remembrance is seen in the context of violence prevention, aiming at analysing, understanding and preventing the causes and forms of violence, racism, xenophobia and Antisemitism.
Teaching methods are more interactive, insisting on the need to respect human rights, as well as other people's values, and promoting interaction and communication, solidarity and mutual understanding.
The Holocaust as the murder of the Jews of Europe by the Nazi regime and its collaborators during the Second World War is taught within the context of history teaching and civic education. Aspects of the Holocaust are also addressed in social science, religious studies and literature.
In December 2005 the Swiss Conference of Cantonal Ministers of Education (CDPE) organised a two-day symposium on "Teaching the Holocaust in Switzerland" in Berne, with the participation of Yad Vashem. The symposium was intended for teachers, staff from the pedagogical universities and people in charge of Holocaust remembrance days in the cantons. Like the support group, the National Symposium is a tool to overcome the difficulties encountered in a federal, highly compartmentalised system of education.
Swiss documentary filmmakers have produced several DVDs based on testimonies. For example, Susanne and Peter Scheiner traced the key places and events in Jerzy Czarnecki's life from a small Galician town to Switzerland, including the experience of forced labour in Nazi Germany. Jacqueline Veuve made a film based on the diary of Friedel Reiter, who had taken care of prisoners in the French camp of Rivesaltes (see pictures).
Remembrance
A Holocaust Memorial Day ("Journée de la Mémoire de l'Holocauste et de la prévention des crimes contre l'humanité") was introduced in Switzerland in 2004 and has taken place ever since in Swiss schools on the 27th of January, focusing on three main topics:
- Remembrance of the Holocaust
- Remembrance of the genocides that have marked European history in the 20th century
- Reflections upon human rights, tolerance, as well as inter-religious and intercultural dialogue.
In 2008 some 500 people, among them the President of the Swiss Confederation, attended a national ceremony honouring the Swiss Righteous Among the Nations, numbering over 60 women and men. This was the first event of its kind to take place in Switzerland (see picture).
During the ITF plenary session in Budapest in December 2006, there was a successful presentation of a documentary film about Carl Lutz and his manifold rescue activities in Hungary ("La casa di vetro") and a discussion with one of the two authors (Aldo Sofia).
In January 2008, the exhibit "Carl Lutz and the Legendary Glass House in Budapest" was displayed by the Carl Lutz Foundation in Budapest at the UN Headquarters in New York, with Swiss and Hungarian support. Since then, it has been displayed in various cities in the USA and Canada.
Research
Following the research by the "Independent Commission of Experts Switzerland - Second World War" and the publication of their findings in 25 volumes, other historians started to further investigate the political, social and economic aspects of this period.
Recent research has focused on the Swiss refugee policy canton by canton or has adopted a supranational perspective, such as the exhibition "La Svizzera e la persecuzione degli ebrei in Italia 1938-1945".
During World War Two, neutral Switzerland was asked to represent the interests of the UK and the USA in various countries. The access to Swiss documents related to these mandates, which are kept at the Swiss Federal Archives in Berne, was restricted at the request of British and US authorities. In 2004 both the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs and the Swiss ITF-delegation requested both countries to lift the restrictions. This was eventually granted in 2006 and 2007.
In 2003 the Swiss parliament passed a new law aimed at cancelling penal sentences imparted to people convicted of having provided assistance to refugees who had been persecuted by the Nazi regime. To this day 120 women and men have been rehabilitated.
In recent years, attention has also been given to Holocaust survivors living in Switzerland. The "Kontaktstelle für Überlebende des Holocaust" has recently begun collecting written testimonies of Holocaust survivors living in Switzerland, and is supported and encouraged by the Swiss ITF-delegation (FDFA and CDPE).
Nevertheless, several testimonies of Holocaust survivors living in Switzerland were published before. The most interesting approach was Nathalie Gelbart's, who interviewed her own grandfather. Ruben Gelbart told the young student about his youth in Poland, his sufferings in the ghetto of Lodz and in Auschwitz-Birkenau and his coming to Switzerland in 1945.
A book based on this dialogue between generations was published in 2008 (see picture).
