Task Force For International Cooperation On Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research

The Holocaust Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum

http://www.iwm.org.uk/server/show/ConWebDoc.1454

An Overview of Holocaust-related activities in the United Kingdom

The United Kingdom's long-standing commitment to Holocaust education, research and remembrance precedes its instrumental role as a founding member of the International Task Force.

In 1991 the UK was the first European country to make Holocaust education a mandatory subject in the History curriculum at all state secondary schools
Following the Stockholm Declaration in 2000, the UK took the lead in organising teacher training seminars, both in the UK and abroad and the UK will continue to strive to commit more resources to bring the lessons of the Holocaust to more people in the future.

The efforts of UK NGOs have raised awareness of the Holocaust across society. The London Jewish Cultural Centre organised and led the first conference sponsored by the Task Force: a teacher training seminar in Krakow which brought together Polish and Lithuanian teachers.
In 2000, Her Majesty The Queen opened Europe's largest permanent historical exhibition on the Holocaust at the Imperial War Museum (IWM), the United Kingdom's national museum of the social history of conflict.
Greville Janner, Chairman of the Holocaust Educational Trust (HET) was involved in the creation of the Task Force and he introduced and chaired speeches by the Heads of delegations at The Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust in January 2000.
Our government now co-funds, with the Pears Foundation, a Holocaust Education Development Programme at the Institute of Education (University of London), which includes a national survey of teacher attitudes and an offer to provide professional development in Holocaust education, free of charge, to teachers from every secondary school in England.
UK delegates have been active in all ITF working groups including Paul Salmons who was Chair of the Education Working Group and is currently Chair of the Subcommittee on Holocaust, Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity.
Alongside these commitments the UK has been responsible for liaison with Lithuania and more recently Estonia with their applications for membership of the Task Force.

Education

The UK has taken the lead in delivering Holocaust education to teachers, pupils and the wider community.
In 1991 the Holocaust Educational Trust successfully campaigned to ensure Holocaust education would form a compulsory and permanent component of the History curriculum for all 11-14 year olds attending state schools.

As well as its work in schools, universities and in the community to raise awareness and understanding of the Holocaust, the Trust provides teacher training, an outreach programme for schools, teaching aids and resource materials. Supported by a government commitment to finance Holocaust education initiatives, the HET continues to play a leading role in training teachers on how best to teach the Holocaust.
As well as its groundbreaking interactive resource, Recollections: Eyewitnesses Remember the Holocaust, the Trust runs the ‘Lessons from Auschwitz' programme. Since the project's inception in 1998, HET has taken over 5000 students and teachers to Auschwitz-Birkenau as part of a four-part course. The visits to Poland are combined with orientation and follow-up seminars and leave an unforgettable emotional and educational mark on participants.

Following on from the inaugural Task Force teacher training conference in Krakow in 2001, the London Jewish Cultural Centre (LJCC) has organised similar seminars in the Ukraine (Dniepropetrovsk in 2002 and 2003, Kiev in 2004 and Lviv in 2006), as well as breaking new ground in Belarus (in Novogrudek and Minsk) despite a tightly structured educational system in that country.
In 2004, the LJCC advanced the scope of teacher training by moving into China. This country is not represented on the Task Force, but the LJCC identified departments of Jewish Studies within certain universities eager to learn about western history and the Holocaust.
The Imperial War Museum offers professional development to trainee teachers from universities across the country, and staff from the Museum have contributed to ITF supported teacher training seminars in many states including the Czech Republic, Ukraine, China, and Argentina. The Museum's Fellowship in Holocaust Education is internationally recognised as a model of excellence in professional development for teachers.
The seminars, convened under the auspices of the Task Force, have enabled the LJCC to co-operate and develop strong links internationally with other leading Holocaust educators.

Remembrance

The UK is strongly committed to paying tribute to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, to honouring its survivors and to learning the lessons of this period in history to build a safer and fairer society. This commitment is demonstrated in many ways, three of which are illustrated here:

1. The Holocaust Centre opened in September 1995 in Nottinghamshire. It is Britain's only dedicated Holocaust Memorial and Education Centre and provides facilities for people of all backgrounds and persuasions to explore the history and implications of the Holocaust. It houses a permanent exhibition on the Nazi period and offers space for reflection in the memorial rose gardens. There is an extensive education programme for students, teachers and professionals in other fields. Visitors from around the UK and further afield come to learn, to remember and to reflect upon the Holocaust and its consequences for our world.
2. The Imperial War Museum London houses the UK's national permanent exhibition on the Holocaust and uses historical material to tell the story of the Nazis' persecution of the Jews and other groups before and during the Second World War. Photographs, documents, newspapers, artefacts, posters and film offer stark evidence of persecution and slaughter, collaboration and resistance. Toys, diaries, photograph albums, story books and hand-made mementos show individual efforts at survival and the testimony of eighteen survivors of the Holocaust brings a fresh and haunting perspective to the narrative. Education activities bring some 25000 school students into the Museum to study the Holocaust each year.
3. The UK commemorates Holocaust Memorial Day, the international day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust and of other genocides, on 27th January each year. Prior to the United Nations declaration designating 27th January an international Holocaust Memorial Day, the UK was using this date to commemorate the Holocaust. Alongside a national commemoration held in a different UK city each year, schools and local communities throughout the UK organise hundreds of events.

This day sets out to motivate people to make sure that the horrendous crimes committed during the Holocaust, and in more recent genocides, are neither forgotten nor repeated, whether in Europe or elsewhere in the world. Holocaust Memorial Day is organised by the national charity Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, with funding from the UK Government.

Research

The UK has in recent years become a hive of Holocaust-related research activity characterised by diversity, innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration.
An influential factor in this process has been research conducted by established historians, with particular achievements being Ian Kershaw's biography of Hitler, Richard Evans' "The Coming of the Third Reich", Michael Burleigh's "The Third Reich: A New History", and David Cesarani's study of Adolf Eichmann, "Eichmann: His Life and Crimes". Beyond receiving international acclaim and popular readership, these works have also made significant contributions to historical knowledge and understanding.
In addition to the library of Holocaust testimonies produced by the publishers Valentine Mitchell, Sir Martin Gilbert has published many books on the Holocaust including, "Auschwitz and the Allies", "The Holocaust: A Jewish Tragedy", "The Boys: Triumph over Adversity", "The Holocaust Atlas" and "The Righteous: The Unsung heroes of the Holocaust" and "Kristallnacht: prelude to destruction."
The work of these historians has raised the profile of the UK's research activities while also acting as stimuli to a younger generation of academics both within and outside the historical academy. Informed by transnational trends of research, these scholars have begun to explore issues such as representation, non-Jewish and Christian responses, memory, pedagogy and historiography; as evidenced by the scholarship of Tim Cole, Tony Kushner, Tom Lawson, Isabel Wollaston, Nick Stargardt, Dierdre Burke and Dan Stone.
An example of how Holocaust research has expanded in the UK to absorb cultural criticism has been provided by the work of Robert Eaglestone and Sue Vice, while the emergence of genocide as an object of academic interest in the UK has been signified by the publications of Donald Bloxham and Mark Levene.
Holocaust research features within a number of university departments throughout the UK including at Manchester (Centre for Jewish Studies), Sheffield (the Genocide Centre), University College London (Department of Jewish and Hebrew Studies), Leeds (Centre for Jewish Studies), Southampton (Parkes Institute) and Sussex (Centre for German-Jewish Studies).
In addition, the UK also has two dedicated Holocaust research centres, the first of which was founded in Leicester in 1990. Currently under the directorship of Olaf Jensen, the Stanley Burton Centre for Holocaust Studies has a long-standing reputation for pioneering teaching, research and work with the wider community, and plays an important role in disseminating advances in scholarship to broader society.
The UK's second research centre was founded at Royal Holloway University of London in 1998 and is regarded as the leading academic centre of its kind in Europe. Staffed by academics who are not only prolific publishers but also advisers to leading statesmen and international organisations, the centre organises national and international conferences as well as offering a globally unique interdisciplinary MA programme in Holocaust Studies.

Under the cover of the Second World War, for the first time in history, industrial methods were used for the mass extermination of a whole people.

The Holocaust Exhibition uses historical material to tell the story of the Nazis' persecution of the Jews and other groups before and during the Second World War.

Taking as its starting point the turbulent political scene in Europe immediately after the First World War, the exhibition traces the rise of the Nazi party, how antisemitism as a Europe-wide phenomenon made a fertile seedbed for Hitler's anti-Jewish beliefs, the perversion of science to support Nazi race theory, the isolation of German Jews, the refugee crisis and the advent of so-called 'Euthanasia' policies in 1939.

Photographs, documents, newspapers, artefacts, posters and film offer stark evidence of persecution and slaughter, collaboration and resistance.

www.iwm.org.uk/lambeth/holoc-ex1.htm

Holocaust - Learning & Access:

www.iwm.org.uk/holocaust/education

"The Association of Jewish Refugees [206.21 KB] " by Anthony Grenville