Dr Dara Horn discusses why Holocaust education may not be working
The multi-award-winning author and scholar of Hebrew and Yiddish literature, Dr Dara Horn, appeared on the most recent episode of Podcast Against Antisemitism where, among other topics, she discussed her mixed feelings towards Holocaust education.
Dr Horn said: “In the United States, there was this idea in the Jewish community about 30 or 40 years ago that Holocaust education was going to prevent antisemitism…you had the opening of this massive Holocaust museum in Washington, you started having mandatory curricular about the Holocaust in schools and other Holocaust memorials opening around the United States, you started having Hollywood movies about this, and a lot of that came from the Jewish community.
“The idea was that people would go to these museums or learn about this in school. They’d learn where hatred can lead, what the world did to the Jews and they would then stop hating Jews. It wasn’t a ridiculous idea but 30 years later and what’s interesting is there’s much higher levels of antisemitism now in the United States than there were 30 years ago, so maybe we should reevalute this?”
Dr Horn continued: “What it’s come to mean is that Holocaust education is the only education that people have about antisemitism and so what that has come to mean is that antisemitism consists of murdering six million Jews.”
Referring to her newest book, People Love Dead Jews: Reports From a Haunted Present, Dr Horn says: “I list a bunch of things that aren’t the Holocaust, and I list everything from trolling Jews on social media to expelling entire Jewish communities from entire countries and seizing all their assets, which of course happened in many, many countries in the Islamic world in the twentieth century. I was like, ‘all of those things are not Holocaust, none of them are a big deal!’”
“When somebody is trolling you on social media and they’re photoshopping your face into a gas chamber, the problem is not that that person doesn’t know about the Holocaust. It’s not an education problem,” Dr Horn added.
During the discussion with our host, Dr Horn also discussed her reaction to the Colleyville synagogue attack, why she decided to learn Talmud and whether Yiddish is making a comeback.
The podcast with Dr Horn can be listened to here, or watched here.
Podcast Against Antisemitism, produced by Campaign Against Antisemitism, talks to a different guest about antisemitism each week. It streams every Thursday and is available through all major podcast apps and YouTube. You can also subscribe to have new episodes sent straight to your inbox. Previous guests have included comedian David Baddiel, The Sunday Telegraph columnist Zoe Strimpel and actor Eddie Marsan.