Holocaust education at American colleges and universities: A report on the current situation

Holocaust and Genocide Studies

Volumn 12, Issue 2, 1998, Pages 282-307

  Haynes, Stephen R ^a  

^a RHODES COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34548234533     PISSN: 87566583     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/hgs/12.2.282     Document Type: Article

References (14)

1. Gerd Korman, "The Holocaust in American Historical Writing," Societas - A Review of Social History 2 (1972), p. 260
2. Franklin H. Litteil, "The Credibility Crisis of the Modern University," in Henry Friedlander and Sybil Milton, eds., The Holocaust: Ideology, Bureaucracy and Genocide, The San Jose Papers (Millwood, NY: Kraus International Publications, 1980), p. 281
3. Henry Friedlander, "Postscript: Toward a Methodology of Teaching About the Holocaust," in Friedlander and Milton, p. 324
4. William H. Honan, "Holocaust Teaching Gaining a Niche, but Method Is Disputed," The New York Times (April 12, 1995), p. B10
5. Evidence for this can be found in the 1978 airing of the NBC television miniseries "Holocaust," President Jimmy Carter's appointment of the United States Holocaust Council that same year, the creation within the Justice Department of the Office of Special Investigations in order to initiate extradition and denaturalization proceedings against alleged war criminals residing in the United States, and increased coverage of the Holocaust in American history texts at the junior and senior high school levels. See Glenn S. Pate, The Treatment of the Holocaust in United States History Textbooks (Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, 1980), p. 118ff
6. Chaim Schatzker, "Teaching the Holocaust: Dilemmas and Considerations," American Academy of Political and Social Science (AAPSS) Annals 450 (July 1980), p. 219
7. Schatzker, "Teaching the Holocaust," and Franklin H. Littell, "Fundamentals in Holocaust Studies," AAPSS Annals 450 (July 1980), pp. 213-26
8. Samuel Totten, William S. Parsons, and Israel W. Charny, eds., Genocide in the Twentieth Century: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts (New York: Garland Publishing, 1995). Two previous attempts to canvass Holocaust educators netted only about thirty replies. Given estimates that several hundred courses on the Holocaust are taught at U.S. colleges and universities, the small size of these samples virtually invalidate any conclusions drawn from them
9. Friedlander, "Postscript," p. 325
10. See Stephen R. Haynes, Holocaust Education and the Church-Related College: Restoring Ruptured Traditions (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1997)
11. and Richard L. Rubenstein's The Cunning of History. Also mentioned as a starting point for discussion was Elie Wiesels assertion in Night that "not all victims were Jews, but all Jews were victims."
12. Yehuda Bauer is one historian who has complained about the mystification that results when the Holocaust is taught without the grounding of historical methodology. See especially, "Against Mystification: The Holocaust as a Historical Phenomenon," in Bauer, The Holocaust in Historical Perspective (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1978)
13. See also, Steven T. Katz, The Holocaust in Historical Perspective, Vol. I: The Holocaust and Mass Death Before the Modern Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 32, n. 20
14. Marcia S. Littell is currently at work on a much anticipated history of Holocaust education, tentatively entitled, Breaking the Silence: The History of Holocaust Education in North America, 1960-1995."