A Different School

In the late 1980s, as a result of the fact that Holocaust survivors were aging, both the survivors and educators expressed concern that interest in the Holocaust would diminish. For the members of the fourth generation just starting school, the 1940s and the Holocaust were distant history. What would be their interest in this subject? Who would assume the obligation to remember?
The first glimmer of an answer, however, was already evident in the 1980s. The inclusion of Holocaust teaching in school curricula at the beginning of the decade, and the trips to Poland at the end of the decade, converged with the quest for the cultural and historical roots of uninterrupted Jewish life and led to a rapprochement with the world of the youngster's grandparents.

Thus, in 1994 we decided to establish the International School for Holocaust Studies, and, at the end of the twentieth century, we inaugurated its new premises. I presented the idea of our new School to Professor Amnon Rubinstein, then the newly appointed Minister of Education and Culture, and he supported it enthusiastically. And thus the idea of the School was incorporated into the comprehensiveׂ"Yad Vashem 2001" master plan.The School is unique, above all, in its staff consisting of scores of teachers, educators, and developers who have pledged themselves to teaching the Holocaust. Encouraging dialogue, teams of educators have invested their professional, emotional, and creative efforts in reviewing the needs, topics, and questions of teachers and young people in Israel and worldwide, in the rapidly changing environonment that exists at the end of the twentieth century. These educators are involved, as close monitors and as participants, in the development of historical research on the Holocaust and cultural endeavors that include literature, cinema, and the arts. They take part in intergenerational dialogue and develop educational materials, methods, and directions that, by means of new technologies and teaching aids, awaken students to the complexities of the Holocaust as a historical event. We have immersed ourselves in the lengthy and comprehensive process of choosing the goals and the intended outcomes of our educational work. Our objective involves enabling students to internalize and derive personal lessons as they confront the present and future relevance of this kind of study in several spheres. The first sphere pertains to their identity as Jews. At this level, the general aim is to strengthen each individualױs personal commitment to meaningful Jewish continuity, in view of his/her Jewish worldview and perception of the Jewish destiny. In the second sphere, the aim is to develop a conscious preference for the democratic way of life and governance and a willingness to defend those basic and inherent values. The third sphere involves internalizing and identifying with fundemental ethical values in order to create a basis on which society and the individual's ability to function within it can be maintained, and to develop the sensitivity to violations of these values vis-a-vis others, and the willingness to react and respond accordingly.
The School invests a large segment of its resources in training the community of teachers, in Israel and abroad, and in developing advanced course contents, curricula, and teaching aids. The Jewish Holocaust is a particular historical event that has acquired universal significance because of its implications and effects. Therefore, it is important in the learning process to acquaint students with the nature of Jewish life that preceded the Holocaust. In this way they can more readily identify with the individual experience during the Holocaust when normal, daily life became a struggle for survival, both on a physical level, and on the level of maintaining a semblance of their dignity of human beings while they were being subjected to excruciating deprivation and humiliation.
The planners, architects, designers, and builders of the new International School for Holocaust Studies, who devoted the full measure of their creative energies to this endeavor, have created an impressive edifice, one which will stimulate and inspire intense and profound educational activity that reaches out from its source in Jerusalem to shape the vision and understanding of places worldwide.

Avner Shalev
Chairman
Yad Vashem Directorate