This project explored conceptualizations and visualizations of the Holocaust and genocide in state curricula, textbooks, and student essays in Europe. It paid particular attention to the ways in which the Holocaust and other genocides (within and outside Europe) are semantically linked in education. It examined national and regional legacies of the Holocaust and other genocides in current education, compared their treatment in different school subjects, and assessed the extent to which their understandings conveyed in curricula, textbooks, and student essays converged or diverged.
As the research field of genocide studies seemed to complement, if not replace, that of Holocaust studies, and as international organizations increasingly recommended broader and deeper knowledge of historical mass crimes and genocidal processes in general, this project examined educational materials used in the countries of Europe and its peripheries.
This project was conducted by the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research in cooperation with UNESCO.
