Bertrand Lecureur: Enseigner le nazisme et la Shoah. Une étude comparée des manuels scolaires en Europe

How have the Nazi period and the Shoah been presented in history textbooks for secondary schools published since 1950 in Germany, the United Kingdom, French-speaking Belgium and France? This volume compares their contents by underlining the evolution of this content and the influence of the historic researches as well as the various events which have been topical over the last fifty years. Whilst the European public opinion often mentions the deep silence about this Nazi period and the Shoah up to the late nineties, German textbooks from the fifties provided pupils, aged 14 to 16, with important information. Although incomplete and imperfect at the beginning, this knowledge was quickly offered and broke the silence before being dramatically increased and more precise at the turn of the century. As far as quantity and quality are concerned, there is a sharp contrast between the German and French textbooks and the British ones which deal much less with this topic. As for Walloon textbooks, they were scarce from the seventies to 2000.

Table of contents [PDF]

Full text [PDF]