New Holocaust curriculum in Israel.

New Holocaust curriculum in Israel. Shoah and Memory. By YISRAEL GUTMAN. Jerusalem: Zalman ShazarCenter, 1999. Hebrew. The well-known Holocaust historian Professor Yisrael Gutman haspublished a new textbook for Israeli high school students, Shoah andMemory. Shoah and Memory is part of a two-book curricular set that alsoincludes a book about Jews in world history over the last decades,edited by Eliezer Domke. (1) This curriculum has been developed forIsraeli teachers who are required to teach thirty hours on the Holocaustas part of the state education mandate. Doruke's textbook providesoverviews of world history, focusing on Jewish cultural, economic andpolitical life spanning various continents during the twentieth century.Therefore, readings about German Jewry during the Weimar Republic Weimar Republic:see Germany. Weimar RepublicGovernment of Germany 1919–33, so named because the assembly that adopted its constitution met at Weimar in 1919. andJews under Soviet Rule between the world wars are provided inDomke's volume and not in Gutman's Shoah and Memory. By beginning with a detailed picture of multifaceted aspects ofJewish life and culture before the Second World War, this two-partcurriculum attempts to reinforce the students' understanding thatmany Jews lived within modem, western societies. Starting with Jewishlife before the Holocaust, Israeli students begin a dialogue with theircollective past to better understand what was destroyed--not only sixmillion Jewish victims but a rich heritage sustained by organizedcommunities. Gutman's book Shoah and Memory is his second textbook forIsraeli high school students; The Holocaust and its Sign Significance,published in 1983, was the first. In September 2000, before he steppeddown as chief historian of Yad Vashem Yad Vashem (יד ושם) — ("Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority") — is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust established in 1953 through the Memorial Law passed by the Knesset, Israel's parliament. , Gutman noted that although thefirst textbook was experimental, it was used extensively by Israeli highschool teachers and sold over 100,000 copies. (2) Shoah and Memory is not a revised version Revised Versionn.A British and American revision of the King James Version of the Bible, completed in 1885.Revised VersionNoun of the Holocaust and itsSignificance, but a different curriculum altogether. This textbook,authorized by the Israeli Ministry of Education, strongly highlights theindividual voices of Jewish victims, how they witnessed, responded andcoped with their insurmountable situations from 1933 and beyond the endof the war in Europe. By drawing out their authentic voices--taken froma wide variety of sources such as artifacts artifactssee specimen artifacts. , diaries, poems, letters,and memoirs as well as works of art--the human story of the Holocaustcomes through every page of this textbook. (3) This curriculum is based upon a chronological, systematic andthematic approach that has incorporated new findings in academicresearch, emphasizing some of the following main points to its readers: 1. The central importance of Nazi ideology and its practicalimplementation 2. The daily life struggles of Jews during the Holocaust 3. The response of Allied and occupied nations in general, and Jewsin the Yishuv in particular, to the plight of Jews in Europe. In addition, there is a concentrated effort to make sure thatstudents understand that the Shoah took place throughout Europe, and notonly in Eastern Europe Eastern EuropeThe countries of eastern Europe, especially those that were allied with the USSR in the Warsaw Pact, which was established in 1955 and dissolved in 1991. . Therefore, the author and pedagogical ped��a��gog��ic? also ped��a��gog��i��caladj.1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of pedagogy.2. Characterized by pedantic formality: a haughty, pedagogic manner. consultants who worked on the book made sure that the survey of GermanJewry did not end in 1938, but rather continued into the 1940s with thedeportations. In Chapter 14 there is an overview of what happened toJews in Romania; Serbia and Bukovina; Transylvania; Hungary; Bulgaria;Slovakia and Croatia as well as Greece. Chapter 15 focuses on the fateof Jews in North African North AfricaA region of northern Africa generally considered to include the modern-day countries of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya.North African adj. & n.Adj. 1. countries during the Holocaust, such asAlgeria; Morocco; Libya; and Tunisia. Currently at the International School for Holocaust Studies at YadVashem there are plans to adapt this book for Spanish-andEnglish-speaking teachers and students. Clearly, several teams ofexperts and educators on various continents will need to work closelytogether on how to adapt--and not merely translate--this textbookaccording to according toprep.1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.2. In keeping with: according to instructions.3. the needs of the students, teachers and diverseenvironments. No textbook is perfect. For example, Shoah and Memory focuses onthe individual's daily experience during the Holocaust though itdoes not adequately cover in my opinion theological dilemmas and issuesthat Jews faced then. I believe that more documents on these topics, andothers, would have added to the book. The authors hope that this book, ultimately, will be part ofIsraeli family library shelves--a book that students, their siblings siblingsnpl (formal) → fr��res et s?urs mpl (de m��mes parents),and their parents will continue to use and refer to. NOTES (1.) The author would like to thank Professor David Bankier for hishelpful comments. Eliezer Domke, ed., The World and the Jews During the LastGenerations: Part II (1920-1970) (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center,1999). (2.) Interview with Professor Yisrael Gutman at Yad Vashem, August24, 2000. Both were collaborative projects. The first was co-authored byProfessor Chaim Schatzker, who specialized in the field of education,whereas the second was written together with Naama Galil, a high schoolhistory teacher who works at the International School for HolocaustStudies at Yad Vashem, along with a team of pedagogical experts at theSchool. (3.) According to the Zalman Shazar Center, publisher of the book,from September 1999- November 2001, approximately 43,000 sets of theDomke and Gutman volumes have been sold. RICHELLE BUDD CAPLAN is the Coordinator of overseas Programming atthe International School for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem, Jersalem.