Teaching A Dark Chapter History Books And The Holocaust In Italy And The Germanys Daniel A R P W Einer by Daniel A R . P. W Einer 9781501775437, 150177543X instant download after payment.

In her memoir, What Did You Do in the War,Daddy? Growing Up German, the West German writer Sabine Reichel recalls her 1960 school history textbook: “ There was an extra chapter, about three-quarters of a page long. It was titled ‘The Extermination of the Jews,’ and I had read it in my room at home many times. I always locked the door because I didn’t want anybody to know what I was reading. Six million Jews were killed in concentration camps, and as I read about Auschwitz and the gas chambers a wave of feelings— fearful fascination mingled with disgust— rushed over me.” Even though Reichel’s class often read textbook sections aloud, she remembered that the class never read this chapter. Indeed, Reichel’s teacher, Fräulein Lange, became visibly uncomfortable as the class of thirteen- year- olds moved toward the year 1933 in the history book, saying, “We are now getting to a dark chapter in German history. I’m sure you all know what I mean?” 1

     In contrast, a ninth- grade student in a Bavarian Gymnasium who opened the 2021 edition of the textbook Geschichte und Geschehen (History and Events) would find far more than three- quarters of a page. This textbook— sixty- one years later— offered extensive discussion of Nazi terror and the Holocaust, with five pages instructing students about “The Genocide of European Jews,” two pages on “Further Victims of Nazi Terror,” and two pages considering “The German Population and the Holocaust: Knew Nothing?” 2 Furthermore,

the ninth grader likely would have encountered the topic in other ways. The president of the Deutscher Lehrerverbandes (German Teachers Association), Josef Kraus, said in 2015, “National Socialism is a core topic of our history classes, and I would hope, for example, that every German pupil leaving school, after appropriate preparation and discussion, has visited a concentration camp.” 3 What a diff er ent textbook— what a diff er ent educational world— than the one that young Reichel experi