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The Holocaust as history and human rights: A cross-national analysis of Holocaust education in social science textbooks, 1970–2008

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Abstract

This article examines Holocaust education in secondary school social science textbooks around the world since 1970, using data coded from 465 textbooks from 69 countries. It finds that books and countries more connected to world society and with an accompanying emphasis on human rights, diversity in society and a depiction of international, rather than national, society are more likely to discuss the Holocaust. Additionally, textbooks from Western countries contain more discussion of the Holocaust, although the rate is increasing in Eastern European and other non-Western countries, suggesting eventual convergence. We also find a shift in the nature of discussion, from a historical event to a violation of human rights or crime against humanity. These findings broadly support the arguments of neo-institutional theories that the social and cultural realms of the contemporary world are increasingly globalized and that notions of human rights are a central feature of world society.

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Notes

  1. For more about the forum, see http://www.manskligarattigheter.gov.se/stockholmforum/2000/conference_2000.html.

  2. The book had to include the exact phrase “human rights” (or a translation of it).

  3. Our hierarchical model consists of textbook (level 1) and country (level 2) equations. The constant of the textbook-level equation and the effect of publication date are modeled as functions of country characteristics. Thus, the interpretation of the constant is of utmost importance. We constructed the variables such that the constant in the textbook-level equation should be interpreted as the estimated likelihood that a textbook that is average on all independent variables will discuss the Holocaust. We accomplished this through grand-mean centering of all textbook-level variables. The equations for our final model (Model 4) were:

    (1) Log odds of Mentioning Holocaust = β0 + β1(High Grade, 11-13) + β2(N. Pages, log) + β3(History) + β4(Publication Date) + β5(Human Rights) + β6(Diversity) + β7(Internationalization) + rij

    (2) β0 = γ00 + μ0j

    (3) β4 = γ10 + γ11(Communist or Post-Communist) + γ11(Non-West, Non-Communist) + μ0j.

  4. The data lines in Figs. 1, 2, and 3 have been smoothed using a 10-year running average.

  5. The original French text is: Alors que la France est le pays des droits de l’homme, qu’elle se singularise dans le monde par sa tradition d’accueil des étrangers, pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, sans attendre les ordres de l’occupant nazi, le gouvernement de Vichy a collaboré à l’extermination des Juifs d’Europe. Pourquoi et comment cette politique a-t-elle été possible?

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305, USA

    Patricia Bromley & Susan Garnett Russell

Authors
  1. Patricia Bromley
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  2. Susan Garnett Russell
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Patricia Bromley.

Additional information

A version of the hierarchical linear model included in this paper was developed for a related project in a seminar conducted by Anthony Bryk, whose comments were most helpful. Work on this paper was funded by a grant from the Spencer Foundation (200600003). The paper benefited from the related studies of members of Stanford’s Comparative Workshop. We are particularly grateful to John Meyer and Francisco Ramirez for their comments. The study was possible only because of the impressive textbook collection of the George Eckert Institute, in Braunschweig, and the extraordinarily helpful assistance of Brigitte Depner and her staff. In addition, we thank individual colleagues who helped us collect textbooks, including Dijana Tiplic, Suk Ying Wong, Rennie Moon, David Suárez, Marine Chitashvili, Pepka Boyadjieva, Shushanik Makaryan, Marika Korotkova, Gili Drori, Sandra Staklis, Marina Andina, Jaime Quevedo, Nii Addy, Magdalena Gross, and Rebecca Taylor.

Appendices

Appendix A

See Table 2.

Table 2 List of textbooks by country over time
Full size table

Appendix B

See Table 3.

Table 3 Countries discussing the Holocaust and Holocaust as human rights violation
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Bromley, P., Russell, S.G. The Holocaust as history and human rights: A cross-national analysis of Holocaust education in social science textbooks, 1970–2008. Prospects 40, 153–173 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-010-9139-5

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