A United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization study published last month found large gaps in the ways that Jewish history is taught in Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland and Spain, as well as a dearth of information in those curricula about contemporary Jew-hatred.
“Antisemitism today is either not treated in textbooks (of Hungary, Lithuania or Greece, for example) or only marginally (of Denmark, Spain and Poland, for example),” per the study. “In some cases, learning materials stress the continuity between historical and contemporary antisemitism by framing contemporary human rights legislation as a post-war response to the persecution and murder of Jews in the Holocaust.”
“Contemporary antisemitism is most commonly addressed in the context of hate crimes or prejudice,” it adds.
Dr. Peter Carrier, of the Georg Eckert Institute in Germany who was part of the three-person team that ran the study, told JNS that he knew “roughly what we might find,” but the team developed a questionnaire to “cover every possible eventuality.”
“It’s essential to be open to surprises,” he said. “And there were a few surprises.”
One finding that caught the team off guard was the lack of guidance from governing authorities about the curricula.
“There’s an amazing lack of coherence and very little information about Jewish history in state curricula,” he told JNS. “What there is is piecemeal and not systematic. Not thought through and not coordinated between different countries.”
Katharina von Schnurbein, European Commission coordinator on combating antisemitism and fostering Jewish life, told JNS that the study “can give educators and policymakers important indications of what they need to address in order to close the gaps in textbooks and curricula” to better teach “accurate and meaningful information about the Holocaust,” to show “Jewish agency in history” and to address “contemporary forms of antisemitism in a coherent manner.”
The commission supported the study financially via its partnership with UNESCO. “We trust that this tool, paired with the outreach by UNESCO, will support educators in a concrete and effective way,” von Schnurbein told JNS. (JNS sought further comment from von Schnurbein about the study’s findings.)
Not same wavelength
The European textbooks in question are meant to cover world history, so Jewish history wasn’t meant to be a focus. But Carrier told JNS that the texts strongly emphasize monotheism.
“So ancient history, ancient Israel. Then a little bit about the Middle Ages. But early modern times, even modern times—19th century—is very weak or missing completely,” he said. “Then we jump into the 20th century.”
That means, he told JNS, that the textbooks instruct students about Judaism in biblical times, and “then we zoom through the following 18 centuries and land in the 20th century with the Holocaust and Israel.”
“There needs to be more meat put on the bones,” he said, “between those two historical poles.”
Some textbook approaches are mixed bags, like “eclectic” Hungarian textbooks, according to Carrier. “They’re not all on the same wavelength,” he said.
Hungarian texts draw a “very simplistic” division between medieval Christians and Jews, but set the modern conflict in the Middle East in the context of the Cold War, which is a “very, very reasonable thing to do to add complexity to understanding,” Carrier told JNS.
Carrier thinks those subtleties reflect more on individual textbook authors than on the attitudes of state governments. He and his colleagues found more coherence in France, which has a centralized education system, he said.
The countries studied cooperated for the most part, but the work was mainly done by individual authors and scholars, who pored over textbooks in their home countries. There was little coordination with governmental bodies, according to Carrier.
There were some workshops urging ministries to “take account of Jewish history and antisemitism more, particularly in the political situation today,” Carrier told JNS.
“They are always willing to let those take place,” he said. “But there are tensions, to put it politely, and also within the delegations. There is great willingness to take part, but reluctance to follow the UNESCO line” to increase and study representations of Jewish history.
“There is resistance to that because of their very polemicized attitudes to Jewish history and what’s going on at the moment,” he said.
Polemic, resistance
Those attitudes led to a delay in the study’s publication when “a bunch of national delegates from educational ministries, who sit in Paris,” where UNESCO is based, held it up, according to Carrier.
“UNESCO didn’t tell us the details of what resistance was posed to the publication,” he said.
Carrier told JNS that he thinks Poland and Hungary “were complaining a bit about some of the content.”
The study authors recommended presenting Jewish history as an integral part of European history, moving beyond portraying Jewish people only as victims, adding Jewish voices—including those of women and girls—across historical periods and ensuring that visual materials don’t reinforce and reproduce antisemitic stereotypes.
The researchers warned that current textbooks, which lack focus on modern issues, can leave students with the impression that antisemitism is only a problem of the past. Only about 10% of the textbooks that they analyzed address contemporary Jew-hatred, they said.
UNESCO stated that there are examples in the textbooks of “how inclusive, empathetic and insightful content can stimulate new ways of engaging with Europe’s Jewish life and history.”
UNESCO also published a handbook with practical guidance for addressing antisemitism in the classroom.
The document encourages using “authentic, personal stories to humanize experiences and challenge prejudice.” It also recommends “intercultural dialogue and engaging with Jewish heritage” to encourage students to overcome “bias and build bridges between communities.”
It also focuses on media literacy to combat online disinformation.
The publications are a part of UNESCO’s project on Addressing Antisemitism through Education, which began in 2023 and, the agency says, has trained more than 1,300 educators and policymakers across Europe.
