The Holocaust has come to present an important challenge for research and teaching, not just in history departments, but also in other academic disciplines such as psychology, literature, sociology, education and theology. It would be impossible to give a complete overview here, so I will restrict myself first of all to courses offered in history departments at German universities during the past five years. After all, it is there that most of the future teachers whose task it will be to inform pupils about this subject receive their training.

In this lecture I will refer 1) to the necessity of integration of new research, 2) the challenge of different political cultures in Germany, 3) and give one suggestion on the integration of new research.

In Germany a significant number of universities offer a wide range of courses on National Socialism. There are also institutions, however, that provide rather scant instruction. Let us take the example of Berlin’s Free University, one of the institutions that offers a very large concentration of courses in contemporary history. During the past five years or ten semesters, members of the Departments of History, Political Science and Eastern European Studies have taught some 110 courses on varying aspects of National Socialism. This is in addition to courses on anti-Semitism and Jewish Studies with some thematic overlaps. Of the 110 courses, about twenty focused on the Second World War and the Holocaust.

I would venture to guess that at almost all universities most lectures, seminars and reading courses on the different aspects of National Socialism do not explicitly address National Socialist extermination policy and the mass murder itself. The overwhelming majority focus on National Socialist ideology, everyday life under National Socialism, resistance, the national community, the persecution of the Jews after 1933, social policy, the Home Front, occupation policy, the conduct of war or repression in general. The study of the Holocaust is, therefore, presented as a part of a much bigger picture.

1) This finding is not all that surprising, since in Germany, both East and West, the scholarly treatment of the murder of the European Jews began quite late. Scholarship and public debate concentrated on the questions of the origins and causes of National Socialism, and the war and genocide were long neglected. Particularly during the past few years, however, mainly younger historians have begun new research projects that study the concrete conduct of the Germans and the underlying motive forces in the individual regions of Central and Eastern Europe. They have situated National Socialist extermination policy in the context of occupation policy in Europe. They have expanded and deepened the available knowledge about the Holocaust enormously. The mass extermination is no longer a hidden event that took place somewhere far away in Eastern Europe.

A knowledge of the situation in the various European countries under German occupation, and of the attitudes and conduct of their populations towards the occupiers and persecuted Jews is of great significance for an understanding of how the Holocaust was able to function in the first place. It is evident that Germans and other antisemites executed the Holocaust. It is as evident that the gentile bystanders across Europe made the Holocaust possible. This is the theme of the social context of the Holocaust. It is at the front of international research. And it is here that researchers and teachers could and should work together.

How difficult but also promising international workshops in this field can be is illustrated by a meeting between a group of recently graduated future secondary school history teachers from West Germany and Lithuanian and Polish colleagues. The meeting took place in the Polish town of Wlodowa, close to the former Sobibor extermination camp. Themes included how the history of the Holocaust was conveyed in the different countries. The German participants found it difficult to understand the at times heated controversies, particularly among the Polish teachers, over the Jewish theme, because they knew nothing about the history of Jews in Poland before the Second World War and under the German occupation.

An enormous gap has arisen between what specialists know about the Holocaust and what can be conveyed in individual university courses. This poses new challenges for the academic teaching of contemporary history, and those who have been involved in this new research must be given the opportunity to bring their knowledge and qualifications into university teaching. The training of future history and social studies teachers should continue to emphasize an understanding of the conditions under which National Socialism emerged. The National Socialist elimination and persecution of political opponents also remains a highly important theme. Only in this context can the conditions and dimensions of the murder in Central and Eastern Europe become comprehensible. A central task for university teaching on the Holocaust is to synthesize the findings of highly specialized scholarship and to make the most important sources accessible in order to create a basis for classroom study.

2) Apart from the changes in approaches to the Holocaust occasioned by the ever-growing temporal distance from the events, we also face a second challenge in Germany, that of two separate political cultures. GDR historiography propounded the idea that even National Socialism’s racist policies of terror and extermination were designed solely to bolster German imperialism’s (that is, German industry’s) plans for conquest and domination. Accordingly, the extermination of Europe’s Jews was perceived as a mere ‘manifestation’ of German imperialism. The universities in the former East Germany therefore are only gradually beginning to offer courses in this field. During the past five years, the Department of History at Martin Luther University at Halle-Wittenberg offered fifteen courses on National Socialist themes, of which two were explicitly devoted to the Holocaust. These are far outnumbered by courses that address the GDR past. This is presumably not an isolated case. Conservative nationalist or rightwing historians and political scientists in the Federal Republic have also been developing a new type of subtile revisionism that attacks what they see as an excessive preoccupation with National Socialist crimes by dismissing it as ‘popular pedagogy’ (Volkspädagogik). It seems that they are celebrating their victory over the communism.

3) The German universities possess autonomy in both research and teaching. The regulations governing study and examinations mandate no canon of courses to be absolved. According to one experienced university instructor in Berlin, it is quite conceivable that 50% or more of history students leave the university without taking a course on the Holocaust. Another professor pointed out that almost every German city has extramural initiatives, institutions of adult education, church-run academies and the like that regularly offer relevant lectures, seminars and exhibitions, often with academic support, so that any interested student has ample opportunity to inform him- or herself in this area. This may well be true, but it is no substitute for academic study. The challenges for teachers today and in the future to be well prepared for discussions based on reasoned argument are and will be tremendous.
Certainly, it would not be desirable to introduce a regulation forcing all history teacher students to take a seminar on National Socialism or the Holocaust. A ‘Holocaust requirement’ would be counterproductive and clearly also unnecessary. An historian from the Humboldt University in Berlin recently said that in his experience, there was a great need and desire for information. Last semester, eighty students attended his seminar on the Holocaust.

The ministries of education could, however, remind future teachers of the particular importance of dealing with this subject for their later professional duties. The individual universities could support this endeavor by offering a diverse range of courses in contemporary history oriented towards the latest research in the field, which would naturally be open to students of other departments as well and facilitate interdisciplinary study.