Report reveals troubling pattern of Holocaust minimisation in Irish textbooks

Irish school textbooks exhibit troubling patterns of Holocaust minimisation, Jewish stereotypes, and one-sided views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to a report published by the nonprofit organisation IMPACT-se.

IMPACT-se, the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education, analysed the Irish national curriculum, specifically examining how Jews and Israel are represented in Irish school textbooks.

This is the first report conducted by IMPACT-se on a European national curriculum, as it has previously focused primarily on Middle Eastern textbooks.

One significant concern in IMPACT-se’s findings is the trivialisation of the Holocaust in national textbooks. For instance, a history textbook refers to the Auschwitz death camp as a “prisoner of war camp,” which IMPACT-se states “minimises the unique and horrific nature of the Holocaust and the systematic extermination carried out there.”

Additionally, the same textbook describes the Holocaust as “the systematic destruction of the Jewish race,” which, according to IMPACT-se, perpetuates the inaccurate Nazi belief that Jews constitute a race rather than an ethnoreligious group. This notion, rooted in Nazi ideology, informed their eugenic practices and is described by IMPACT-se as “reductive, inaccurate, and offensive.”

The report highlights issues beyond Holocaust representation, pointing to troubling portrayals of Jews and Judaism in a Christian religious and historical context. In one textbook for younger students, a comic strip about Jesus shows a group of people who dislike him, depicted with visibly Jewish attire, such as a tallit and kippah. IMPACT-se notes that this portrayal aligns with antisemitic stereotypes that have historically blamed Jews collectively for the death of Jesus.

IMPACT-se stresses that such portrayals risk creating subconscious associations between Jewish people and wrongdoing in young, impressionable readers, which runs counter to educational values of tolerance and empathy.

The report also finds a strong bias in educational materials about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with narratives often favouring Palestinian perspectives. In one instance, a textbook presents a case study that describes Israeli soldiers as aggressors, which could foster misconceptions about Israel’s actions and role. IMPACT-se also criticises the historical misrepresentation of Israel as “Palestine” in contexts that predate the term’s common use, such as during the life of Jesus, when the region was known as Judea.

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