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This lecture is one of a series of ten lectures that will focus on education in times of national disasters and calamity in Jewish History. These online lectures are held in conjunction with Sydney University’s Department of Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies and Mandelbaum House.

This week’s lecture will focus on teaching the Holocaust in the post-survivor age.

Currently, the history of the Holocaust provides both the historical and conceptual grounding for a variety of education programmes internationally. In recent years, this ‘watershed event’ has also become a touchstone for a subfield of educational initiatives that seek to teach civics and citizenship, highlight contemporary instances of discrimination and injustice, and advocate for human rights. While diverse in both approach and content, one question that all Holocaust and related education programmes must confront is how they will utilise this largely cruel and nihilistic history to cultivate citizens and societies embodying its very opposite. Such a stark contrast between content and goals highlights the difficulties inherent in bringing the complexities of the past to bear on the needs of the present. It also raises questions as to the efficacy and ethics of doing so. In this session, we will address these and related questions, asking what the future of Holocaust education might look like, a poignant and pressing question as we witness the passing of the survivor generation.

Dr Avril Alba is a senior lecturer in Holocaust studies and Jewish civilization and Chair of the Department of Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. She teaches and researches in the areas of Holocaust memory and representation and has also curated several major exhibitions on these topics. Her most recent publication is a co‐edited collection with Shirli Gilbert, Holocaust Memory and Racism in the Postwar World (2019).