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Israel Debates Holocaust Education For First Graders

The proposal by Israel's education minister to introduce the Holocaust into the first-grade curriculum has sparked an ethical debate about the role these studies play in shaping Israeli society.
A battered teddy bear belonging to Ina Rennert, a 75-year-old Holocaust survivor, is displayed with a picture of her as a child at the Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum in Jerusalem April 17, 2011. Rennert had handed over to Yad Vashem for safekeeping the toy she says she once clung to as a little girl while hiding from the Nazis in Poland during World War Two. Thousands of aging Israeli survivors have answered a call by Yad Vashem to hand in Holocaust-era keepsakes to preserve their memory for future gen
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It is almost impossible to understand the contemporary Israeli experience without assessing the central role played by Holocaust remembrance. The Holocaust is such a constant presence in the contours of Israeli society that it would be difficult to find any area where it has not left its mark. Consider this paradox: The more time passes, the greater place the destruction of European Jewry has in the conscience of Israelis, and the more intensely it affects them. Very often it even determines how they think and impacts their views about the rest of the world.

How should people relate to the Holocaust 70 years on? How much should we allow it to shape our lives today?

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