Program Launched for Having Holocaust Taught in Sweden’s Schools

The Swedish Jewish community has projected a broad-based educational program on the Holocaust that it hopes to have integrated into Sweden’s general school system. The program will be based on a successful year-long educational effort led by the Swedish Jewish community during the past year.

The program, outlined in a report to the European office in Paris of the American Jewish Committee by Jeff Schatz of the Swedish Jewish community, would enlarge understanding among Swedish public opinion and in the school system of the Jewish cause and of the dangers of neo-Nazism; stress the permanent moral and political lessons to be learned from the Holocaust, including the link between the Holocaust and Israel’s right to exist; and inform pupils about the history of the Jews in Sweden and about Judaism in general.

The program carried out during the past year coincided with showing on Swedish television of the American TV series, “Holocaust.” The report points out that the educational and other materials produced had a tremendous impact on Swedish students and on public opinion generally in the country. Not only was their greater understanding developed of what happened to European Jewry, the report states; but the danger of neo-Nazism were brought home.

“The only negative responses came from small neo-Nazi groups that tried to spread anti-Semitic materials during the duration of the project,” the report noted. However, the interest of schools, libraries and the press has been tremendous, the report stated, adding that many papers were written in school classes on the Holocaust.