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Private: Belgium: very insufficient Holocaust education!

09/03/2023

Article published in jforum.fr on the 19th of June 2022.

CEJI Director Robin Sclafani presents the national report on government measures to combat anti-Semitism and encourage Jewish life.
Anti-Semitism: report calls on Belgium to better teach the Shoah
The Director of CEJI (Jewish Contribution to an Inclusive Europe) presented the project NOA – Networks Overcoming Antisemitism. This project assesses, through a partnership of leading Jewish organisations, the policies of EU Member States in all areas and helps them to develop holistic national action plans to combat antisemitism and promote Jewish life. The conclusion of the report calls for the fact that, overall, the Belgian State has done little to combat antisemitism as a specific type of racism. The report calls for targeted interventions and greater public efforts. The area where policies scored lowest by far was education.

“There is no official guidance on antisemitism. The Shoah is taught, but not in a consistent way. There are students who have never been told about the Shoah. On the French side, there are new laws to cover Nazism that will be put in place in the coming years,” says Robin Sclafani, who admits that teachers find it difficult to deal with students who dispute the facts. “Teachers need to be better trained. We need to know how to teach anti-Semitism through contemporary Holocaust education.

To counteract this conclusion, recommendations were proposed. Among them, firstly, the appointment of a national coordinator for the fight against antisemitism and the promotion of Jewish life and the provision of the necessary support for the implementation of the policy. Furthermore, it is recommended to establish a sustainable inter-ministerial working group to facilitate communication and cooperation within the government, as well as a sustainable and participatory national round table of stakeholders to facilitate communication and cooperation with civil society organisations to implement national action plans to combat racism and antisemitism.

An interdisciplinary research consortium is also recommended to generate knowledge to inform policy making in order to help prevent and combat antisemitism and promote Jewish life. And finally, financial and human resources are requested to ensure the sustainable implementation of these general measures.

Find the original article here: https://www.jforum.fr/belgique-tres-insuffisant-pour-lenseignement-de-la-shoah.html