Perceived Moral Lessons Derived From Holocaust Learning Program

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The Second World War (1939-1945) is considered to have been one of the largest, most important and influential historical events for humanity in the twentieth century. Possibly it is also the most terrible of all. During the war and especially between 1941-1945 another horrifying and despicable event occurred – The Jewish Holocaust. It was a premeditated and systematic murder of more than six million Jews perpetrated by the Nazis under the leadership and vision of their leader, the Fuhrer, Adolph Hitler. The aim of this research was to identify the moral lessons that the students perceived they had learned from their Holocaust Learning Program.102 participants male and female, students in three Israeli high-schools responded to the Perceived Lessons Learned Questionnaire at the end of the program. The results revealed that the highest level of agreement in the perceived lessons list was assigned to the lesson "it is important to learn about the moral dilemmas of the Holocaust". The results for the different categories of moral lessons indicate the extent of agreement with "humanist-liberal" moral lessons was much higher in comparison with the extent of agreement with "nationalist-utilitarian moral lessons. In addition, significant differences were found between boys and girls in relation to the extent of agreement with "nationalist-utilitarian" lessons. Boys expressed a significantly higher extent of agreement than the girls with these lessons.