The Evolution Of Moral Atitudes Towards Post Holocaust Moral Dilemmas

Abstract

The term "Jewish Holocaust" relates to the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis in Europe during World War II. This paper presents significant results regarding the evolution of Israeli high-school students' attitudes towards post-Holocaust moral dilemmas faced by the Jewish people after the Holocaust. The aim of this research was to test whether a Holocaust Learning Program generated changes in the participant's moral attitudes. 102 participants – male and female students in three Israeli high-schools, answered a Moral Attitudes Questionnaire, administered at three points of time over a period of a one-year Holocaust Learning Program at school. The results revealed that the evolution of the participants' moral attitudes towards Post-Holocaust era moral dilemmas only demonstrated significant change for category 5a - "Consideration of revenge and compromise", where their agreement with the affective-intuitive moral solution decreased significantly, and for category 6a -"The perception of the Holocaust as a historical event", where their agreement with the Universal moral solution decreased significantly. One of the main conclusions is that continuous learning and deeper understanding of the Holocaust, through learning, led participants to become more emotionally involved but they also acquired more understanding of the complexity and difficulty involved in making moral decisions in the reality of the Holocaust. This combination of factors led to a greater understanding and acceptance of the way that Jewish people coped with the horror and moral challenges of the Holocaust.