Transcending Moral and Emotional Engagement: The Use of Holocaust Heritage in Primary Education

Abstract

This chapter reflects on the tension between the aims of stimulating knowledge, remembrance and moral development that are often ascribed to Holocaust education through an analysis of the educational resources for primary education of the Westerbork Memorial Centre and the Junior Resistance Museum in the Netherlands. Using an analytical framework on the effects of different narrative and display strategies, de Bruijn identifies the various ways in which these resources foster emotional and moral engagement and how that impacts the opportunities for acquainting pupils with multiple perspectives. He argues that it would be useful to encourage pupils to study processes of cultural memory in order for Holocaust education to contribute both to a stronger knowledge of this history and to skills of democratic citizenship.