Holocaust Learning and Morality E-Book

Shay Efrat

• Herausgeber: BooxAi
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

The research presented in this book is an innovating attempt to examine Holocaust Learning Programs and their influence on the formation of moral attitudes among Jewish-Israeli high school students. It aspires to fill a gap in knowledge relating to two major questions: the first is what do Israeli high school students think about the way in which Jews coped with the moral dilemmas that they faced during and after the Holocaust? The second question is what effect present Holocaust learning programs in high school have on the formation of students’ moral attitudes.  Therefore the main aim of the research is to identify the level of agreement or disagreement with the different moral behaviors of Jews during and after the Holocaust among Israeli high school students who participated in a Holocaust Learning Program, and in addition to examine what moral lessons they may have gained from this learning.

About the author:
Dr. Shay Efrat, the author of the book, is a social psychologist and psycho-historian of the Holocaust living in Israel. He has developed a unique Holocaust learning program entitled "Holocaust, society and morality", based on consideration of moral dilemmas. He is also the author of the book I survived to tell my story.

Leseprobe

Holocaust learning and morality

Shay Efrat

Holocaust learning and morality

All rights reserved

Copyright © 2021 by Shay Efrat

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Publihsed by BooxAi

ISBN: 978-965-577-916-5

Holocaust learning and morality

Shay Efrat

preface byGideon Greif

Edited byNaomi Goldstein Yalin

Translated byNaomi Goldstein Yalin

Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface to the research conducted by Shay Efrat

Abstract

Introduction

Chapter 1- Literature Review

1.1 The Holocaust as a critical historical event

1.2 The concept of morality

1.3 Morality in psychology research

1.4 Jewish moral dilemmas during and after Jewish Holocaust

1.5 Jewish Holocaust in Israeli education

Chapter 2- Methodology

2.1 Introduction

2.2 Research aims

2.3 Research methods

2.4 Ethics

Chapter 3- Results

3.1 Study 1: Students’ initial moral attitudes at the beginning of The Holocaust Learning Program

3.2 Study 2- The evolution of moral attitudes

3.3 Study 3 - Perceived influences and lessons learned

3.4 Study 4 –Associations between moral attitudes and moral lessons

3.5 Study 5 –The experiences of Holocaust learning

Chapter 4- General Discussion and Conclusions

4.1. Overview of our main results and conclusions

4.1 Contributions of the present thesis

4.3 Research limits

4.4 Future directions of investigation

4.5 Future directions of Holocaust learning

References

Appendices

Acknowledgments

First I would like to thank Professor Adriana Baban, my Scientific Coordinator, for her professional and wise guidance. In addition, I would like to thank Professor Sebastian Pintea and Professor Gideon Greif for their professional help and support.

I would like to express my gratitude to the internal committee members: Professor. univ. Dr. Adrian Opre, Lector. univ. Dr. Eva Kallay and Lector. univ. Dr. Robert Balazsi for the evaluation of my progress over the years.

Gratitude is also due to the staff of "AD Atid Lekidum" for their friendship and advice.

I would like to express my thanks, gratitude and appreciation to the research participants who provided the data for my study.

Last but by no means least, I am most grateful for the support of my beloved family throughout this journey, and especially to my wife Molly who joined me on this fascinating exploration.

Preface to the research conducted by Shay Efrat

The following preface, written by Professor Gideon Greif, relates to the question whether it is morally permissible and worthwhile from an educational and pedagogical point of view to undertake research on the moral dilemmas faced by the Jews during the Holocaust.

"Dealing with the ‘morality’ of victims – all types of victims – is problematic by its very nature. It is more natural to talk about the "morality" of the criminals and murderers – the Nazi-Germans and their principal crime: the Holocaust that they inflicted on the Jewish people and other people from 1933 to 1945. If we do not remember this, we shall do a severe injustice to the victims, and this is something that cannot be permitted. The morality, or more accurately, the immorality of criminals is what should head the list of priorities in any discussion on morality and conscience.

The Holocaust placed the individual and the collective Jewish community in unprecedented extreme, extraordinary and exceptional human situations. Now, 70 years later it is perhaps possible to discuss these situations in order to consider how we should act in similar situations. Naturally, even this determination is very problematic, since no historical situation is exactly replicated. Circumstances, backgrounds and situations alter from moment to moment, and what happened yesterday will not occur today or tomorrow. It is in this spirit that we should see the research conducted by Shay Efrat. The consideration of moral questions and dilemmas discussed in the research does not in any way taint the Holocaust victims, the Jews. Furthermore, it does not lessen the enormity of the German crimes.

However, there is educational value in discussing questions of human behavioral practices in extreme situations, in order to examine ourselves, to think about these situations close-up, to try to reconstruct a particular historical reality and perhaps to come closer to the victims and to identify with them.

Thankfully, we do not need to cope with the issues that faced the Jews through the years of the Holocaust. They were forced to decide – sometimes within minutes – fateful matters, concerning their families and children, those most precious to them. In most cases they did not have essential information; they had no relevant empirical knowledge of any kind and no-one to consult. Each Jew had to make these fateful decisions, whatever they might be, by themselves; each individual and his conscience, each with his world of morals and values. We therefore relate to the research and the questions that it poses as a workshop on human behavioral sciences – and no more than that.

This is not a judgmental workshop, nor is anyone being put on trial. Anyone who has not faced similar situations should not be quick to judge others; nobody will authorize us to do so. The moral dilemmas that were raised in this research were drafted out of respect and admiration for the masses of Jews, who were humiliated, tortured and murdered cruelly and intentionally by the German Nazis and their collaborators".

Professor Gideon Greif, Givatayim, Israel, December, 2014

Abstract

The research is an innovating attempt to examine Holocaust Learning Programs and their influence on the formation of moral attitudes among Jewish-Israeli high school students. It aspires to fill a gap in knowledge relating to two major questions: the first is what do Israeli high school students think about the way in which Jews coped with the moral dilemmas that they faced during and after the Holocaust? The second question is what effect present Holocaust learning programs in high school have on the formation of students’ moral attitudes. Therefore the main aim of the research is to identify the level of agreement or disagreement with the different moral behaviors of Jews during and after the Holocaust among Israeli high school students who participated in a Holocaust Learning Program, and in addition to examine what moral lessons they may have gained from this learning.

Due to the fact that this research subject has not been investigated or clearly defined in previous research, an exploratory approach was chosen. The research is a longitudinal survey combining mixed methods. It was conducted in three high-schools in Israel and included 102 participants. It lasted from January 2015 until January 2016 over a period of two academic years, when the students were in the middle of Grade11 until they reached the middle of Grade 12.

Research procedure included attitudes’ measurement at three points in time during this period: January 2015, September 2015 and January 2016. At these times participants filled in a "Moral Attitudes Questionnaire" relating to 14 moral dilemmas. Participants were asked to relate to each dilemma by choosing between two alternative solutions - solutions based on deontological morality in contrast to solutions based on survival morality. In January 2016, at the end of the research, participants answered one more questionnaire - the "Perceived Influences and Lessons Learned Questionnaire". In addition, thirteen of the questionnaire participants also participated in individual in-depth interviews. Main research results indicate that participants gradually increased their understanding towards the survival moral solutions that Jews had to take to stay alive during the Holocaust. They also gradually decreased their judgmental moral attitudes towards the "passive" resistance of the Jews to the Nazis. Following the presentation of the research results and conclusions, we propose a new model for Holocaust learning - the "Multidimensional Holocaust Learning Program".

Keywords: Holocaust Moral dilemmas, survival versus deontological moral solutions, Holocaust learning program, the journey to Holocaust memorial sites in Poland, Multidimensional Holocaust learning program.

Introduction

The Jewish Holocaust - the premeditated and systematic murder of more than six million Jews by the Nazis during World War II (1939-1945) is a very wide field of knowledge and research. It has been discussed, investigated, taught and learned from many perspectives and points of view over many years but there is still much more to learn regarding this terrible event (Browning, 2004; Farabstein, 2002; Goldhagen, 1998; Zimerman, 2013). One of the most interesting but less investigated aspects of the Holocaust is the moral perspective. From the Jewish point of view, morality is considered in relation to four main dimensions: the Nazis who exterminated the Jews, the governments and individuals who assisted the Nazis, the free world and especially the countries who fought against the Nazi Germany, who undertook or did not undertake actions to save the Jews and finally the Jews’ own actions in order to cope with the Holocaust. This research discusses moral aspects of the behavior of Jews, who were forced to cope with dilemmas caused by the Holocaust. The high-school students who participated in the research were asked to express their moral attitudes not as a judgment on the moral decisions taken by Jews during and after the Holocaust but as if they themselves faced identical dilemmas. The rationale for consideration of both Holocaust era dilemmas (1939-1945) and Post-Holocaust era dilemmas (1945-2016) was that these are two parts of one story and we need to look at both parts in order to understand the entire story.

The research subject was chosen for two main reasons: the first is my personal interest in the Jewish Holocaust, as a Jew and a family relative of both Holocaust victims and survivors. This interest has emotional as well as intellectual aspects. It stems from a deep emotional-moral sense of personal obligation to do something about the Holocaust which was created in my childhood and more acutely in adolescence during many conversations with my grandfather about what happened, mainly to our family, in the Holocaust.

The second reason is that in recent years during my professional work as a teacher with adolescents and college students, I have found that the study and discussion of ethical, moral and value-related questions in class, became very interesting and meaningful when related to Holocaust moral dilemmas.

The importance of this research subject derives firstly from the influence of the Holocaust on Jews and Israelis over the last decades. Throughout this time it continues to influence and occupy the Jewish people and the State of Israel in various ways - education, social, culture, political, national etc. (Guterman, Yablonka, & Shalev, 2008; Weiss, 2013; Weitz, 1997). Second importance derives from the continuing attempts mainly by the Ministry of Education in Israel to find new ways to teach the Holocaust to the young generations and to preserve its memory (Ministry of Education, 2015a). The universal importance of this research subject stems from the fact that the Jewish Holocaust is one of the darkest and perhaps one of the most despicable and horrifying chapters of World War II (Barley, 2007; Greif, Weitz & Macman, 1983). It is important for humanity to teach and learn about the Jewish Holocaust as a part of the terrible historical phenomena of genocides (Oron, 2006).

Over the years, various aspects of the Holocaust have been studied in many ways and from many points of view (Machman, 1998). However, the ways in which the Jews coped with the moral dilemmas they had to face during the Holocaust is not one of them. Public and academic discourse in Israel including school Holocaust learning usually tends to ignore or underestimate moral issues and specifically the Jews’ behavior in relation to moral dilemmas during and after the Holocaust (Aharonson, 1999; Weinrab, 1984).

Previous research studies on the Holocaust have not focused on the development of moral attitudes evolving through Holocaust learning and this subject has barely been explored (Mayseless & Solomon, 2005). The present research that investigates the consideration of moral dilemmas of the Holocaust as part of Holocaust learning and their effect on students’ moral attitudes is therefore an innovative attempt to bridge this gap of knowledge. Why did we choose to focus on the moral dilemmas? The answer is that moral dilemmas enable us to touch upon the very core of the Holocaust – the human emotions, thoughts and reactions of its victims and survivors. Furthermore, a deep understanding of moral dilemmas and decisions will help us widen our knowledge on human behavior in genocide events.

The decision to investigate the moral attitudes of high school students was based on the consideration that most of these young students learn the subject of Holocaust in Grades 11 and 12. Although these students are the third and fourth generation after the Holocaust they will carry on its memory in the future. The Holocaust Learning Program of the Ministry of Education includes chapters dealing with the causes of the rise of the Nazis in Germany, Nazi ideology, the Jewish Holocaust and World War II. This formal education program focuses on regular academic studies based mostly on textbooks, and is taught in history lessons during school studies (Ministry of Education, 2015). In addition, students are strongly encouraged to participate voluntarily in the organized youth heritage expeditions (journeys) to Holocaust extermination and memorial sites including ghettoes, extermination camps, memorials, synagogues and additional sites in Poland. The goal of the journey is to foster the students’ deep identification with the Holocaust and its victims (Lindenstrauss, 2012). The journey to Poland is the culmination of an educational and academic process, which lasts a full academic year and includes intensive preparation including academic studies, meetings with survivors/witnesses, visiting Holocaust museums and watching documentary and epic Holocaust films (Bitts, 2004; Bar Natan, 2004). Because all of the participants in this research took the Holocaust Learning Program and most of them (70%) also chose to participate in the journey to Poland the research investigated the outcomes of these two parallel axes of learning.

The main research question was how Israeli youth, who are members of the third and fourth generations after the Holocaust grasp the Holocaust from the Jewish moral perspective. Therefore, the main aim of this research is to explore the attitudes of Israeli youth towards the way Jews coped with the moral dilemmas of the Holocaust. The research participants were 102 Jewish-Israelis students aged 16-17 from three high-schools who volunteered to participate in the research. The study is a longitudinal survey investigating the participants’ learning process over a chronologic period of one year, from January 2015 until January 2016 and over a learning period of two academic years, from the middle of Grade11 until the middle of Grade 12. This is also an exploratory research since its deals with a new subject – the moral issues of the Holocaust, more specifically with the moral attitudes of the participants towards the Jews’ ways of coping with Holocaust moral dilemmas.

A mixed methods research was conducted in order to collect a wide range of data. A questionnaire investigating the participants’ moral attitudes towards Jewish moral dilemmas during and after the Holocaust was given to the participants at three points in time – January 2015 at the beginning of Holocaust learning, September 2015 in the middle of learning and January 2016 at the end of learning. The questionnaire related to 14 different Jewish moral dilemmas - seven from the Holocaust era (1939-1945) and seven from the post-Holocaust era (1945-2015). In addition, at the third point in time (January 2016) the participants filled out another questionnaire regarding perceived social and educational factors influencing their moral attitudes and perceived moral lessons they learned in their Holocaust studies. At this point 13 students also participated in an individual in-depth interview in order to deepen the researcher’s understanding of their thoughts and feelings following their learning.

Chapter 1- Literature Review

1.1 The Holocaust as a critical historical event

1.1.1 The main events of the Jewish Holocaust

"In the Holocaust, worlds collapsed, the world of the individual, family and the community, and all the conventional rules were broken: the rules for daily living and society, rules of morality and thought" (Faberstein, 2002, p. 133).

The Second World War (1939-1945) is considered as one of the beigest, 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 terrible despicable event occurred - the Holocaust suffered by the Jews and other people in Europe; the premeditated and systematic murder of more than six million Jews and other people from other races and nations by the Nazis under the leadership and vision of their leader, the Fuhrer, Adolph Hitler (Greif, Weitz & Macman, 1983). Hitler first outlined this vision in general lines in his infamous book, "Mein Kampf" (“My struggle” in German), first published in 1925 (Gunnar, 2000). The book was written when he was imprisoned for leading an attempted military coup to overthrow the German regime in November, 1923. From that point on, he tried to fulfill this vision using the power of the German nation. The Second World War gave him the opportunity and was the key to fulfill this ideological ambition (Heilbrunner & Zimerman, 1995).

Nazi Germany initiated the war in order to fulfill its vision of world domination. Above all, the Nazi regime sought to conquer territories in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to provide the German people with a "living space", but in fact, Nazis armed forces invaded many countries all over Europe and North Africa. Their plans involved political, economic and military considerations. The primary goal was to establish a New "Third Reich" – a German empire that was to rule Europe and, if possible, the entire world. As the "dominant world empire" Nazis consider themselves as entitled to overtake territories and economic resources by force. The new world order that would be created through war would consequently include the racial subordination of “inferior” races, especially the Slavs - the people living in Eastern Europe - to serve the “superior race”, the German people. A no less important goal was to ensure the victory of the "superior German Aryan race" in the “war of the races”, achieving world domination and exterminating “injurious” and “inferior” races. These races were primarily the Jews and secondly, the Romani people, both of whom were victims of Nazi ideology and were slated to be exterminated. Although the Nazis’ actions took the lives of many people from many nations, Jews were considered the main threat and were, therefore, the main target (Machman, 1998).

During the years 1941-1945, approximately 6,000,000 Jews and 300,000 Romani people were murdered by the Nazis solely for ideological reasons (Barley, 2007). Nazi plans for extermination were also aimed towards specific groups of German citizens – those people, who were found to be physically or mentally disabled according to medical standards. They were murdered in a special secret government operation, termed "Euthanasia" or under the code name "T-4", which took place in 1939-1941. Approximately 100,000 Germans including children were executed, using toxin shots (Snyder, 2012). These actions provide an accurate reflection of the Nazi regime’s implementation of their ideas in practice that were performed thoroughly, faithfully, and sometimes even happily by ordinary Germans (Goldhagen, 1998). In order to gain some understanding about how such monstrous actions could have happened, we should look at the main concepts of this ideology:

The superiority of the state over its citizens so that the individual is obliged to relinquish his own welfare and wishes (which are considered secondary to those of the state) for the benefit of the state, which he has a duty to serve with no questions even at the cost of his life.Complete and unquestionable obedience to authority and especially the supreme authority of the "Fuhrer" Adolf Hitler whose orders are stronger than any written law. From this perspective, the state and the "Fuehrer" are one and the same and any resistance or harm to the state and its laws, as embodied in the Fuehrer’s wishes and orders, is considered to be treason against the homeland.There is always a "struggle for survival" between races, however only the strong are worthy of living and the weak should die. The "Aryan" race – the German race - is the superior race on earth and consequently should dominate all other races and use the "inferior" races (mostly the Slaves) for its benefit, regardless of the welfare or wishes of those races. The "injurious" races – the Jews and the Romani peoples should be exterminated because they interrupt world order and balance. In order to maintain its superiority, the Aryan race should be sustained as a "pure" race without any unhealthy people, for example, physical handicaps and mental illness and disabled populations should also be exterminated.With regard to the Jews they are considered to be the most "injurious" race and the most terrible enemies of the "Aryan" race. They should therefore be completely obliterated, both physically and culturally from the face of the earth (Browning, 1992).

The murderers’ hostility towards the Jews which was such an important part of Nazi ideology derives from a combination of ancient murderous Christian anti-Semitism with racist concepts that developed during the 19th century in Germany. The Nazi innovation was that they enacted the realization of this combined ideology by attempting to exterminate the Jews during the Holocaust. In fact, this created a reversal of the moral dictate, “Thou shalt not kill” became “Thou shalt kill” and the shedding of Jewish blood became permissible by anyone in any place during that time in occupied Europe. The anti-Semitism that existed among the nations that Nazi Germany conquered served as a “gift” for the Nazis because they could easily enlist collaborators among the conquered populations to help them to murder the Jews – they permitted others to kill Jews and not be punished and even receive rewards for this. There were many people in the occupied countries that supported the Nazis’ policy towards the Jews whether by independent killing of Jews or by handing them over to the Nazis or by enlisting to units that acted under the Nazis to murder Jews. Nevertheless, it is important to note that although this help was important, it was not essential for the Nazis to fulfill their plans to eliminate the Jews. For the Nazi military personnel and police, the murder of Jews was an order that they had to perform whether or not they supported it. However, the fact is that the large majority of these people fulfilled the order without question and usually tried to excel in murdering Jews including women, children and babies. This happened despite the fact that those who wished to be relieved of the duty of participation in the murder of Jews could have done so and would not have been punished for this (Browning, 1992, 2004).

The racial war waged by Nazi Germany against the Jews lasted from January 1933, when the Nazis took power in Germany until the end of World War II in May 1945. The first to suffer were the Jewish citizens of Germany. On April 1st, 1933, only a few months after the Nazis took power, a boycott was declared on Jewish stores. This was followed by the legislation of the "Race Laws" and the denial of Jews’ civil rights in 1935 and with brutal attacks including the destruction of Jews’ property, killings. Then, in November 1938, during and after the "Kristallnacht" ("Crystal night") events, the Nazis conducted mass arrests of Jews, who were sent to "concentration camps".

At the outbreak of World War II, on September 1st, 1939, the Nazis expanded their war against the Jews outside German territories, at first mostly in Poland. Until 1941, the Nazi regime encouraged the emigration of Jews out of Germany, but following the German invasion of the USSR on June 22, 1941, the policy turned towards mass murder of the Jews (Zimerman, 2013). This policy developed gradually during the war until it became an immense extermination operation that spread through the many countries occupied by Nazi Germany. The program to exterminate all the Jews is usually referred to as “The Final Solution”. This program took the lives of approximately 6,000,000 Jews from all over Nazi occupied countries, including USSR, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Greece, Norway, The Netherlands, Belgium, France and North Africa. The actual murder took place in the main in occupied USSR and Poland. It is important to indicate that the German Nazis did not only murder the Jews; in the process that preceded the actual murder, they tortured them, starved them and humiliated them in many most evil and distorted ways (Goldhagen, 1998).

The Jews were murdered using various methods: at first from 1939 – 1941, mostly in Poland, Jews were confined in parts of towns known as “ghettos”, where they were subjected to intentional starvation and negation of minimal living conditions that caused mass mortality. At this time many Jews were also imprisoned and enslaved in "concentration" and “work” camps where they were forced to perform hard labor and were starved to death. From 1941 Jews were massacred systematically in mass shootings by special S.S "death squads" called “Einsatzgruppen” together with Nazi police units and locally recruited units from occupied territories mostly Ukrainians and Latvians. All these groups were aided by the Nazi army – the "Wehrmacht". These shooting massacres took place in the USSR, eastern Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and northern Romania (Bukovina). From 1942 -1944 Jews were murdered with poisonous gas in special extermination camps which were located primarily in Poland. The most famous extermination camp is "Auschwitz - Birkenau" in west Poland. The Jews were sent to these death camps from all over occupied Europe. From the fall of 1944, as a result of the Soviet "red army" advance from the east into occupied Poland and other Eastern Europe countries, many more Jews died as the Nazis herded them in "death marches". The "death marches" were long and arduous forced marches, almost without nourishment, from the hard labor camps and extermination camps in Eastern Europe (mainly Poland) into Germany. At that time and until the end of the war on 8 May 1945, many Jews died of starvation, illness and executions in the concentration camps that were still operating in Germany until the last days of the war. To sum up, the main stages of the extermination program in occupied Europe were:

Identification, marking and registration of Jews and denial of their civil rights (1939-1940).Expulsion of the Jews from their places of residence and enforced concentration in "ghettoes". This included the infliction of starvation and physical and mental exhaustion and anguish through enforced labor, abuse and humiliation (1940-1941).Organized and systematic extermination by shooting in the villages or towns where Jews were concentrated performed by "death squads" (1941-1942).Systematic extermination of the Jews with poisonous gas in special "death camps" which were located mostly in Poland (1942-1944).Extermination during the “death marches” and in the "concentration camps" in Nazi Germany (1944-1945) (Barley, 2007).

A question often asked is: "how could it happen". To answer this question, we should first look at it from the Jewish perspective - the way, in which the Jews coped with the Holocaust. Indeed, in the first years of the war Jewish leaders unwillingly obeyed the Nazi regime hoping that this cooperation would improve Nazi consideration of the Jews. The main reasons for this approach (Gutman, 1990a; Machman, 1998) included:

There had been a short lived German regime in Poland from 1917-1918 that had favored and been very positive for the Jews, and this fact together with the generally positive reputation of the Germans, led many Jews to believe that a new Nazi regime would also be positive despite the many worrying signs that had already appeared.The Jews had been accustomed to cooperate with gentile civilian governments for hundreds of years as the safest way to ensure their wellbeing and therefore they acted in the same way with the Nazis before they fully understood their true intentions.Even after the extermination began and the Jews understood the Nazis’ intentions, there were many leaders who believed that by cooperating and working for the Nazis, Jews could gain time until the Allies would defeat the Nazis in the war and that they would be rescued.The Jews continually hoped until the last moment that cooperation would help them to be saved and assumed that aggression towards the Nazis would lead to the Nazis losing patience and immediately harming them.In most places, the Nazis cruelly tortured and terrorized the Jews in different ways through starvation, forced labor, executions, degradations and abuse even before they began their full extermination program. Thus they reduced the Jews’ ability and desire to defend themselves when the mass exterminations began.The Nazis used many deceptive means and thus managed to deceive the Jews regarding their real intentions until the last moment; while the Jews "wanted" to believe the fictitious promises they were given.The Jewish population was an unarmed civilian population, untrained in warfare and without any military leadership. It faced a huge army and an evil terror mechanism that imprisoned it in ghettoes and made it difficult for them to conduct any independent action.The Jews’ adherence to their families meant that many of them who could escape or fight, chose to stay with their families until the bitter end.

Nevertheless, as Gutman (1990b) and Machman (1998) point out, it is very important to emphasize that many Jews did resist the Nazis in various ways, including armed rebellion. Approximately 250,000 Jews survived and were saved because they resisted and struggled to survive in any way they could, assisted by certain main factors:

Jewish education promoted a tradition of cohesion, mutual assistance and guarantee in times of distress.Belief in the ability of the Jewish people to survive despite many enemies over the generations with the help of Almighty God.The common desire to resist the Nazis and to prevent or at least disrupt the realization of their plans to exterminate the people of Israel.The belief that the Allies would eventually win the war.A strong desire to survive in order to document and tell about what had happened.A strong desire to wreak vengeance against the Nazis.

Now let us examine the question: "how could it happen?" from the Nazi perspective. As noted, the motivation for the genocide of an entire people stemmed from Nazi ideology. The orders for the mass murder of the Jews, the Romani people and other victims of Nazi ideology came from the highest Nazi officials and these orders were perceived by the Germans as the implementation of the wishes and policy of the Nazi party and regime, led by the "Führer", Adolf Hitler. Nevertheless, these orders were carried out by the entire German Nazi chain of command and at its lower end, by simple S.S. soldiers, policemen and regular army soldiers all of them contributing to the fulfilment of this ideology and policy in practice. The question of how they were able to morally justify their acceptance of and participation in the mass murder has not been satisfactorily answered till today (Mazower, 2015).

After the end of the war, in 1945-1946, trials of Nazi war criminals were held in the city of Nuremberg in Germany by the victorious allies – the Soviet Union, the United States, Great Britain and France. The accused were senior members of the Nazi regime and military forces. Some of them were sentenced to death and some were imprisoned. Hitler himself and other senior members of Nazi regime committed suicide at the end of the war. Nevertheless, most Nazis associated with the terrible war crimes were never put on trial (Kochavi, 2006). Although Nazi Germany was the driving force and the main factor in causing the Holocaust, it did not bear sole responsibility. It was supported by the regimes of its allies that cooperated with Nazi Germany and helped by individuals in many places that supported and even participated in the implementation of its deadly racist ideology. Fortunately, the alliance that opposed Nazi Germany won the war and stopped this terrible outbreak of madness and evil. Nazi ideology and military practice did not only hurt the ‘injurious’ races". Millions of Russian prisoners died in POW (Prisoners of War) camps. Millions of POWs from other countries and ordinary civilians died while performing forced slave labor. Additional millions of civilians died in wild but systematic destruction of towns and other settlements all over Europe. So how could it happen?! 70 years after the end of the war and despite vast research, there is still no clear answer to this disturbing question, but we can indicate that dictatorship, terror, racism, lack of morality and the people’s fear of standing up to resist these forces are essential components in creating this kind of universal tragedy (Mazower, 2015).

1.1.2 The historical-psychological context of the Holocaust for the Jewish people

Since the destruction of Jerusalem and the deportation of most of the Jewish people from ancient Israel by the Roman Empire in 73AD, there have been two more events that are seen by scholars as exceptional historical events in the history of the Jewish people. These events, or perhaps historical processes, are the Jewish Holocaust that occurred from 1939-1945 during the Second World War and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 (Gutman, 1983). The proximity of these two events is not random and there is a close affinity between them, although each holds a significant status of its own. From a chronological viewpoint, the establishment of the State of Israel occurred after the Holocaust and the Holocaust served as an important catalyst in the establishment of the new state. Therefore, it is not surprising that the Israeli Ministry of Education relates to this connection in its learning program and introduces the chapter on the establishment of the state immediately after the chapter on the Holocaust in its history textbooks (Guterman, 2008).

Although the Holocaust ended with the surrender of Nazi Germany on 9th May 1945, it continues to influence and occupy the Jewish people and the State of Israel in various educational, social, and cultural dimensions until today (Weitz, 1997). Thus too, the official establishment of the State of Israel on 14th May 1948, just three years after the end of the Holocaust, is a process that in a way has not ended until today. This is at least true in geo-political terms since the young state is under constant existential threat from some of its neighbor states (Klausner, 1975; Goren, 1997). This is exemplified by the fact that one day after the declaration of the establishment of the State of Israel on 15th May 1948, the armies of five Arab states, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon invaded the infant state and joined the Arab Palestinian “Liberation Forces” with the declared aim of wiping Israel off the face of the earth. Despite the changes which have occurred since then and the peace treaties that have been signed between Israel and two Arab states Egypt and Jordan, the Holocaust continues to serve as an inspiration for the evil designs of some states and organizations (Gelber, 2004). It is almost superfluous to note that until today there are some who still aspire to destroy the State of Israel and overtly declare this as their goal (Ben-Orveh, 1983; Lorach, 1976). In this context, it is also relevant to note that the Palestinian Arabs who lost their state in the War of Israeli Independence borrowed the concept “Holocaust” (in Arabic “Nakhba”) to describe their own catastrophe. They define their fall in the Israeli War of Independence as a national Holocaust and note its anniversary as a special commemorative day, remembering their defeat and raising black flags as a sign of mourning (Gelber, 2004; Machman, 1996a; Oron, 2003).

In order to discuss the issues raised by the Holocaust in the context of the State of Israel, it is necessary to understand how this context is seen in Jewish and Israeli perceptions. In terms of the present study, it is also important to note the significant influence of Jewish and Israeli conceptions of the Holocaust on educational approaches to Holocaust studies in Israel. In a broad national-historical conceptualization, the predominant view of the Jewish people sees the Holocaust as an additional event along the sequence of continuous attempts by different empires, peoples and dictators to harm and destroy the Jewish people and now also the State of Israel. This orientation traces the persecution of the Jews from the times of the Assyrians and Babylonians, through the Persians and Greeks and the Romans, to the Spanish Inquisition, the "pogroms" that massacred Jews in Eastern Europe and of course, the Holocaust perpetrated by German Nazis and their collaborators among the European nations. The modern-day aspirations of some states and terror organizations to destroy the State of Israel are seen by most Jews and Israelis as simply a current stage in this continuous process (Machman, 1996b).

1.1.3 Survivors and Israeli society’s dual trauma following the Holocaust

"A person who survived the Holocaust, believing that he had reached the very limit of suffering in the years of persecution and imprisonment in the hands of the Nazis, now becomes aware that suffering is infinite and that he is able to bear additional and even sharper suffering" (Frankl, 1981, p. 115).

This is how one Jewish survivor of the Auschwitz extermination camp, the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl described the emotional experience of a Holocaust survivor after his release. Many testimonies from the Holocaust testify that the victims in their last moments expressed one or both of the following requests: revenge against the Nazis and that the world would remember them and what happened to them (Frankl, 1981).

Those who did survive felt that they needed to fulfill these wishes of their dead relatives, but they also had a strong desire to rebuild their personal and family lives that had been destroyed. They felt the need to tell their personal, family and community story, but this was a secondary need at that time; first, they had to cope with the exhausting challenge of resuming their lives. Indeed, those who survived the Holocaust all went through terrible physical and mental suffering, in addition to their loss of most or even all of those who were dear to them. They survived, but the events that they had undergone left their mark on them and continued to influence them for their entire lifetimes. Despite the fact that the war ended in 1945, they had to continually cope with the memories and scars that they carried in their souls and bodies. Most of the survivors were very young, between the ages of 15-25, since older and younger Jews were the first to be murdered by the Nazis (Aharonson, 1992).

With the end of the war, survivors had to invest immense efforts to overcome the trauma they had experienced and most of them indeed succeeded. The majority of the survivors immigrated to Israel, established new families and became active and creative citizens who became engaged in social activity and achievements no less than the other residents of the state; however, others suffered from severe Post-Traumatic Syndrome and did not manage to overcome this malady. Even those who functioned well remained with mental scars that imposed subjective suffering for the rest of their lives and, of course, influenced their families and their close surroundings (Neuman, 2010).

Yet many of the survivors, like the public and medical institutions of Israel tended to ignore and even deny the influence of the Holocaust in a manner known in psychology as the initial and unhealthy response to loss. The young state established in 1948 was dominated by mixed feelings: on the one hand, a sense of guilt due to the lack of success in saving the Jews who had been massacred in Europe during the war, and on the other hand, prevalent opinions criticized the “surrender” of those Jews who “went like lambs to the slaughter” (Heskel, 2015). Later after the “Eichman trial” in 1961, a greater understanding developed towards the survivors. The "Eichman trial" was the court case against Adolf Eichman, the Nazi officer who was responsible for the logistics of the extermination of the Jews of Europe. He was caught in Argentina and brought to court in Israel. During the trial, the testimony provided by survivors was written up in full detail in the press and broadcast on the radio, so that Nazi crimes and the full extent of the horrors of the Holocaust became public knowledge (Machman, 1996b). Thus, for the first time the survivors’ suffering was awarded a sort of legitimization and many of them began to speak about what they had endured during the war. This change in attitudes was a positive change from a clinical psychology aspect, helping survivors to cope with their loss. With the exposure of the survivors’ experiences and stories, the dimensions of the mental anguish that they had undergone were revealed and clinical understanding of their state grew. These stages in the Israeli public’s attitudes towards the Holocaust during and shortly after the Holocaust are noted by Machman (1996b) and Heskel (2015):

Disbelief in the reality of the Holocaust.Guilt feelings about the insufficient aid provided to the Jews in Europe.Irrational anger at Jews who it seemed did not sufficiently resist the Nazis.Scorn for the survivors who were seen as weak and submissive in contrast to what were supposed to be the brave and militant “sabras” (native born Israelis).Lack of desire to listen to the terrible things that had happened to the survivors.

These reactions were “assisted” by a lack of real information and research on the Holocaust and its effects and by the fact that survivors did not talk about what had happened, or only a very few told their stories. The main factors for the survivors’ difficulty in talking about the Holocaust, especially before the "Eichman trial", included:

Guilt feelings due to the fact that they remained alive while their family perished.The fear that no one would believe them and that they would be ridiculed.Reactions of scorn, disbelief and derision by Israeli society.Fear of being accused of different acts that they did or did not do during the Holocaust.A sense that they needed to focus on the present and to leave the past behind as something less important.Psychological defense mechanisms – repression, rejection, denial.A sense of shame and guilt feelings regarding matters that they were forced to do during the Holocaust.A desire to protect children and other family members from the horrors of the past.Difficulty to turn the mental resources that they need in order to reconstruct their lives, to the telling of their stories about the Holocaust.Difficulties involved in expressing themselves in writing and orally in Hebrew.

All these factors led to misunderstandings in Israel concerning the actual events and experiences of the Holocaust.