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different conceptual and narrative types. 34 While Hitler is a central trope in education about
the Holocaust in almost all countries, for example, meta-historical explications of individual
and social memories and politically motivated commemorations of the event generally
feature only in western European textbooks. These ‘scales of reference’ 35 are evidently not
homogenous but rather heterogeneous, and involve complex overlapping combinations
of dates, authorial viewpoints, contextualizations and protagonists. Thus, although the
Holocaust is an increasingly global point of historical reference in curricula and textbooks,
it is not presented globally in the same way. Defining and comparing scales in this study
therefore helps to show how precisely the Holocaust is represented worldwide.
The report proceeds first by recording the status of the Holocaust as found in curricula.
Concepts diverge not only from one language to another, but also from one historical
context to another. We may assume, for example, that educators in China do not associate
the word ‘Holocaust’ with the same thing as those in France, for example. Moreover,
educators generally link the Holocaust conceptually to other, local, contexts in order to
appeal to experiences and arouse the interest of pupils in their countries. The report
then goes on to record representations of the Holocaust in textbooks. Our questionnaire
requested researchers to record the structure of the textbook, the historical context in
which it places the Holocaust, the spatial and temporal scale with which the Holocaust
is conveyed, the agents involved, principal interpretative (conceptual, historiographical)
paradigms, the presentation of causes and effects, the arrangement of visual material,
narrative techniques and points of view, didactic approaches, national idiosyncrasies and
analogies with other comparable events.
While collecting this information, care was taken to ensure that local points of view were
acknowledged and presented as clearly as possible by proceeding inductively. Assuming
that the term ‘Holocaust’ can be understood differently in different parts of the world, and
that different terminology may be used in different languages to refer to the same event, we
strove to document as accurately as possible the variety of specific local understandings
of what the Holocaust involved and what it means. To this end, the questionnaires sent
to assessors of curricula and of textbooks did not prescribe a standard definition of the
Holocaust, but rather requested researchers to seek references to the event, if necessary
in their local languages, and to report what concepts and contents were thus conveyed
in educational materials. In order to limit the influence of researchers’ subjective
understanding, the questions were posed in such a way as to invite researchers to record
and quote precisely what they found in textbooks in as neutral a manner as possible;
leeway for personal interpretation was limited by asking researchers to quote text, state
34 This report therefore differs from previous ‘mappings’, which generally serve to assess and define the boundaries of
educational materials. See Robley, W., Whittle, S. and Mudroch-Eaton, D. 2005. Mapping generic skills curricula. A
recommended methodology. Journal of Further and Higher Education, Vol. 3, pp. 221-231; van Wiele, J. 2004. Mapping
the road for balance. Towards the construction of criteria for a contemporary religious textbook analysis regarding Islam.
Journal of Empirical Theology, Vol. 1, pp. 1-35; Wilson, T. 2001.Mapping the curriculum in information studies. New
Library World. Vol. 11/12, pp. 436-442.
35 Rembold, E. and Carrier, P. 2011. Space and identity. Constructions of national identities in an age of
globalisation. National Identities. Vol. 4, pp. 361-376, 361.
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