228776e

EL SALVADOR
The sample
The sample contains one social sciences textbook currently in use in state schools by
fourteen-year-old pupils, but whose date of publication cannot be established. The
textbook contains one page about the Holocaust within a section devoted to world history
and, more specifically, within a subchapter devoted to ‘The Two World Wars’, in which there
are subsections entitled ‘The Emergence of Autocratic Regimes’, ‘German Nazism’ and
‘Causes and Consequences of the Second World War’.
Scale
The textbook refers to the year 1933 when Hitler rose to power, and to 1935 when it claims
that Jews were persecuted and killed in concentration and extermination camps. The
authors do not name the sites of camps, but frame the event within German history while
indicating the European dimension of the Second World War in two maps showing dates of
events of the war.
Protagonists
Emphasis is placed on the representation of perpetrators, above all of Hitler, with reference
to a quotation from Mein Kampf, while authors also refer more generally to the Hitler Youth,
the SS, SA, a totalitarian regime, the Nazi government and the NSDAP. Victims are defined
as political opponents (as victims of concentration camps from 1933), Jews (as victims of
concentration camps from 1935) and communists, who are represented graphically in a
photograph of emaciated prisoners in a barrack (an image which is not accompanied by a
caption). No individual victims are represented. Collaborators are mentioned, and the Allies
are mentioned, albeit not in relation to the Holocaust (as bystanders, for example), but in
terms of their capacity to respond militarily to the ‘aggressive foreign policy of Hitler’ (p. 71).
Interpretative paradigms
The general focus of the chapter is placed on the Second World War, in which the Holocaust
is addressed within a separate box. However, the authors explain the etymology of the term
‘Holocaust’ and also refer to the event as ‘extermination’, ‘mass murder’ and ‘the systematic
and organized murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators’ (p. 70).
The narrative is concise but not comprehensive, for the Nuremberg laws and the Wannsee
Conference are not treated. The motives of perpetrators are explained as a reaction to
‘a sense of belittlement, political and territorial revenge … as well as frustration’ (p. 70)
which is said to have followed the Treaty of Versailles. Their aims are described simply
as ‘expansionism’ and the murder and destruction of Jews, while causes are defined in
economic and psychological terms as the fear of middle class people of the consequences
of the Russian Revolution and of the effects of the economic crisis, and in ideological terms
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