Holocaust education cannot fight hate alone
New research finds Holocaust education cannot serve as Australia’s primary defence against antisemitism.
Holocaust education cannot serve as the main defence against antisemitism in Australia, a new Monash University report has found, with many of the educators who deliver it now questioning what decades of teaching have achieved.
The report, Holocaust Education and its Role in Addressing Antisemitism in Australia, draws on in-depth interviews with 25 educators, scholars and museum professionals in Australia, Britain and the United States. It was produced by the Monash Initiative for Rapid Research into Antisemitism (MIRRA), part of the university’s Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation.
Chief investigator Professor David Slucki said the project grew out of a 2025 study of antisemitism in the arts and cultural sector, where Holocaust education kept surfacing as a theme among museum professionals and artists.
“Sometimes the solutions can outrun the evidence,” he told The AJN, saying the researchers regarded practitioners as the experts because they understand the realities of the classroom and the museum floor.
Slucki said awareness of the Holocaust had risen without any matching fall in antisemitism. “One thing we’ve been very successful at is Holocaust awareness, but when you scratch the surface, they actually don’t know that much.”
Holocaust denial had changed alongside it. It “used to be a bunch of crackpots in basements sending each other pamphlets through the regular mail, now it’s just a click of a button on your phone”, he said.
Participants also warned against anchoring Jewish identity in the Holocaust, with students encountering Jews mainly as victims and only in the past. “We’re a historical curiosity. We’re not living, breathing people,” Slucki said.
He identified two sources of teacher reluctance to teach the subject. One was a fear of being unprepared for questions about Israel and Gaza, which he called reasonable and fixable through better training. The other was ideological, coming from teachers who regard teaching the Holocaust as a trivialisation of what is happening in Gaza.
“I don’t think Holocaust education is adequate as an answer to antisemitism,” Slucki said, describing it as terribly inadequate if treated as the principal defence against anti-Jewish hatred.
The report’s nine recommendations include a national framework with shared standards, compulsory teacher training, and antisemitism prevention developed as a distinct focus rather than a by-product of historical learning. It also calls for support to reach educators beyond Melbourne and Sydney.