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Teaching and learning about the Holocaust provide opportunities to engage students in serious reflection on the origins of violence and the mechanisms that lead to it. This helps them better understand how such events can be prevented, as well as their own role as active, global citizens in defending human rights. It also encourages them to become citizens who welcome diversity as a positive value and promote respect and tolerance. Moreover, it gives young people the tools to recognize new forms of racial hatred and anti-Semitism and to combat them. 

Dealing with these issues is a difficult task for teachers and educators. It requires substantial knowledge of history and use of appropriate pedagogical approaches, as well as the capacity to address complex human histories. Educators have to help students determine what such unprecedented acts of violence mean to them. UNESCO’s role is to support its Member States in providing education stakeholders with the support and capacity they need to educate students about such difficult topics. 

This book is a step in that direction. It provides an overview of opportunities that may arise to educate students about the Holocaust in diverse cultural contexts and educational situations, with a special focus on Latin American countries. Latin America may be physically distant from the places where genocide was perpetrated against the Jewish people, but it is still coming to terms with its own past of violence and crimes against humanity. 

This publication provides Latin American educators with access to a contemporary report on the most important issues discussed in relation to pedagogy and policy development. They will also be able to explore how even today in Europe education about the Holocaust is shaping a culture of memory.  

Furthermore, they will be able to see how in other places, the memory of the Holocaust has been a starting point for understanding other painful histories.