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Teacher Sarah Perry had noticed the subtle signs of antisemitism at her school in Melbourne’s south-east before it decided to upend the way it taught the Holocaust.
One student used “Jew” as a derogatory term, another had drawn a picture of Hitler on a test.
The Heritage College teacher wanted to make sure she stamped it out, and soon realised most of her class members had never actually met a Jewish person.
The Officer school refocused its Holocaust studies to centre on the personal stories of survivors and started holding an annual memorial event to which Jewish students from the area were invited.
Perry said the changes helped promote a shift that dissolved tension at the multicultural school, even between students with non-Jewish cultural backgrounds.
“We talk a lot about how the [racial] slurs don’t end in slurs, and we’ve noticed a huge decline,” she said.
Perry’s positive experience, however, is not one felt by other Holocaust educators, who told a study, conducted through Monash University, that they felt at sea, untrained in handling polarised and politicised questions on Israel-Palestine and the heavy weight of being the targets of antisemitism while trying to tackle it in classrooms.
A key finding of the research, and backed by those tackling the issue, is that teaching about the Holocaust alone doesn’t address antisemitism, and there should be different topics that give children an understanding of the issues still faced by “real-life, living, breathing Jews”.
One educator surveyed by the Monash Initiative for Rapid Research into Antisemitism (MIRRA) called out the issues facing schools: “The big problem is that it’s got to be done correctly – if [the Holocaust is] taught badly, it actually increases antisemitism.”
The research, Holocaust Education and its role in addressing antisemitism in Australia, which canvassed 25 Holocaust educators and museum professionals, is to be tabled in the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion on Friday.
The inquiry was set up in response to the Bondi terrorist attack at a Hanukkah celebration on December 14 last year in which 15 people were killed.
Professor David Slucki, MIRRA chief investigator and Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation director, said Holocaust education was not always taught, despite being mandated, and there was a lack of support for those delivering it.
Slucki said one key was helping students understand Jews, “real-life, living, breathing Jews”, as part of multicultural Australia and was as important to combat antisemitism, if not more, as Holocaust education.
“I do run workshops on antisemitism and Jewish cultural awareness for university leaders, and I’m surprised by even very distinguished people who don’t know a lot,” he said.
“I don’t think Holocaust education is going to be the thing that kind of chips away at those mentalities.”
Slucki said the Brighton Secondary College case showed that the prevalence of students using Nazi imagery or swastikas as part of their “jokey teenage personas” wasn’t necessarily going to be stopped by teaching alone.
In 2023, in a landmark ruling, five Jewish students won more than $430,000 in compensation after a court found the school had failed to protect them from racial discrimination.
In Sydney’s west, history teacher Greg Keith said there were pockets of antisemitism across the country, with some teachers fearing for their safety.
As part of a University of Sydney PhD he completed last year, in which 80 teachers across NSW schools were surveyed about their experiences teaching the Holocaust, 18 nominated racism or antisemitism as classroom challenges.
NSW Education Standards Authority said it wasn’t representative of the 180,000 teachers across NSW.
The MIRRA research found Holocaust educators also felt unprepared to counter complex conversations about the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
It called for more training for educators and guidance on how to tackle difficult conversations, something that has been in sharp focus since Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023, and Israel’s response.
Teachers are already reporting that it is more difficult to have polarising conversations in classrooms, with 70 per cent citing student and parent aggression in a recent survey as the reason for not engaging in controversial issues in class.
Melbourne Holocaust Museum chief executive Breann Fallon said Holocaust education was as much about the future as it was about the past.
“It is about the lessons that we can learn in contemporary society,” she said. “It is about how we relate to each other and the responsibility that we have to each other.”
It was important, she said, that educators had the training to face difficult conversations and questions with curiosity and an open mind.
“If we can’t talk about it, we’re not going to be able to move forward,” she said.
The federal government established the Antisemitism Education Taskforce, chaired by David Gonski, late last year and has commissioned the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority to provide advice on a targeted review of the Australian curriculum to combat antisemitism.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said that while the Holocaust was already part of the curriculum, the taskforce was looking at how to give students an understanding of Jewish Australians’ history and culture, their contribution and Australian values.
It also established a resource hub for teachers, and an advisory council to support schools, educators and students to combat antisemitism and other forms of discrimination.
Perry said extra training by the Gandel Holocaust Studies Program had given her the space to lead noticeable change at her school.
“We wanted to tackle racism, but in a way that wasn’t personally connected to our students and our various cultures,” she said.
It helped give a constant reminder that “when you don’t value each other, this is where it leads”.
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