What do we wish to achieve by teaching about the Holocaust? There is no question that one of our primary goals should be to provide students with a full and extensive knowledge of the historical facts. However, the problem in treating the Holocaust merely as history is that history can dissolve into irrelevance. Our intention should be that as a result of learning about the Holocaust, our students emerge with a greater understanding of the limits of human perfectibility and potential. Through such an understanding they may strive for self-improvement.

Teachers of Jewish students should bear in mind Emil Fackenheim's directive to all Jews to "listen to the voice of Auschwitz". An important goal should be to have Jewish students consider their own responsibilities as Jews in the light of Fackenheim's assertion that Jews have a sacred obligation to survive and are forbidden to hand Hitler a posthumous victory by despairing of or abandoning Judaism.

In order for (Jewish or non-Jewish) students to understand why Nazism took root so easily in Germany, it needs to be presented as the culmination of centuries of antisemitism in Europe generally and in Germany in particular. (See Antisemitism and Nazi Antisemitism.) The terminology of the Holocaust is complex and requires some attention. The scope and numbers of people involved are difficult to grasp and often benefit from graphic representations and/or comparisons to familiar numbers and reduction to individual and personal proportions.

When dealing with the issues of guilt and responsibility for the Holocaust, the scope of responsibility needs to be widened. Teaching about the Holocaust should not become simply a means of condemning the Nazis, for in this approach some key lessons will be lost. Students need to be taught about the world's overwhelming silence in the face of Nazi barbarism and to examine concepts including the basic responsibility of all human beings for each others' welfare. (For all the topics mentioned here, see Lesson Ideas.)

The Holocaust can be studied in many different contexts: ghettos, death camps, forests, places of hiding and so on. Given the time constraints that most teachers must consider, many decide to focus on the ghetto situation. This is because it represents Jewish experience in microcosm, providing the best insight into the continuum of events, including the richness of Jewish cultural life before the Holocaust.

Another important methodological consideration which needs to be kept in mind is the need to avoid presenting the Holocaust as nothing more than a horror story. The intention should not be to deliberately shock or inspire a ghoulish fascination. Some students, especially some of those younger than about 15, revel in the violent aspects of history and tend to glorify violence and those who enact it. Focusing on the horrors of the Holocaust is most undesirable for this general reason, but also in the sense that it reduces those people who suffered them to the status of 'victims', further depersonalising them, as was the intention of their Nazi oppressors and murderers.

When teachers and students are faced with the visual and literary evidence of the Holocaust they may be intimidated, unsettled and even frightened. It is only by carefully confronting the facts that people can come to terms with the key moral and historical issues. Whether as a case study or as an integral part of European and world history, the basic messages remain to be learnt: humanity's capacity for inhumanity, repression, racism and genocide. The ultimate question for both teachers and students is: 'How we can ensure that such barbarism does not happen again?'