Holocaust representation in Dutch history textbooks 1960-2010

Abstract

When teaching emotionally taxing and historically complex topics, many teachers rely on history textbooks. The Holocaust, being a mandatory subject in the Netherlands from the 1960s onwards, is such a topic. In most of the textbooks that I have analyzed from the period 1960-2010, representations of the Holocaust ignore the complexity of the Holocaust. Factual renditions are inaccurate, the historical context of Judaism is completely absent and the ‘perpetrator narrative’ is still the most dominant viewpoint of the Holocaust in most textbooks. In most cases, the Holocaust is seen as a by-product of World War Two, an event in itself but not as the most tragic part of Jewish life and culture in Europe. The richness of Jewish culture and the difficulties in the long-lasting relation between Jews and non-Jews in the Netherlands is mostly marginalized or not mentioned at all. Dutch society after 1945 was being reconstructed and entangled into the Cold War. The contradistinction to a new form of totalitarianism or the celebration of the heroic ‘active’ victims offered significant value to this resurrection of the nation. The Dutch continued to witness themselves as victims of the German occupation. It was not until the 1980s that the passive victims, in particular the Jews, gradually obtained more attention in public commemorations.  In the textbooks however, representations of the Holocaust basically remain incomplete, unmethodical and serving the national narrative.