Mandating Holocaust Education and House Bill 437: A National Debate

By Talli Dippold

Over the past two decades, legislation mandating Holocaust education in the US has been a topic of intense debate. The value of Holocaust education is not being disputed, but rather the requirements, assessment, and the funds budgeted to support such a mandate are a focus of national and state-wide deliberations.

At the federal level, the Never Again Education Act was signed into law on May 29, 2020. This federal legislation established a new grant program through the U.S. Department of Education to fund training and provide resources for educators to effectively teach the Holocaust and other genocides. The legislation provides $2 million a year, for five years, to be given to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. This allocated funding will expand USHMM’s resources, enabling educators across the nation to access professional development programs and curricula promoting the importance of preventing genocide, hate, and bigotry against any group of people.

In North Carolina, NC House Bill 437, the Gizella Abramson Holocaust Education Act, passed the NC House of Representatives on April 16, 2019, and was incorporated into the general budget by the NC Senate a month later. The Senate allocated a $700,000 line item to fund Holocaust curriculum development and teacher training. Much to the dismay of its advocates, Governor Cooper vetoed the proposed budget making it necessary for the Holocaust Education Act to now be reintroduced as a standalone bill in both the NC House and Senate.

NC House Bill 437 would have required Holocaust and genocide education to be part of the N.C. public school curriculum. It would ensure that middle and high school students have an understanding of the geography, history, and political systems that allowed the Holocaust to happen. These lessons would be integrated into English, social studies, and other courses. In addition, HB 437 covered the creation of a state-approved Holocaust Studies elective for middle and high school students.

The North Carolina proposed bill is named for Gizella Abramson, a Holocaust survivor and a founding member of the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust. Ms. Abramson was a tireless educator who shared her testimony with thousands of N.C. students in her lifetime. Her son, Michael Abramson, currently the chairman of the N.C. Holocaust Council, is championing this legislation. If HB 437 was signed into law, the Holocaust Council, in partnership with the N.C. Department of Public Instruction and the N.C. Center for the Advancement of Teaching, would be tasked with curriculum development and teacher training.

Educators from the 16 states where Holocaust education is mandated, have learned that a system of accountability and adequate funding accompanying such legislation is critical. Without buy-in from local school systems and corresponding teacher training, a statewide mandate fails to advance the goals of Holocaust education.

According to Miriam Klein Kassenoff, the director of the Holocaust Teacher Institute at the University of Miami, “Simply passing a Holocaust bill without appropriate funding can be most detrimental in furthering Holocaust education. Stakeholders must agree that sufficient funding would be available to train teachers and for teachers to access resource material, curriculum, and lesson plans to meet the goals of the mandate in a pedagogically sound way.”

Abramson, whose N.C. Holocaust Council has trained about 500 teachers each year since the mid-1990s, offers an alternate perspective. Another path “is to pass the Holocaust Bill and use private and corporate funding to create the curriculum and to train the teachers. An argument can be made that a mandated Holocaust education bill will encourage school systems to ensure that its teachers are trained to teach the Holocaust. Perhaps that’s the best we can do right now.”

Ultimately, the Holocaust Council has endorsed the strategy espoused by Kassenoff and is working with the General Assembly and the Governor for line-item funding for the Holocaust Education Bill. In the meantime, even without a mandate, hundreds of educators across the state incorporate the lesson of the Holocaust into their curricula utilizing the abundance of available local, statewide, and national resources.

Talli Dippold is an adjunct professor of Holocaust Studies and Associate Director of the Stan Greenspon Center for Peace and Social Justice at Queens University of Charlotte. dippoldt@queens.edu.