Abstract: Historical commissions have played an important role in the most recent efforts to garner restitution and reparations for Holocaust victims and their families. Several dozen Holocaust commissions were convened in the late‑1990s and early‑2000s in European countries where histories of collaboration and complicity with the Nazi regime were either under‑documented or suppressed in the official discourse. This essay examines the Holocaust commissions from a historiographical perspective with special attention given to the methodological and rhetorical strategies they employed when confronted by the traumatic experiences and memories of victims and survivors. While the work of these commissions was shaped and influenced, to varying degrees, by external political forces and interest groups, this essay explores the ways in which “the politics of history” entered into their written reports and, consequently, obscured and silenced fundamental aspects of Holocaust history. Three commissions, in particular, are held up for scrutiny (i.e., Austria’s Jabloner Commission, the International Commission for Holocaust‑Era Insurance Claims, and France’s Mattéoli Commission), and an assessment of their work is given against the backdrop of ongoing debates within the field of trauma studies and in response to questions concerning the Holocaust and the “limits of representation.”
Abstract: Seit einigen Jahren dokumentiert die Antisemitismusforschung eine starke Zunahme von antisemitisch motivierten Äusserungen und Angriffen in diversen europäischen Ländern, sowie jüngst auch in der Schweiz. Dieser Umstand schlägt sich nieder in einer intensiven Diskussion über die Hintergründe und Ursachen dieser Zunahme, die unter dem Stichwort «Neuer Antisemitismus» zusammengefasst ist. Neben der Frage, inwiefern diese Zunahme auf Kontinuitäten judenfeindlicher Ressentiments christlich-religiöser, rassistisch-nationalistischer oder links-ideologischer Hintergrundfolien zurückzuführen ist, rückt auch die Frage nach judenfeindlichen Einstellungen in muslimisch sozialisierten Kontexten in den Vordergrund. Vor diesem Hintergrund verbindet das vorliegende Heft Expertisen aus der Antisemitismus-Forschung, der Geschichtsdidaktik, der interreligiösen Bildungsarbeit, der Islamwissenschaft wie auch der Islamisch-theologischen Studien, um der Herausforderung einer sachgerechten Darstellung in den je als notwendig erachteten Bezügen und Faktoren gerecht zu werden. Damit soll ein Beitrag geleistet werden für eine interkulturelle Antisemitismus-Aufklärung, die sich vor dem Hintergrund einer aktuellen gesellschaftlichen Aufgabe versteht und Verwertungsmöglichkeiten für die gesellschaftliche Bildungsarbeit aufzeigt. Akteur:innen aus der öffentlichen und religiösen Bildungsarbeit bietet das Heft eine interdisziplinäre Expertise, auf deren inhaltlichen Grundlagen eigene Formate und Angebote aufbauen können. Die interdisziplinäre Verzahnung bietet Fachwissenschafter:innen einen Einstieg in einen sich neu zusammensetzenden thematischen Blickwinkel in der Antisemitismusforschung. Die interessierte Öffentlichkeit gewinnt aus dem Heft eine kenntnisreiche Darstellung, die der Begleitung gesellschaftlicher Diskussionen dienlich sein kann.
Abstract: Marking the 75th anniversary of The Authoritarian Personalityin 2025, this article revisits its insights into the persistence of authoritarianism in contemporary society, drawing centrally on the work of Theodor Adorno and Else Frenkel-Brunswik. Based on the results of their studies, it can be demonstrated how antisemitism, sexism, anti-feminism, and queerphobia are interconnected rather than separate phenomena—a concept expanded here as the "intersectionality of ideologies." Examining rigid gender norms in authoritarian systems, the article explores their role in reinforcing antisemitic narratives, with examples from Hamas and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Additionally, it analyzes the culture industry as a site of ideological entanglement, using the 2022 documenta 15 exhibition as a case study. By reassessing authoritarianism's links to antisemitism and gender oppression, the article highlights its enduring relevance.
Abstract: Haketia, a hybrid Judaeo-Spanish trans-language suppressed under imperial rule in the Maghreb, is being actively reanimated through digital heritagisation practices amongst dispersed communities of speech. How do digital heritage practices enable the postvernacular transformation of Haketia from suppressed vernacular to an active tool of cross-cultural coalition-building? Drawing on virtual ethnography of the eSefarad online platform, this study examines how such platforms operate not as static preservation but through processes of ‘trans situ’ heritagisation, where cultural elements are exchanged across multiple sites, temporalities, and modes of presence. The analysis traces Haketia’s transition to postvernacular performance, where using the language becomes a conscious cultural enactment that forges virtual communities across historical rupture. Rather than representing continuous transmission, these digital practices are marked by inventive reconstruction and purposeful reassembly, conceptualised here as ‘open-source Sephardism’ – a framework grounded in diasporism that privileges relational ‘hereness’ over territorial return. Through collaborative negotiation and cross-cultural coalition, this digital heritage practice fosters the revival of Judaeo-Muslim virtual worldly commons, demonstrating how minoritised vernaculars can be reactivated as living threads of diasporic connection that transcend traditional boundaries of heritage preservation.
Abstract: Introduction. This study addresses the representation of ethnic minority cultures in online museum collections, which often reflect diverse viewpoints. We propose a data-driven methodology to construct a large-scale multi-viewpoint knowledge graph, using Jewish cultural heritage as a case study.
Method. We developed an LLM-based pipeline that combines object typing, named entity recognition, relation extraction, enrichment, and clustering.
Results. An analysis of 647,951 records and 178,444 extracted subjects from the collections of Jewish museums across the globe revealed diverse thematic emphases: Israel and the Netherlands prioritised religious themes, while others highlighted everyday life. Surprisingly, only Australia emphasised the Holocaust.
Conclusion(s). The central contribution of this study is the development of a knowledge organisation system capable of tracing major trends and identifying patterns in the polyvocality of perspectives. The methodology provides quantifiable, scalable analysis of multi-viewpoint cultural heritage, extendable to other minorities.
Abstract: In 2009, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum took the experimental initiative of creating a Facebook page; since then, it has established accounts on other social media platforms, such as Instagram and Twitter, and is now followed by more than one million users across these networks. This chapter investigates the ways in which the Museum utilises social media, particularly with regard to its authority as an institution and site of Holocaust education and remembrance. On one hand, the Museum has fostered an online virtual community where Auschwitz victims are commemorated, the ethics of remembrance are discussed, and users’ feedback is sought and acknowledged. On the other hand, the institution uses social media to fact-check and criticise certain representations of Auschwitz, suggesting only those explicitly approved by the Museum are acceptable. This demonstrates a wider Museum dichotomy between retaining traditional, didactic practices and establishing contemporary, participatory ones.
Abstract: Virtual reality and augmented reality experiences play an increasingly significant role in Holocaust memory and education as professional memory institutions continue to explore the affordances of integrating digital technologies into visitor and user experience. There is a rapidly expanding list of projects experimenting with cinematic virtual reality, photogrammetry, digital mapping, 3D modelling, 360-degree on-location survivor testimony as well as a growing portfolio of augmented and mixed reality mobile and tablet applications.
Principally being implemented as spatial technologies, several memorial sites and museums are exploring the possibilities of creating 3D graphic reconstructions of former sites of Nazi persecution in AR/VR such as the digital reconstruction of Falstad Concentration Camp, the Here: Spaces for Memory App at the Bergen-Belsen Memorial Site, the Sobibor AR exhibit, the project Auschwitz VR as well as the 360-degrees-walks at Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial. Going further, some digital initiatives are using VR/AR/MR technologies to zoom in on historical documents, testimonies and artefacts, notable projects include the ARt AR App at the Dachau Memorial Site and Museum which revivifies historical and contemporary drawings and paintings in-situ at the present-day site, the Anne Frank House VR which invites visitors to navigate the annex through a series of digital objects, and The Last Goodbye VR experience which foregrounds survivor testimony within Majdanek, the similarly survivor-driven Walk with Me at The Melbourne Holocaust Museum and numerous films that shape the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center’s The Journey Back exhibition space.
While it is important to note that VR technology is not new and has existed for more than 30 years, it is only recently that the technology has become more widely accessible in the heritage and museum sectors (in part, due to the affordability of headsets and devices in the domestic market). The proliferation of VR and AR projects within the sector, then, raises critical questions regards the opportunities for digital Holocaust memory practice and education while also bringing to the fore issues of curation, contextualisation, visitor experience and accessibility.
This report serves as an important first step in this work. It was created as part of the research project ‘Participatory Workshops – Co-Designing Standards for Digital Interventions in Holocaust Memory and Education’, which is one thread of the larger Digital Holocaust Memory Project at the University of Sussex. The participatory workshops project have focused on six themes, each of which brought together a different range of expertise to discuss current challenges and consider possible recommendations for the future.
The themes were:
AI and machine learning
Digitising material evidence
Recording, recirculating and remixing testimony
Social media
Virtual memoryscapes
Computer games
Abstract: The social media landscape is ever-changing as is its relationship to Holocaust memory and education. In the earlier days of Facebook and Twitter’s dominance, there was a clear divide of opinions in the Holocaust sector. On one hand, some institutions were early adopters (notably the Auschwitz State Museum) and others experimented with the affordances of these platforms such as the team at Grodzka Gate, Lublin extending the analogue practice of school pupils sending letters to child Holocaust victim Henio Zytomirski onto Facebook and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s ‘tweet-up’ hybrid architecture tour. On the other hand, expressions of hesitance about these participatory spaces informed the need for the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s Education Working Group to establish guidelines for using social media in this context (2014).
As practice grew, it also became somewhat formalised with most organisations predominantly focusing on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for public engagement work, and most content presenting traditional curation of historical sources with additional narrative, promoting the organisation’s offline (or elsewhere online) work, or behind the scenes access to curator and educator experiences. Whilst, one of the
celebrated potentials about social media is their ability to help organisations to reach wider (global) audiences, little has changed online since Eva Pfanzelter’s (2014) claim that the Holocaust institutions that dominated previously offline, also dominate on social media platforms. Few others attract much engagement with their posts.
TikTok has brought both new opportunities and challenges for the Holocaust sector – organisations and individuals who have taken to creating content on the platform are seeing far greater engagement than they had on previous ones. Yet, TikTok is also one of the most data-invasive and opaque platforms regarding researcher access. Many also encounter far more Holocaust denial, distortion and trivialisation on this platform. However, the social media landscape is also far larger than the Holocaust sector has really acknowledged and much of the coded hate content that appears on mainstream platforms has been cultivated at scale on others, from 8Chan to Telegram, and gaming and VR social spaces. It is imperative therefore that we bring together a wide range of stakeholders and experts to discuss what the sector needs to move forward with its work on social media. If Holocaust memory and education is to remain visible in the ever-expanding digital world, then it must be visible across a variety of digital spaces.
This report serves as an important first step in this work. It was created as part of the research project ‘Participatory Workshops – Co-Designing Standards for Digital Interventions in Holocaust Memory and Education’, which is one thread of the larger Digital Holocaust Memory Project at the University of Sussex.
The participatory workshops project have focused on six themes, each of which brought together a different range of expertise to discuss current challenges and consider possible recommendations for the future. The themes were:
AI and machine learning
Digitising material evidence
Recording, recirculating and remixing testimony
Social media
Virtual memoryscapes
Computer games
Abstract: Exhibition from September 18, 2024 to March 16, 2025 at the Jewish Museum Vienna and from April 9, 2025 to March 1, 2026 at the Jewish Museum Munich
Eighty years after the Holocaust, the last eyewitnesses are dying. Their stories, but also their trauma, have been passed on to their children and grandchildren. While the Second Generation grew up as direct observers of their parents’ psychological and physical damage, the Third Generation can look with greater distance at the family histories, in which memories and silence, family myths and secrets, and overwhelming or missing family legacies are ever-present.
The catalogue of the exhibition “The Third Generation: The Holocaust in Family Memory” investigates various ways of dealing with the inherited trauma and the difficult confrontation with the burden of family history. The contributions discuss biographical and artistic coping strategies by the generations after the Shoah and highlight the common features shared by a heterogeneous group scattered throughout the world.
Abstract: This article explores how Holocaust education can be reimagined through the lens of Critical Theory—particularly the work of Theodor W. Adorno—in order to more effectively confront contemporary antisemitism. While Holocaust education is often invoked as a response to rising antisemitism, its actual impact in this regard remains contested. Drawing on Adorno’s reflections on antisemitism and education after Auschwitz, the article highlights both the emancipatory potential and the limitations of education. Central themes include the importance of early childhood education, the critique of ideology, and the tension between pedagogical aims and societal structures. The article proposes eleven impulses for rethinking Holocaust education, emphasizing, among other points, the need to turn toward the subject, the dangers of half-education (Halbbildung), and the importance of linking historical specificity with sociological insight. Rather than offering a prescriptive model, it outlines a conceptual framework that situates Holocaust education within a broader project of social critique and enlightenment. Ultimately, it argues that Holocaust education alone cannot prevent antisemitism, but can meaningfully contribute to resisting it.
Abstract: CLe 10 octobre 2013, lors d’une réunion plénière à Toronto, l’Alliance internationale pour la mémoire de l’Holocauste (IHRA) a marqué un tournant dans la compréhension des manipulations historiques en introduisant l’expression « distorsion de la Shoah ». Cette nouvelle terminologie qui étend la réflexion sur les menaces posées par l’antisémitisme et le négationnisme, dépasse le simple ajout lexical. Elle reflète une prise de conscience accrue face à la complexité des discours visant à remettre en question la réalité historique de la Shoah.
Le « négationnisme », un mot inventé en 1987 par l’historien Henry Rousso dans son ouvrage Le Syndrome de Vichy, désigne les idées de ceux qui minimisent ou nient l’extermination des Juifs durant la Seconde Guerre mondiale. À l’époque, l’historien souhaitait rectifier l’usage inapproprié du terme « révisionnisme », souvent confondu avec celui de négationnisme, et rappeler que, dans une démarche scientifique, le révisionnisme se distingue clairement de ce dernier. Il expliquait alors :
Le révisionnisme de l’histoire étant une démarche classique chez les scientifiques, on préférera ici le barbarisme, moins élégant mais plus approprié, de « négationnisme », car il s’agit bien d’un système de pensée, d’une idéologie et non d’une démarche scientifique ou même simplement critique.
Le négationnisme, en tant qu’idéologie, cherche avant tout à effacer ou déformer la réalité de la Shoah. Toutefois, cette définition s’avère insuffisante pour désigner d’autres formes de falsifications historiques qui, plutôt que de nier directement l’événement, le réinterprètent de manière à le banaliser, le déformer ou le trivialiser…
Abstract: This article examines the role of antisemitism in international politics. Drawing on a genealogy of European antisemitism, it proposes the analytic framework of the ‘enemy within’ to foreground instances when Jewish ‘enemy’ figures are positioned on both sides of the boundaries organising international political orders. This particular permutation of (racial) bordering is porous and ambivalent, even or especially as ‘hard’ and binary racial borders are simultaneously enforced. The article identifies four characteristics of the Jewish ‘enemy within’: a shared origin story with European Christendom; simultaneous presence on both sides of a (racial) boundary; a prompting of fears around contagion, infiltration and assimilation; and deployment to legitimise strategies of hyper-vigilance, surveillance and purification. The genealogy traces how the Jewish ‘enemy within’ is mobilised in consolidation or defence of, first, Christian medieval order and, second, raced nation-states, economies, and bodies, in modernity. In both periods, the Jewish ‘enemy within’ appears as both an insider and outsider whose perceived ambivalence threatens, and is mobilised to defend, religious, racial and political international orders. Finally, the article applies this framework to contemporary antisemitism. Overall, the article offers a novel engagement with antisemitism in International Relations and a tool for analysing complex forms of racial bordering in global politics.
Abstract: Antisemitismus ist eine historisch tief verankerte Form der Feindseligkeit gegenüber Jüdinnen und Juden, die aktuell wieder mit einer stark zunehmenden Gewaltbereitschaft einhergeht. Die erheblichen psychischen Auswirkungen von Antisemitismus sind vielfältig und werden durch wiederholte, häufig mehrdimensionale Diskriminierung und die besonderen Effekte der Hasskriminalität verschärft. Angststörungen, Depressionen und posttraumatische Belastungsstörungen sind Beispiele häufiger Folgen. Als Bewältigungsstrategien neigen viele Jüdinnen und Juden dazu, ihre jüdische Kultur zu verbergen, sich sozial zurückzuziehen oder ihre Identität aufzugeben, um nicht Opfer antisemitischer Vorfälle zu werden. Weil sie sich kontinuierlich mit Vorurteilen konfrontiert sehen, kann sich bei den Betroffenen sogar eine Perspektive der (Mit–)Schuld entwickeln – das Gefühl, selbst für die erfahrene Gewalt verantwortlich zu sein, was die Fähigkeit zur Bewältigung der erfahrenen Diskriminierungen zusätzlich erschwert. Ziel des Artikels ist es, einen Einblick in die Prävalenz und die weitreichenden individuellen Auswirkungen von Antisemitismus zu geben und damit zu verdeutlichen, welche Relevanz Antisemitismus in der Gesellschaft hat.
Abstract: In this report, we have studied different facets of antisemitism on non-password protected social media outlets with user-generated content. Our results show that antisemitic content exists on all social media platforms. However, the amount of antisemitic content seems to vary with the degree of moderation on each platform. Since 2017, discussions about the ZOG conspiracy narrative have increased, while the Covid-19 pandemic has given rise to new antisemitic conspiracy theories. Conspiracy narratives are closely related to antisemitic stereotypes, which were found in 25% of posts mentioning Jews or Jewishness. The most common stereotypes being that Jews are powerful, deceptive, and manipulative. In our study, almost 35% of all posts mentioning Jews or Jewishness expressed negativity toward Jews. These posts were found mainly on minimally moderated platforms. Jews are also one of the groups that are targeted by toxic language online. Over 4,000 occurrences of explicit Holocaust denial terminology were found during a three-month period. National legislation is difficult to apply to the global internet. A joint effort by governments and platform companies is important to develop techniques that keeps antisemitic content from the internet, while education is necessary to prevent antisemitism before it goes online
Topics: Antisemitism: Definitions, Antisemitism: Christian, Antisemitism: Discourse, Antisemitism: Education against, Antisemitism: Far right, Antisemitism: Institutional, Antisemitism: Israel-Related, Antisemitism: Left-Wing, Antisemitism: Monitoring, Antisemitism: Muslim, Antisemitism: New Antisemitism, Antisemitism: Online, Philosemitism, Main Topic: Antisemitism
Abstract: Enduring Jewish Communities around the World: Models of Effective Communication employs an organizational communication perspective to examine how strong internal and external communications have helped Jewish communities survive globally in unlikely locations, harsh circumstances, and periods of violent antisemitism. Drawing on in-depth interviews with religious and community leaders of nine international Jewish communities, Joshua Azriel contends that communication is a part of Judaism’s core and a powerful, informal tool that has been used over millennia by its followers to sustain their communities, culture, and religion. Scholars of communication, religion, history, and Jewish studies will find this book of particular interest.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands
Chapter 2: Halifax, Canada
Chapter 3: Guatemala City, Guatemala
Chapter 4: San Jose, Costa Rica
Chapter 5: Sefwi Wiawso, Ghana
Chapter 6: Bene Israel, India
Chapter 7: Belmonte, Portugal
Chapter 8: Sofia, Bulgaria
Chapter 9: Iasi, Romania
Chapter 10: Conclusion
Bibliography
About the Author
Abstract: Hatred of Jews noticed a dramatic rise after the events of October 7, 2023. Since Holocaust education was presented for years as the answer to the hatred of Jews, the question almost automatically occurs: Has Holocaust education failed? Does it need to be revised or totally reorganized? How do things differently in the future? How can Holocaust education contribute to combating hatred of Jews? The German Holocaust education expert and historian, Dr. Melanie Carina Schmoll, PhD, provides answers to these questions. This book teaches academics and practitioners why and what to expect when teaching about the Holocaust. Content, outcome of Holocaust education, gaps in knowledge and the reasons for are examined. In comprehensible explanations, Dr. Schmoll shows the potential failures in Holocaust education and why the teaching of history still matters. Hatred of Jews-A Failure of Holocaust Education? bridges the gap between academic research and practical support for educators, teachers, and textbook publishers. A step-by-step guide helps on how to improve it in the future.
