Theroretical presentation of the topic

If we accept that everyone on this earth, regardless of colour, creed, language or ethnicity, is fully human – and, as such fully deserving of our interest, sympathy and acceptance – we will have taken a giant step forward from dehumanization to a stronger sense of global kinship. Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary-General (2004)
Teaching and learning about genocides is a process oriented towards understanding and remembering, which include questions of the social construction of national, transnational and transnational memory of the Holocaust, the Holodomor, the Armenian Genocide, the Romani and Sinti genocide, the Srebrenica massacre, the genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples, the ethnic cleansing, massacres and slaughters that took place during the last decade in Syria, South Sudan, Iraq, Afghanistan, on the Bay of Bengal and in other parts of the world.

It is also a process closely linked to:

• a multidimensional analysis of historical facts,
• ethical and psychological issues,
• and the language of social discourse, in which issues related to the key question posed by Harald Welzer (2009) in the title of his book, “Why do ordinary people commit mass murder?” are discussed.

Genocide education: understanding and remembrance

Genocide education refers to education about the patterns and trends characteristic to genocide, to the analysis of its causes, nature and consequences. As cautionary knowledge about the atrocity of genocide, its long-term consequences for individuals, societies, and nations, it becomes an important component of teaching, included in school curricula and university classes in democratic educational systems. Genocide education focuses on knowledge related to the specific cases of genocide and is directed at collective memory and the process of changing thinking and actions by sensitizing audiences to other human beings by showing the complexity of the meaning and significance of human behaviour. An important element of this education is “situational awareness” (Zimbardo, 2010), that is, the ability to accurately assess what is required of a person by circumstances or situations (Machul-Telus, Markowska-Manista, 2017).

Experience related to the historical, social, and political processes of shaping memory and the space for working through difficult knowledge (Trofanenko, 2009) in the history of every community and every nation shows how complicated are the paths leading to positive answers to the questions posed in the title of this e-module. We know that a trip to Auschwitz will not suddenly turn visitors into generous philanthropists. An hour-long lesson on the Holocaust certainly will not prevent the next Rwanda or the next Darfur. “The younger generations commonly view the Holocaust with indifference. Born in the early 1990s, they tend to view World War II as irrelevant to their everyday lives.” (Kwaśniewski, 2010). The remembrance of World War II, the remembrance of the Holocaust, and therefore the remembrance of phenomena that have marked entire generations, is necessary today. Thousands of monuments, publications, paintings and objects of commemoration are not enough. A memory based on the testimony of survivors, primary source materials and difficult questions, memory which is connected to changes in sensitivity and addresses a broad, multicontextual understanding of phenomena, seems to be the key to maintaining peace and counteracting the recurring old rhetoric, hate speech, and radicalization of societies. As Barbara Harff notes, “People discuss prevention, but no one knows what is effective.” (Jaeger 2005) Moreover, legislation to prevent genocides and mass crimes is not the same as the practice of countering human rights violations and combating the conspiracy of denial. It does not protect against the eradication of difficult memory, which – if left untreated – can result in the “Lucifer effect” (Zimbardo, 2011) and further crime.

Glossary

• Lucifer effect – describes the change of person’s character from good to bad based on environmental factors. Zimbardo points out that every person, under certain conditions for such behaviour, can become either a perpetrator of bad deeds or a victim of repression and torture (Zimbardo, 2011).
• Difficult knowledge – the term is used, among others, in relation to the transmission of content about the Holocaust and genocides in the educational process. It is associated with teaching of difficult topics and requires educators to take a critical approach to their own learning theories, beliefs, and values. Moreover, it demands a pedagogical willingness to push the boundaries of students’ historical knowledge. This approach requires not only high teaching standards but above all a better understanding of how young people cope with emotions and emotional problems related to difficult world events (e.g. migrations and genocides). Brenda Trofanenko suggests that in educational messages, teachers should return to conducting a kind of “historical inquiry” with students, i.e. inquiry based on asking questions about the nature of genocide, the reasons why it occurred (locally, regionally, globally) and seeking answers about how it happened in their times (Trofanenko, 2009; Machul-Telus, Markowska-Manista, 2011).

The task of genocide education

Therefore, the task of genocide education is to demonstrate that past events provide a unique opportunity to understand today’s world and that learning about tragedies done to people by other people is an essential tool for reading the message of the past in order to function in the realities of today (Machul-Telus, Markowska-Manista, 2017). The mechanisms (legal and political) established by international agreements to prevent and counter tragedies such as ethnic cleansing, massacres, genocides seem to be ineffective in the face of entrenched social attitudes, the dependence of the countries of the Global South on the countries of the Global North, increasing radicalization, and the dynamics of change associated with shifting power balances and global dependencies.

Holocaust and genocide education “can play a key role in genocide prevention by providing a forum in which to address past violence while promoting knowledge, skills, values and attitudes that can help prevent violence against a group today.” Moreover, it plays an important role in rebuilding resilience to violence and creating a reflective consciousness, as well as contributing to the spread of a culture of peace based on mutual respect for human rights and human dignity.

Education about genocide should therefore implement the following objectives: – recognizing grounds, course and effects of events and historical processes, which contribute to genocides, – learning maps of contemporary acts of genocides, slaughters and massacres, – making aware of effects of genocide for next generations, – learning mechanisms, which contribute to genocides and ethnic cleansings as a method to prevent mass crimes, – analysing possibility to avoid such events in the future (Machul-Telus, Markowska-Manista, 2011).

It should be emphasized that superficial, haphazard, fragmentary, and incomplete education about genocides, disconnected from the context, memory, and places involved, obviously has no chance of permanently changing attitudes. Instead, it may contribute to blurring of understanding and teaching and limit memory to certain facts and issues. Nor does it stand a chance of either overcoming the power of racism and xenophobia or solving entrenched social problems. However, effective education, considered as a process, can foster a better understanding of the mechanisms that can lead to genocide and thus inspire deeper reflection. An in-depth and sustained study of the causes and contexts of the Holocaust, the Srebrenica massacre, or the Rwandan genocide can sensitize not only individuals but also groups, and thus help to recognize the signals of impending danger and, consequently, to implement measures to stop it.

Ellen J. Kennedy, director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota, emphasizes that genocide education is a component of three essential elements: teaching about genocide, teaching against genocide, and teaching to prevent genocide. Educators addressing this issue can therefore shape curriculum content accordingly to emphasize all three of these areas:

•  teaching about genocide, with stress on both the comparisons and uniqueness of societies, cultures that existed before the annihilation;
• teaching against genocide, or providing a background and presenting ways in which individuals can resist manipulation; 
• teaching to prevent genocide, or teaching designed to engage students and the general public in advocating for political change, supporting a 2005 UN resolution that makes it mandatory to protect innocent civilians when their own governments are unable or unwilling to do so.

In contrast, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) developed guidelines for teaching about genocide that were preceded by extensive pedagogical research. From these, five directives were formulated that may be helpful to educators who are conducting genocide education:

1. Define genocide.
2. Identify the contexts that led to the genocide. Think through various factors and patterns that may have played a role in the early stages: political considerations, economic hardship, local history, cultural contexts; how target groups were defined, dehumanized, marginalized, and segregated prior to the mass killing, etc.
3. Be aware of simplistic similarities to other genocides. Despite the determinants of genocide pointed out in theory, each act of this violence has its own unique characteristics: time, place, people, and methods.
4. Analyse the response of the international community (U.S. and global). It is important to learn from the past mistakes. To do this, students must seek to understand why remedial/helpful action was or was not taken by the global community.
5. Illustrate the positive actions taken by individuals and groups in the face of genocide. During every act of genocide there were individuals who opposed it and those whose lives were saved by someone. Emphasize the importance of acts of courage, sometimes very small but not insignificant. When teaching and learning about genocide, individuals may fall victim to helplessness or the assumption of the inevitability of events.

The history of genocides embedded in the world’s heritage tells us much about human nature, about social relations and dependencies resulting from conquests, colonial expansions, and processes of nation and state formation. Teaching about genocide, in addition to providing much relevant information about the factors and circumstances that allow such crimes to occur, the roles of government, armies, and civilians, and preventive options, also brings other lessons. It shows us that ordinary people are capable of horrific acts of violence, but also of extraordinary heroism. Genocide education oriented towards understanding and remembrance provides a multifaceted look at issues of power, class, social dependency, political crises, and dehumanization. Finally, this education against genocide is a basic (though insufficient) tool to prevent the repetition of events from the bloody history of man.

Migration, crisis and genocide

Migration and genocide are closely intertwined constructs (Wolff, 2020), shaping our present and future, regardless of whether we are directly or indirectly involved in them. Literature is replete with scholarly writings on the socio-legal aspects of genocide, as well as on migration on a macro and micro level in today’s globalized world. However, there are not many scientific analyses and publications that deal with the problems of migration and genocide, showing the symbiosis and historical inseparability of these two processes (Davidson, 2015). Both genocides and the resulting migrations, as well as migrations and the resulting conflicts, carry with them the potential for political, social and cultural chaos. The stories and consequences of the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, the Armenian genocide, genocides in Australia or Latin America, and crimes on a genocidal scale in many regions of the globe go beyond territories of total annihilation. As a result of the wave of migration, they spread much more widely, over significant areas of other countries, regions, and continents. Migrating victims, witnesses and perpetrators, fleeing mass crimes and massacres, bring new challenges to their host societies. These crimes “draw (…) into the whirlpool not only the perpetrators and victims, but also the witnesses, marking them permanently.” (Nijakowski, 2013: 11) Each victim, witness and perpetrator transforms the topography of new places through their homelessness, individual testimonies of life, and practices of forgiveness and revenge. Genocide and modern migration share an inseparable bond.

Modern migration cannot be understood without the knowledge of genocides. It is important, as Philip Zimbardo (2011: 12) writes “(…) to know and understand how and why acts of genocide occur.” This knowledge is necessary, because genocides and crimes against humanity were and are nowadays a ubiquitous result of migration (Clarke, 2021; Kataria, 2020; Asquith, 2019; Alvarez, 2017). Moreover, it includes not only the perpetrators and victims of mass murders or massacres in a given area, but also victims, witnesses of massacres and executioners sailing on the same dinghy for a better, safer future, and subsequently living in the same refugee camp or centre, and finally passing each other every day on the streets of the town they live in.

Accelerating globalisation, escalating conflicts and deepening social inequalities can lead to profound and sometimes undesirable changes in the lives of individuals, societies and nations, based largely on migration and refugeeism (Markowska-Manista, 2019).

The processes of global migration mean that we live and will live with millions of victims of conflict, war and genocide. They are and will be among us and each of us may one day become a migrant or refugee. These are processes over which we have little influence or control.

In Central and Eastern Europe, we are witnessing a multidimensional migration crisis consisting of a sharp increase in the number of migrants crossing through various migration channels to Europe. These are mostly refugees or migrants from areas engulfed by warfare, conflict, crises, accompanied by incoherent migration policies of the European Union and a spreading attitude of resentment towards refugees and migrants in European societies (Markowska-Manista, Pasamonik, 2017). We are at the same time witnessing and participating in an attitudinal crisis resulting from the fear of strangers (Bhabha, 2018). Accompanying the attitudinal crisis, social and political polarisation in the field of refugee policy (reinforced by sensation-based media coverage) focused on accepting (or rather not accepting) refugees, is based on differentiated emotions and differentiated cognitive schemas, and consequently on differentiated moral values (Markowska-Manista, 2019).

This is why it is so important for the majority society, minorities and migrants coming to Europe, North America or Australia (if we look at this process globally) to be aware of how to teach about these phenomena to the younger generations in the context of children’s human rights.

Shaping social memory through education is extremely important in sensitising the young generation to the universality of history and making them aware that it does not matter where we live, because in every place on Earth we must be aware of the danger of genocide (UNESCO, 2013).

None of the genocides around the world happened overnight, without discernible symptoms or warning. It is an intentional and non-accidental process, and its consequences have both domestic and international dimensions. On the one hand, we are aware of the repetition of these events and of this “banality of evil” (Arendt, 2006) which have accompanied man for centuries. Today’s increasingly diverse world, however, needs conscious young generations who can understand how tragic in their consequences genocides are and how trivial are their roots, generations open to understanding and constructive resolution of the conflicts that give rise to them.

Genocides must be educated about in the present in the context of learning from the past in order to shape the future. This temporal placement implies the need to discuss genocidal phenomena in broader historical and political contexts, that is necessary to understand their complexity, as well as confirming the necessity of the multidimensional nature of the educational experience in relation to the topic of genocides. Genocides as social facts should be explained by reference to other genocidal acts (Kucia, 2005: 5).

Viewing genocide education as teaching essential to understanding historical and contemporary processes related to politically, economically, and culturally motivated conflicts, it is important to note its important role in: countering human rights violations, promoting democracy, and shaping attitudes of tolerance and respect for others.
Such education allows to shape both the historical and generational memory, makes one sensitive to the problems of the contemporary world, may contribute to a better conduct of individuals and groups, and subsequently to changing attitudes. Reflective shaping of memory, which makes us aware of the recurrence of history and different faces of evil, can contribute to the reflection of individuals and groups on the intentionality of action and in the long run result in a change of attitudes and become (on the level of education) a means to create a peaceful society that respects human rights, prevents radicalization and intolerance.