Children studying in a clandestine school in the Kovno ghetto, Lithuania. USHMM, courtesy of Eliezer Zilberis 
A priest and several nuns pose with a group of children at a Franciscan convent school in Lomna, Poland where Jewish children were hidden during the German occupation. USHMM, courtesy of Lidia Kleinman Siciarz 
German passport for Hilde Schindler with the given middle name of Sara and stamped with J for Jude (Jew) Courtesy of the Jewish Museum London
Jewish children at the children’s home in Izieu, France. Soon afterwards they were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and murdered. Copyright © Yad Vashem 
Identity cards like this one were issued to all children who came to Britain with the 'Kindertransport', the organised groups of Jewish refugees who escaped from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938-9 Courtesy of the Jewish Museum London
Challenges and Opportunities
The CPD programme responds directly to the issues raised by teachers across England who participated in the IOE's landmark research into Holocaust education.
How can we move young people without traumatising them?
How do we support our students as they learn about stories of mass murder and immense human suffering? What is our duty of care? What activities and resources are effective in engaging students’ interest and stimulating enquiry, critical thinking, and deep reflection? What resources and classroom activities are age-appropriate for teaching a story of mass murder?
How to do justice to a complex history?
What content is essential to cover, and how to approach the scale and complexity of the Holocaust in a limited amount of curriculum time?
How do we ensure that victims and perpetrators are not dehumanised?
Do we risk creating or reinforcing negative stereotypes of Jewish people? Of fuelling anti-German feeling? How do we integrate the stories of the many victim groups of Nazi persecution and mass murder?
What are the limits of historical empathy?
How can we help young people to understand the beliefs, motivations and actions of people in the past without asking them to pretend that they know what it was like to experience events so far removed from their own lives today?
What about students who do not take the Holocaust seriously?
How should we respond to young people who make jokes, deny or trivialise the Holocaust?
How can we relate our teaching about the Holocaust to understandings about other genocides?
Can learning about the Holocaust give insights into other crimes against humanity?