Together with the National Coordinator for Combating Anti-Semitism (NCAB), the municipality of Amsterdam will set up a support center where schools can go with questions about Holocaust education and anti-Semitism.
The support center will, among other things, refer to different teaching methods and also wants to provide pedagogical support to make it easier to discuss the Holocaust in class, writes AT5/NH Nieuws. The NCAB and the municipality of Amsterdam are still discussing the precise details of the support center with Amsterdam teachers and experts.
For the time being it is an initiative for schools in Amsterdam, but the NCAB hopes that other cities and regions will take over the support centre. “We hope that larger municipalities will open their own counter and that smaller towns will share such a point. So that the support point is close by and accessible to everyone,” says Eddo Verdoner of NCAB.
Alderman Moorman of Education is pleased with the future information point. “We cannot and do not want to look away if the horrific facts of the Holocaust are insufficiently known to so many people. We must help the schools that need support with this.”
Recent research commissioned by the Anne Frank House shows that 42 percent of secondary school teachers were confronted with anti-Semitic expressions and trivialization of the Holocaust in class last school year.
‘Crucial in the fight against anti-Semitism’
Eddo Verdoner of the NCAB emphasizes the importance of education about the Holocaust in schools. “Holocaust education is a crucial part of the fight against anti-Semitism, discrimination and exclusion. This dark period in our history should not go unnoticed by any student.”
Last Monday, there was a fuss about a projection on the Anne Frank House. The text ‘Anne Frank inventor of the ballpoint pen’ was projected on the museum, a text that implies that Anne Frank did not write her diary herself. Mayor Femke Halsema called the projection in front of AT5 ‘a new low’.
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