Remembrance Without Reduction: Why Holocaust Education Fails When It Becomes a Moral Shortcut

Every January, on campuses around the world, students mark Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Posters go up. Speakers are booked. A survivor or historian tells a devastating story. Candles are lit. The words “Never Again” are spoken with appropriate solemnity.

And then everyone goes back to class.

Nothing about this is malicious. In fact, it is often done with genuine care and good intentions. But intention doesn’t in any way guarantee impact. And increasingly, I worry that much of what we call Holocaust education on campus is doing less than we think it is.

Not because it is wrong.

But because it isn’t enough.

When remembrance becomes a moral mic drop rather than a serious intellectual and ethical encounter, it quietly fails the very students it is meant to serve. It flattens history. It alienates curious minds. And it leaves Jewish vulnerability poorly understood by everyone except Jews themselves.

Holocaust education was never meant to function as proof of virtue. It was meant to form people into guardians of human dignity, shaped by memory into responsibility, and allergic to the small compromises that make moral collapse feel normal.

There is a difference.

The Shortcut We’ve Normalised

On many campuses, Holocaust education operates as a kind of moral shorthand.

Show the horror.

Name the evil.

Affirm that it was wrong.

Move on.

The underlying logic is simple and deeply flawed: if people understand how bad the Holocaust was, they will naturally oppose antisemitism today.

But learning does not work that way. And neither does moral development.

What this approach produces is not understanding, but rather an opportunity for moral signalling. It teaches students how to perform empathy without requiring them to grapple with complexity. It rewards emotional reaction over intellectual engagement. And it subtly communicates that remembering is something you demonstrate, not something you integrate.

For Jewish students, the result is often dissonance. Their history is publicly acknowledged for one week, then functionally ignored the rest of the year. Their vulnerability is mourned abstractly, but rarely translated into contemporary responsibility.

For non-Jewish students, the lesson absorbed is even thinner: antisemitism was bad back then, extremists are bad now, and the work of remembrance is largely symbolic.

That is not education. It is theatre.

Moral Signalling vs Moral Formation

A useful distinction here is between moral signalling and moral formation.

Moral signalling is about public reassurance. It answers the question: Do we agree this was wrong? It is collective, declarative, and emotionally legible.

Moral formation is about shaping how people think, reason, and act over time. It asks harder questions:

• How do ordinary societies slide into moral collapse?

• What does minority vulnerability actually look like before catastrophe?

• How do institutions fail long before violence begins?

• What responsibility do bystanders carry, not just perpetrators?

Formation requires discomfort. It resists clean conclusions. And it does not resolve neatly in ninety minutes.

When Holocaust education is reduced to signalling, it becomes safe. When it aims at formation, it becomes demanding.

And demanding is precisely what our students need.

The Cost of Flattened History

One of the most damaging side effects of reductive Holocaust education is historical flattening.

The Holocaust is presented as an inevitable eruption of evil, rather than the outcome of political decisions, cultural narratives, legal changes, and social incentives unfolding over time. Antisemitism is framed as an ancient hatred that periodically explodes, rather than a mutable phenomenon that adapts to context.

This framing unintentionally reinforces two dangerous ideas.

First, that the Holocaust is so singular and extreme that it has little relevance to modern democratic societies. And second, that antisemitism today must look the same to be taken seriously.

Neither is true.

When students are taught how antisemitism functioned, not just that it did, they become better equipped to recognise it when it appears in new language and new forms. When they understand the mechanisms of exclusion, scapegoating, and dehumanisation, they are less likely to dismiss contemporary warning signs simply because they do not resemble the past closely enough.

Depth produces discernment. Reduction produces complacency.

Asking the Question We Avoid

Every serious educational effort should be anchored in a simple but uncomfortable question:

What change are we actually trying to produce?

I wrote previously about the importance of moving from instinct to intention in Jewish advocacy. That same discipline applies here. If the goal of Holocaust education is merely to honour memory, we should say so honestly. If the goal is to foster empathy, name that. But if we claim it is meant to combat antisemitism, then we must be willing to examine whether our methods are fit for that purpose.

This is where a theory of change becomes indispensable.

If Holocaust education is meant to shape campus culture, then we need to be clear about how it does so. What attitudes shift? What capacities are built? What conversations become possible afterward that were not possible before?

Without that clarity, remembrance risks becoming ritualised rather than transformative.

What Serious Holocaust Education Actually Does

When done well, Holocaust education does not aim to shock. It aims to train attention.

It helps students learn to:

• sit with moral ambiguity without rushing to judgment

• recognise early warning signs of social breakdown

• understand Jewish peoplehood as a living historical continuum

• see minority vulnerability as structural, not accidental

• resist simplistic analogies while remaining ethically alert

This kind of learning is slower. It requires facilitated discussion, not just lectures. It benefits from sequencing, not one-off programming. And it works best when it is embedded within a broader educational ecosystem rather than isolated as a standalone event.

In other words, it behaves more like formation than commemoration.

Practical Shifts That Change Everything

For students and professionals looking to elevate Holocaust education beyond symbolism, here are a few concrete shifts that make an immediate difference.

Design for after, not just during.

Ask what conversations, relationships, or learning processes should exist because this program happened. If nothing follows, the impact likely ends when the room empties.

Replace certainty with inquiry.

Build programs around questions rather than conclusions. Students learn more when they are invited to think than when they are told what to feel.

Integrate Jewish particularity without apology.

Universal lessons matter, but they should emerge from a clear understanding of Jewish history, not replace it.

Sequence experiences.

A lecture can open a door. A discussion can deepen it. A retreat, course, or immersive experience can solidify it. No single format carries the whole load.

Prepare facilitators, not just speakers.

The quality of the conversation often matters more than the brilliance of the content. Invest accordingly.

None of this requires abandoning remembrance. It requires taking it seriously enough to expect more from it.

From Memory to Responsibility

Holocaust education fails when it becomes a box to check or a moral credential to display. It succeeds when it forms people who are harder to manipulate, quicker to notice danger, and more capable of acting with clarity when it matters.

Memory alone does not produce responsibility. An approach that aims for moral formation does.

If we want campuses that do more than mourn Jewish suffering in the abstract, we need to teach in ways that help students understand how fragile pluralism really is in open societies, how quickly norms erode, and how much agency individuals and institutions actually possess.

Remembrance is not the end of the work.

It is the beginning of it.

And if we treat it that way, we might finally stop asking Holocaust education to do everything in one hour, and start allowing it to do something real over time.