EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE: THE SHOAH AND ST. MICHAEL’S COLLEGE ADELAIDE

What is the ‘Holocaust’? 

Up to 24% of youth, in a reputable survey did not know, and 30% of Millennials had no idea. Such evidence might suggest poor history teaching for young Australians. The Andrew Steiner Education Centre, within the Adelaide Holocaust Museum is changing that. 

Ms. Stacey Moros, Head of History at St. Michael’s College Adelaide (SMCA) has introduced her history classes to the horrors of the Shoah (Jewish and preferred name for the ‘Holocaust’), one of the pre-eminent examples by the Nazi German government of the 1930-40’s of massive anti-Semitism, and, in effect, practical genocide of Jewish people.

Coming from an East European background, she received a Gandel Foundation scholarship in 2013 to visit Berlin and Auschwitz. Her study tour was an “amazing educational, professional, personal experience”, she says. SMCA is one of 55 South Australian schools to benefit from the Holocaust introduction program run by the Education Centre. as Andrew Steiner as a Shoah survivor has had a long association with SMCA, it became the first school to participate at Stacey’s initiative. 

Stacey’s goal in teaching the Shoah is for pupils to realise that, as she says in “The Southern Cross” magazine, this “happened in a modern, cultured and civilized” Germany. 

She teaches the underlying causes of the persecution and its stages of horrific destruction of an ethnicity over much of Europe. The absolute nature of the program – obliterating the physical, cultural, and religious life of Jewry – is taught. Individuals’ stories of families who played sport, celebrated birthdays, holidays, weddings, were part of normal German social groupings are explored.

For Ms. Moros, this broadening of the history curriculum honours those killed, and “gives them back a voice”.

Results of the survey of attendees of the Steiner Centre show participants develop a deeper tolerance of minority groups and of vulnerable groups in their society.

See the interactive online program:  www.ahmsec.org.au

(All Information: “The Southern Cross”, February 2022      Author:  Br Gary Wilson)