The seminar began with a message from Nenad Novkovski, Minister of Education and Science, Macedonia. Mr Novkovski emphasisied the fact that we should all learn from history in order to avoid to make the same mistakes in the future.

The Aims of Seminar 1A were:
To demonstrate through the case study of Holocaust education the potential for historical events to impress themselves on the conscience and ultimately upon the actions of society.
To outline a number of philosophies and methodologies related to teaching about the Holocaust To ask whether teaching about the Holocaust is an appropriate tool for combating intolerance.
To ask to what extent the teaching of historical precedent generally can play a role in prevention.
To examine the link between historical scenario and moral education.

Dr Stephen D. Smith: The Holocaust Centre – Beth Shalom, UK Where past meets future: Questions about Intolerance.
Stephen Smith began the education workshops by explaining that they were constructed in such a way as to achieve practical results. He suggested participants think about the ways in which their own departments might use the discussions in the formation of education policy. He expressed the hope that recommendations would be forthcoming that would stimulate cooperation on education policy.
Dr Smith noted the importance of asking fundamental questions about the nature of intolerance and the role that education might play in combatting its presence. He underscored the fact that what we know about the outcomes of educational endeavours are still unclear and that we need to continue to ask questions about the nature of intolerance itself. He suggested we question our goals to understand what role education might play in more a constructive, focussed and quantifiable manner.
Some of the questions he asked included:
What can/do we actually learn from history ?
Is it possible to do so in a way that has practical outcomes in the contemporary setting?
Is intolerance innate or is it learned ?
If innate can we combat it? If learned can tolerance also be learned?
Is tolerance the opposite of intolerance or its cousin - an uneasy compromise in which the other is merely tolerated?
How do you educate for acceptance, appreciation and understanding?
If we educate ignorant racists, will they become informed racists ?
Who in society is responsible for children’sn learning ?
Is education about teaching children only?
What do governments in order to educate outside of the school environment?
Is education about learning facts alone? How does the teaching of values take place and who is responsible for them?
If part of learning is about listening, how do we listen and learn from the voices of the victims of intolerance?

Shulamit Imber, Yad Vashem, Israel
Teaching about Holocaust: Are there lessons to be learned from history ?
Shulamit Imber focused her comments around the elelments of teaching the Holocaust that root the expereince in human and personal history. She emphasised the need to impress upon students the fact that real people were involved in creating the possibility of the Holocaust and in bearing the brunt of its consequences. Her succinct comments urge professionals to think more broadly than historical facts or replaying the mechanisms of mass death, but about the human process that led to it, lived through it and continues to suffer its consequences.
She suggested that any educational endeavour which touches the Holocaust should always access the human story and underscore that the specific circumstances that thos individuals lived through are of universal value to our understanding of human relationships. Her main points included the following:
We should always teach the Holocaust as a human story. We talk about the victims, the perpetrators, the rescuers and the bystanders as categories that allow us to understand that people fulfilled role in the history, but not just to limit them to those roles alone. However, they should also demonstrate that some poeple had no choice and other wilfully chose the role they played.
When we talk about the Jewish victims we start always with everyday life before the persecution of the Jews began in earnest. Doing so the child can find points of references to his / her own life and relate to the victim as a person, rather than as a statistic.

Talking about the perpetrators we ask ourselves if there is a little Nazi in all of us, demonstrating that they were not far removed from the type of people, actions and choices that led to the Holocaust. We find out that we all are bystanders. We find out what the rest of the world did during the Holocaust and ask about the consequences of not acting or reacting to the challenge posed by the perpetration of such evil. We should ask questions of this history that might make a difference. For Example: what turned a bystander into a rescuer ? All rescuers saw a face - a real person to be saved. Understanding that victims are people is the first step to being there for them – is that not something we can actually teach?
Holocaust cannot be taught only within the discipline of history. It has to permeate art, philosophy, literature, ethics - to challenge the whole of our cultural and academic thinking in a variety of disciplines.

Christer Mattsson, Living History Project, Sweden Teaching for tolerance:
Embracing diversity in divided societies
Christer Mattsson explained that in the Swedish school system teaching about the Holocaust must meet the requirements of the national curriculum. In teaching this subject it is possible to fulfil one or or more of the curriculum objectives, which makes it an important area of learning.
In his presentation Christer Mattsson asked questions of the way in which we teach about the Holocaust and what educational goals are fulfilled in so doing. He used computer generated presentation techniques to demonstrate graphically the decision making process that made possible the final solution and simultaneously demanding an evaluation from the student. He followed the choices that were made in the decision to kill en-masse and asked about the type of decisions that were being made at various points by the perpetrators and whether or not the choices that made were markedly different from the kind of decision making process and choice selection that any of us would use in similar situations. The idea was to demonstrate that beyond learning what happened it is important for learners to understand the mechanisms that lie behind the possibility of mass death and the process that leads to it.
He suggested that in teaching the Holocaust a number of skills need to be developed, not only to learn about it, but to learn from it and to then go on to communicate the issues it raises.
He raised three key skills to be considered:
1. Didactical skills - by which we learn to interprate the past
2. Pedagogical skills – by which we learn to understand the present
3. Communicational skills – by which we learn to take part in the dialogue that creates the future.
Mr Mattson left the audience with a question for further consideration: What is missing most in the tuition today ? Knowledge ? Didactics? Or pedagogy ?

Professor Hubert Locke, Washington State University, USA:
What are the outcomes we seek in teaching towards tolerance ?
Professor Locke reflected upon the challenges posed to societies in which intolerance persists and the mechanisms of the educational environment not necessarily understood. He suggested certain changes to perceptions of education itself and to perceptions of groups that are being tolerated. He also suggested that what is known about the theory of intolerance must not overlook the nature of peoples fundamental attitudes and values. His key points included the following:
Education is not the opposite of ignorance.
Enlightment of the mind doesn´t necessarily lead to a change in the heart.
We should stop talking about majority and minority, there is often no demographic relevance for these terms; we should replace them by for example insiders and outsiders.
When teaching history we have to include both bad and good things, in other words we have to tell the truth.
The state must inoculate it´s citizens to stand up to the virus of nationalism. What is the state capable of doing in hands that do ill to some of its citizens?

Discussion with Audience Following Formal Presentations
Following the presentations a lengthy discussion ensued in which a number of suggestions were proffered. They included the following:
The terms ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ should not be used when educating as it infers greater/lesser, them/us, superior/inferior and provides ready lines of division between groups.
‘Tolerance’ is not enough, we have to teach acceptance, respect and equality, therefore the discussion needs to be taken on to see how that is achieved.
Young people should be taught how to decode propaganda, how to see and understand that the deniers of Holocaust lie to them.
(Dr Karen Mock, Canada and Hubert Locke, USA) On a worldwide level, sanctions should be imposed on countries where there is no peaceful coexistence; this should be required as a new foundation for democracy.
(Mauricio Hatchwell, Spain) There needs to be further research and the results of research in educating for tolerance should be transferred into the curriculum and through the public media.

(Hubert Locke, USA) The teaching of history and specifically of Holocaust should be done with an awareness of local needs. By way of example in Russia, the experience of the Gulag has to be included as it has particular and important meaning to the local population and cannot be seen as something entirely separate.
(Ekaterina Genieva, Russia) When teaching history to children, they must be brought near individual turning points; a human connection has to be brought up to every child. To achieve this, new, integrated teaching methods have to be developed.
(Vaiva Vebraite, Lithuania) Do not start teaching the Holocaust with history. Start by focusing on the individual, always put history in the context of the individual as that is where it works out in practice.
(August Zemo, USA) Teachers must be taught how to teach about Holocaust and the curriculum must be adapted to be able to contain this specific subject area.
(Shulamit Imber, Israel) Teachers must get time to be able to teach values
(Christer Mattsson, Sweden)

Conclusions
The discussion concluded by recommending that policy makers consider how they take an historical precedent such as the Holocaust and teach it for what it was as an historical episode, but in so doing make a considerable effort to demonstrate that it took place in human history and that its mere happening is sufficient demonstration of its possibility. It underscored the importance of reflecting on the fact that it emerged out of quite ordinary circumstances, with extraordinarily evil consequences.
It also concluded that while formal education requires further research, training and development, that education should not be seen in the narrow sense of formal education in school alone. The concept of educating in order to combat intolerance should be extended to encompass the informing of society in the widest sense possible.