Do German schools teach much about the Holocaust and Germany's role in World War II?

Question

I heard that German schools after the war never taught much about the Holocaust at all or Germany's role in the war and at most just skimmed over it, is this true and is it still true today? If you're German and you want to school in Germany do you remember, did your teachers teach you much about it?

Answer 1

Now while I was in school, I did learn about the Holocaust and about WW II.

Other than that, why is it so difficult to let go of the Holocaust, it was a horrible thing but talking about it will not make it go away.

Vietname and now the war that is going on is also horrible and so many other war's.

Answer 2

I learned about it in the 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, and 12th grade!!!And we also went to two concentration camps, the one in Dachau and one in the czech rep..

do american children learn something in the school about the genocide on native american?!

Answer 3

Why would young Germans be forced to take a guilt trip over something that people in their country did and which is generations away? I agree that it should be part of their history studies, but it should not be used to rub it in constantly.

I guess contemporary Americans would not like to be reminded constantly of how they treated blacks or native American Indians.

Answer 4

I worked for a long time in schoolbooks publishing company in Germany. Yes this is the subject in the History classes. They read that, they talk about it. It is good they teach the kids about the History, I think everybody need to know that. This is the part of the history.

Answer 5

It's true that immediately following the war, not much was taught about the war and the Holocaust, although i would argue that today, Germany is much more open about the Holocaust than nation's such as France, who have not opened up their archives to the public (for fear that they were SO involved in the war and don't want the world to know).

The education of history varies by state in Germany, but while I lived there, they went through different periods depending on the school grade: So grade 11 covered Charlemagne until the French Revolution, grade 12/13 covered Enlightenment until present day.

Answer 6

Righ after the war it is true, that no one were even talking about the holocaust.

Today in my opinion this thing is too much discussed in school. When I was in school we had only, belive me,  had only  history lessons about n**i-regime. If I would not have been researched by myself, would not have known(by school), that there was a germyny in a time _before_ n***s. I had history class in 8 years of my school-time, and only in the last year of that we did _additionaly_ a little bit about the GDR because I _begged_ my teacher to do so!

Belive me, I have my exercise-books from my complete school time til today, and there is almost  nothing of history from time before 1920.

It is not good to raise in the feeling that the history of you counry cosists only on a bunch of b******s, and you are not taught that this is only the half truth, and this regime was only one part of a very long history, that was not bad all the times.

Answer 7

I went to school in Germany for 13 years and I can tell you that nowadays they tell you everything about WWII and the Holocaust. In the last 2 years before our Abitur (German High School diploma) we talked about it so much that many students actually got annoyed with it. The good news: Not only did we speak about faults and horrifying actions, we also discussed psychological aspects and reasons. We read Günter Grass none stop and tried to figure out why it happened, and how to catch it if history repeats itsself.

To sum it up: Instead of just going over the facts out Gymnasium teachers made sure that we truly understood what happened (as far as that is even possible today). We really learned something.

Answer 8

Its true, that directly after the war, there was taught nothing about Hitler. It think the reason is, that the teachers themselves lived in times of war and dont want to talk about their role.

But nowadays of course everything is tought about ww2 and germanys role

Answer 9

I'm not sure what went on in the 2 decades after war.But I think the young people in the 70's were ready to face the things that happened.But just a guess.

In my school years(1990-2001)We were taught very much about holocaust and the political stuff going on before WWII.Also visited the Conzentration Camp in Dachau.

We weren't actually taught about the battles of WWII but the political meetings such as the allied meeting in Malta and certainly Potsdamer Conference when war was over.

Got a counterquestion.Who tells you such a c**p we weren'`t schooled in those important questions of our history?Saw this question several times.