LONDON (EJP)---Teachers from across the UK are attending a 10-day intensive Holocaust training seminar at the Yad Vashem memorial museum in Jerusalem.

The seminar is organised by the Holocaust Educational Trust (HET), which is educating young people from every ethnic background about the Holocaust and the important lessons to be learned for today, and Yad Vashem.

The 21 teachers from different teaching backgrounds were chosen for the course after submitting applications about their personal experiences of teaching the Holocaust and their reasons for applying.

Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said:”The whole experience of being in Israel, whilst learning about such a significant event in the history of the Jewish people, is having the most profound impact on the participants.”

"These teachers are determined and motivated to take what they have learnt from the Course back to their classrooms in the UK, and I have every faith that they will do a fantastic job."


During the seminar the educators are attending academic lectures by some of Israel’s leading Holocaust educators including Professor David Bankier and Professor Yehuda Bauer on subjects such as ‘The universal aspects of the Holocaust vis-a-vis other genocides’, and ‘Jewish identity in a world of chaos’.

HET educators are providing pedagogical workshops which focus on teaching the Holocaust within the framework of the UK and the English National Curriculum. The participants will have the opportunity to make use of the unique facilities on offer at Yad Vashem.

Adrienne Jervis, a teacher from Lytham St. Anne’s High Technology College in Lancashire, who is one of the participants, said: “The Course enables me to understand and explore the issues surrounding the Holocaust in much greater depth and highlights the impact of individual responsibility.”

“I will be able to pass on to my students, not just a greater awareness of the past, but particularly a profound understanding of the contemporary lessons of the Holocaust.”