Are preschoolers ready to learn about the Holocaust?
The new initiative by the Education Ministry to introduce the Holocaust into the preschool curriculum has provoked a heated debate as to whether its motives are educational or nationalist.
In an interview with the Globes newspaper on April 27, author and Holocaust survivor Uri Orlev, who wrote some of the best-known works of children’s literature about the Holocaust (including "The Island on Bird Street" and "Run, Boy, Run") was asked how to explain the Holocaust to children. “When my son was seven,” Orlev responded, “he asked me, ‘How did you escape from the Germans?’ I didn’t know how to explain it to him.” After much thought, he responded to his son with an allegory about life and death, which he originally heard from a Polish girl.
Orlev is not a great supporter of Israeli Education Minister Shai Piron’s new curriculum to begin teaching the Holocaust in preschool. “It’s not wise,” he said in the same interview. “He got a bit carried away. How can anyone tell a story like that to someone so young?”
