By April Corbin Girnus
Ethan Cohen recalls learning about the Holocaust in “fifth or fourth grade, briefly” and “then in middle school more in depth.”
But his experience isn’t the standard in Nevada.
“I attended a Jewish day school for most of my life,” said the high schooler, who serves on the Nevada Youth Legislature. “I had that with me growing all the way up. … I think my peers, while they maybe know a little about the Holocaust, it’s not comprehensive enough to make a difference that I think is necessary in our lives.”
Cohen on Wednesday shared his perspective with state legislators on the interim committee on education, who discussed ongoing efforts to improve the state’s education of the Holocaust and other genocides.
In 2021, lawmakers passed a law requiring the Nevada State Board of Education to create a subcommittee to review and make recommendations regarding the teaching of the Holocaust and other genocides. That year, the Anti-Defamation League reported that dissemination of white supremacist propaganda was historically high nationwide.
It has increased since, according to the ADL, particularly in the wake of the war in Gaza.
Elliot Malin, who sits on the subcommittee and presented to state lawmakers Wednesday, referenced recent protests being held in the nation’s capital in response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress, saying protesters were “calling for a final solution of Jews, yet again” — referring to the Nazi plans to kill all Jews.
Those protests, like those on college campuses earlier this year, have sometimes veered into antisemitism, but have been driven by anti-war sentiment and pleas to end the violence that has displaced hundreds of thousands and killed more than 39,000 people, mostly civilians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Israel has expressed skepticism about the accuracy of the death count.
Malin also gave lawmakers an overview of a survey released earlier this summer by the Governor’s Advisory Council on Education Relating to the Holocaust, which found that 1 in 10 Nevadans does not believe the Holocaust happened, only 1 in 3 Nevadans can accurately state how many Jews were killed in the Holocaust, and a quarter of Nevadans could not name a cause of the Holocaust.
More than a third of parents of minor children reported seeing an increase in Holocaust distortion and denial.
The Nevada Department of Education (NDE) has developed and launched 22 self-paced professional learning courses for educators, spanning topics from the Holocaust and combating antisemitism, as well as courses covering the Armenian, Rwandan, Cambodian, Darfurian, Guatemalan and Roma genocides.
More than 2,600 Nevada educators have enrolled in the courses, according to Malin. The subcommittee hopes to increase this library of self-paced courses for both educators and students.
The advisory council’s survey found that 28% of Nevadans could not name a single genocide, including the Holocaust. Numbers were more pronounced among certain groups. Among 18-34 year olds, 39% couldn’t. In rural counties, 46% couldn’t. Among those with only a high school level education, 41% couldn’t.
The NDE this year encouraged educators to participate in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s annual educators conference, which was recently held in Washington D.C. but included an online component. More than 900 Nevada educators participated.
Such efforts were possible because lawmakers in last year’s session approved a temporary Holocaust and genocides professional position within the NDE. Malin said the subcommittee will be requesting that state legislators make the job permanent when they meet next year.
“We can see the good work they’re doing,” he added. “We can also see the need for it. And so we would like to create a permanent Holocaust and other genocides professional position at the Nevada Department of Education instead of having to come back every session for the contractor. We know this is important, and we know that education works.”
The subcommittee also plans to seek state funding for microgrants that can help schools bring in guest speakers. That need is especially great within rural communities, Malin added.
Assemblywoman Selena La Rue Hatch, who is a world history teacher within Washoe County School District, said she “understands how critical these (topics) are” but noted that it is unclear where lessons about the Holocaust or other genocides are meant to be taught.
“I have students that come in to me sometimes where they have spent three or four months reading ‘Night’ (the acclaimed Holocaust memoir by Elie Wiesel) in 8th grade and they know every single thing about the Holocaust. And I have students who come to me in 10th grade and they have never heard about any of it. I hear colleagues that say, ‘We don’t need to teach the Holocaust in 10th grade because they learned it in 8th.’ It ends up falling through the cracks.”
Jamie Wise, the NDE staffer focused on the Holocaust and genocides, said the topics need to be taught “across the board” and not at any one particular grade level or course. The NDE believes it should be “providing a crosswalk to say these are the standards that can be taught that would address Holocaust and other genocides.”
She added, “We can’t just keep it in a silo. It does have to be stretched out across everywhere.”
NDE is working on providing those possible pathways not just in history and social studies but also English Language Arts, fine arts, music, media arts.
La Rue Hatch recommended the subcommittee work more closely with individual school districts, which set specific scope and sequences for curriculum.
“I think when we say everyone can teach something, sometimes it means no one teaches it,” she said. “You assume, oh, the science teacher’s got it, the art teacher’s got it, the English teacher’s got it. I do think sometimes being explicit is helpful.”
