"I grew up in a pretty normal family – a mother and five siblings – but in a xenophobic environment. My older brother was in the neo-Nazi movement, my mother was a xenophobe, my grandfather was a Nazi in the 1940s. That is my family story."
So recalled Peter Sundin, a participant of a recent seminar at Yad Vashem for Swedish educators. Sundin joined 25 teachers who came to the Mount of Remembrance to learn more about the Shoah and acquire effective tools for educating Swedish youth of its relevance today.
Sundin got involved with neo-Nazis in his hometown at the tender age of 14, and finally quit the movement after taking part in a particularly violent attack against a young immigrant. In 2012, he met Christer Mattson – a well-known Swedish leader who has worked with former neo-Nazi leaders for the past 20 years and now heads the Swedish "Tolerance Project" that helps educate students and teachers alike about the dangers of hate and xenophobia. He told Mattson his story, and began working with youth involved in xenophobic movements. "I've been to Poland twice and now I am here in Israel at Yad Vashem because I feel it is the best education I can get."
Every year, thousands of educators and community leaders from around the world journey with this same open mind to participate in seminars at Yad Vashem. They come to draw on Yad Vashem's unique approach to Holocaust education and use these skills back in their home countries. Yad Vashem also has official agreements with dozens of countries that send their teachers to Israel to participate in these important teaching courses.
As a relatively "side-player" in the war, for decades afterwards the general Swedish population received scant knowledge about the Shoah. In the 1990s, with Sweden's desire to join the European Union and the rise of the fascist National Socialist movement, the Swedish government understood more had to be done about Holocaust education. Consequently, in 1998 Prime Minister Gören Persson spearheaded a Swedish campaign, the Living History Forum, and began to foster education about the Holocaust within its own borders and throughout the world.
And yet, this wasn't enough. Neo-Nazis gathered greater and greater numbers, among the youth especially. Holocaust denial, as well as other racist and xenophobic ideologies and acts, lay high on their agenda. Following the shocking murder by four neo-Nazis of a Czech immigrant teenager in 1995, the Tolerance Project was born, in an attempt to identify, work with, and eventually turn around at-risk youth caught up in fascist movements.
Kimmie Åhlén, another participant in the Swedish educators' seminar with a neo-Nazi past, came to Yad Vashem because of his complicated personal history. Involved in a culture of alcohol and drug abuse and committed to violence and fighting "communists" and immigrants, Åhlén was on the fast track to the top of the neo-Nazi Movement. In school, he denied the Holocaust, telling his teachers that he didn't believe in it because Jews and Jewish culture was the biggest enemy of National Socialists.
Åhlén got involved with the Tolerance Project after revisiting a Jewish graveyard in Karlstad (the southwestern Swedish town where 500 Jewish women went to recuperate after the war). When he first visited the site, he was convinced that there were really no Jews buried there. But under Mattson's guidance, his horizons opened and he realized he wanted not only to increase his knowledge on the Holocaust but also understand why and how it happened. He is especially inspired by hearing survivor testimony at Yad Vashem. "As I work with young people, using first-hand stories of Holocaust survivors is a way to bring history to life and create sympathy for the victims."
Social Science Teacher Helena Hermansson agrees. "Swedish teachers are obliged to teach about the Holocaust in particular, as well as other genocides. But Swedish teachers need to learn more about how to teach the Holocaust. Students should see history as an ongoing process, learning from the past, and seeing the individuals behind the stories. In this way, students learn that their choices can make a difference."
History Teacher Ola Flennegard has been dealing with Holocaust education since 2001 and was interested in coming to Yad Vashem in order to deepen his understanding of the events of the Holocaust, as well as to learn about its didactic approaches to Holocaust education. "Without profound knowledge about the Holocaust, we cannot encounter neo-Nazis or neo-Nazism. Superficial knowledge can be catastrophic. The preservation of memory at Yad Vashem is so evident and on a high level… we need to move away from linear teaching to learning about what happened before and after – to give more of a perspective to the event. The Holocaust was not only, or even mainly, about the camps, but about the hole in Europe that needs discovering – six million people. If you know where to look you can find traces of what was.
"You can't be a European [educator] and not want to teach about the Holocaust, and show your students the loss it caused of human values in Europe. It is not enough to appreciate what was lost – we need to understand that human beings were behind the loss and they were born no different to us. If you want to understand what it means to be a human being, you have to come to Yad Vashem."
First published in Yad Vashem Jerusalem magazine, #84, October 2017