Chapter 18 - Holocaust Education and Commemoration in Britain

Summary

The chapter analyses the significance of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen in public awareness, and the stages of formalized Holocaust memory which have followed. These include the introduction of compulsory Holocaust education in schools in the 1990s and the institution of Holocaust Memorial Day in 2001, followed more recently by the reopening of the Imperial War Museum Holocaust galleries and plans for a UK Holocaust Memorial. Memory of the catastrophic genocide has remained hard to reconcile with that of the emphasis on wartime triumph which characterizes national recall in Britain, and this incompatibility continues to influence public conceptions of the Holocaust. Yet popular works of fiction and film, such as the television drama The Windermere Children (2020) about the post-war rehabilitation of child camp survivors in the Lake District, can have the effect of turning self-congratulation into self-reflection by urging that past generosity be repeated in the present, despite Britain’s departure from the European Union. The emphasis on Holocaust literacy could offset the tendency to mythologize Britain’s role in winning the Second World War in winning the Second World War.