Teaching the Unteachable: A Canadian Perspective

Much attention has been devoted to the development of college or university courses dealing entirely with the Holocaust. For many students, however, a general survey course provides the only context in which they will study the Holocaust as part of their higher education. This article, based on the author's experience in teaching at a Canadian university, suggests how the Holocaust can be treated in a survey course on twentieth-century history. While the Holocaust certainly reflected trends that are typical of our century as whole, in many ways it must also be seen as unique. Among other things, it is the greatest episode of modern history whose very occurrence has been widely denied. A direct engagement with the Holocaust-denial movement has thus become a regrettable necessity in teaching twentieth-century history.