Munich, June 7, 2024 — ENCATE brought together museum workers, educators, researchers, and civil society actors at the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism to explore Muslim belonging and German remembrance practices. Participants discussed the integration and exploration of the insights from Prof. Esra Özyürek’s book “Subcontractors of Guilt: Holocaust Memory and Muslim Belonging in Postwar Germany” into their educational, scholarly, and advocacy work.

As a part of the workshop, Aya Zarfati from the House of the Wannsee Conference gave input about Holocaust education for diverse groups at the museum. She pointed out that appreciation of diversity through various means, such as language, allows for more inclusion and stronger multiperspectivity. Together with the insights from Özyürek’s book, the participants reflected on how Holocaust remembrance should look in order to be as inclusive as possible. The participants also pointed out that Holocaust remembrance in today’s (post-migration) society is strongly connected to questions of identity and should tackle questions such as the following:

• Who remembers?
• Which groups are addressed in Holocaust remembrance and education?
• And how are these groups addressed?

Even though some educators may believe that Holocaust education and memory site visits can somehow fight antisemitism, particularly the perceived unique form of antisemitism among young Muslims, the answer is not always straightforward. Isolating one specific group is not useful at all. Creating educational and remembrance programs for a specific audience, such as Muslims, can often be reductive and perpetuate stereotypes.

In today’s post-migrant society, remembering and teaching about the Holocaust is relevant for everyone, regardless of their background or family history. It is because it helps us better understand today’s discourses, politics, and society in Germany. At the end of the workshop, it became clear that it is fundamentally essential to have open conversations with each other, rather than talking about each other, to create a future of remembrance for everyone together on an equal footing.

Andrea Schnelzauer, KIgA e.V.