Standards & Mandates

Where this stands

Holocaust education is required across much of the world.

For decades after 1945, the Holocaust went largely untaught — in the United States and across Europe alike. The change came from the ground up: survivors and educators built local resource centers through the 1970s and 1980s, training teachers and pressing the subject into nearby schools, and over time the requirement moved into law. In 2000, governments meeting in Stockholm pledged to “promote education about the Holocaust in our schools and universities” — the founding commitment of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), which today unites 35 member countries alongside UNESCO and other partners.

Today the requirement spans the globe. Holocaust or genocide education is mandated, in some form, in countries including Germany, France, Austria, Poland, the Netherlands, Hungary, Sweden, Switzerland, Israel, Canada, and Australia, and is woven through national curricula across much of Europe. In the United States — where schooling is set state by state — roughly 29 states now require it, most of those laws passed since a 2018 survey exposed how little younger generations knew. The map of where this history is taught has never been larger.

What the mandates say

A common shape, in many forms.

Whether written by a national ministry or a U.S. state legislature, the mandates share a shape: schools must teach about the Holocaust — usually alongside other genocides — within the grades each authority specifies. The wording and placement differ widely:

• Germany embeds it across the curriculum, though depth varies by federal state (Land).
• France mandates it through the national curriculum; England teaches it within the study of the Second World War.
• New York places it in its Social Studies Framework under Education Law §801; California has required genocide and Holocaust instruction in grades 7–12 since 1985 (Education Code §51220); New Jersey requires it for all students, K–12.

Same goal; different law, grade range, and subject home — country to country and state to state.

The flexibility — and the gap

A requirement to teach is not a way to teach.

What the mandates almost never do is say how. Nearly everywhere — in national systems and U.S. states alike — the law requires that the Holocaust be taught but prescribes no curriculum, sets no outcomes, and includes no assessment. Many are unfunded, asking schools to teach the subject without supplying materials or training. Commissions and ministries publish guidelines and suggested resources, but what to use, and how much time to give it, is left to the district, the school, and often the individual teacher.

Researchers in many countries find the same pattern: a persistent distance between the law on the books and what reaches the classroom. A mandate can require that the Holocaust be taught; it cannot, by itself, ensure it is taught well.

The deeper gap

Even where it happened, the fuller story runs thin.

Beneath that gap lies a deeper one. Where the Holocaust is taught, it is often taught as an isolated event — cut off from the centuries of Jewish life, and of antisemitism, that came before and after. The medieval ghettos, the expulsions, the long arc of Jewish civilization are thin in most curricula worldwide, and thinnest, strikingly, in the very places where that history unfolded: Venice, where the word “ghetto” was coined in 1516; Rome, whose Jewish quarter stood walled for three centuries; the Spain that expelled its Jews in 1492. The sites endure; the fuller story behind them is rarely taught alongside them.

This is the gap The Makor Project was built to fill — free, source-grounded, classroom-ready material that sets the Holocaust inside the full arc of Jewish history, mapped to the standards teachers already work within. The gap is not an American problem; it is a global one.

Where it’s required

The map of requirements.

The list keeps growing. Rather than maintain our own, we point to the institutions that track it authoritatively:

• Countries — the IHRA member countries and the Stockholm Declaration.
• U.S. states — USHMM’s Where Holocaust Education Is Required and the Echoes & Reflections interactive map.

At the elementary level (K–5), most mandates target middle and high school, but several reach younger grades — New Jersey (K–12), Illinois (elementary and high school), and Texas (all grades, age-appropriate at K–5) among them. That is where Makor’s K–5 portal fits.

In the United States there is no federal mandate — curriculum is a state and local matter, and the federal government is barred from prescribing it. What exists federally is support: the Never Again Education Act (2020) funds the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to develop and share Holocaust-education resources nationwide.

How Makor aligns

From requirement to classroom.

Makor’s value is operational: every Topic is mapped to the standards teachers already work within, so a requirement on paper becomes a lesson that holds up. Alignment is added as each system is verified.

• New York — aligned. Every Topic is mapped to the NYS Social Studies Framework, Common Core ELA-Literacy, and the C3 Framework, supporting Education Law §801.
• California — alignment in progress (Education Code §51220 and the History–Social Science Framework).
• Other states and countries — added as verified. Because Makor is built on primary sources and inquiry, its material maps readily to most standards frameworks worldwide.

Are you a state, district, or ministry reviewing resources? Write to editor@makorproject.org — we can provide alignment detail for your standards.