Eighty years after the Holocaust, Europe and the world are witnessing a sharp rise in antisemitism and violence against Jewish individuals and communities. In addition to directly threatening the security and well-being of Jewish people, antisemitism also has a corrosive impact on the very fabric of democratic life.
Video: What is antisemitism?
To uphold the global promise of “Never again”, educational programmes are vital in building societal resilience against hatred and antisemitism. However, teachers often feel unprepared to address antisemitism in the classroom, fearing backlash from students or parents, or inadvertently spreading antisemitism stereotypes while trying to dispel them. Some educators also report a lack of focused teacher training programmes on antisemitism.
91鶹Ʒ been actively engaged in combating antisemitism for a decade. Since 2023, with funding from the European Commission and in partnership with the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE/ODIHR), 91鶹Ʒ trained hundreds of educators, teacher trainers and policymakers in 10 European countries (Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czechia, France, Germany, Greece, Romania, Slovenia and Spain) to better recognize, prevent and confront antisemitic prejudice in schools. On 23 April 2025, UNESCO held the 10th such training session in Slovenia in cooperation with the OSCE/ODIHR, the Slovenian Ministry of Education and the Slovenian National Commission for UNESCO.
Here are 5 key take-aways and good practices that have emerged from these capacity-strengthening workshops:
- The first step to counter antisemitism is to properly understand its mechanisms
Antisemitism often uses coded communication to evade detection. Like a virus, it survives and evolves by mutating. Its remarkable fluidity means that antisemitism has, in the words of Alex Maws, head of Education at the Association of Jewish Refugees and a long-time partner to UNESCO, “no fixed ideological home” and can appear both on the right and on the left. Antisemitism targeted Jews both as a religious group, an ethnic and cultural group and, more recently, as members of a national community. Antisemitism also takes on a superficial anti-hegemonic nature and disguises itself as a defence of the “oppressed” against powerful oppressors – thus presenting itself not as racist, but as righteous.
It is important that education initiatives deconstruct the many masks of antisemitism and provide learners with the right toolbox to deconstruct all forms of antisemitism, wherever they appear and regardless of how it tries to legitimize itself. 91鶹Ʒ launched the short video , targeting both educators and the general public, which can also be used as a tool in classroom to facilitate conversations about the nature of anti-Jewish prejudice.
- Addressing Jewish history, culture and Jewish life in national contexts should be complementary to teaching about antisemitism
Antisemitism dehumanizes its targets and presents Jewish people as alien to the national communities they belong to. An important corollary to teaching about anti-Jewish myths and the history of anti-Jewish persecutions, culminating in the Holocaust, is to humanize Jewish population and highlight the richness of Jewish heritage and how Jewish history intermingles and integrates with national histories.
- Antisemitic conspiracy theories can be addressed within the broader framework of Media and Information Literacy
Conspiracy theories are at the core of antisemitism. Therefore, addressing the mechanisms of disinformation is an integral part of building resilience against anti-Jewish hatred. Conversely, teaching about antisemitism can further media and information literacy by exposing how false information and scapegoating functions. Education to prevent antisemitism and Information and Media Literacy programmes are consequently mutually reinforcing and can foster a healthier informational ecosystem.
- Holocaust education should be leveraged to reinforce teaching about and against contemporary antisemitism
Holocaust education alone cannot substitute for education against contemporary antisemitism. however, when done correctly, it can contribute significantly to efforts to prevent antisemitism. Holocaust memory is frequently a focal point of antisemitic discourse, contested through both outright denial and more subtle forms of distortion or inversion. Holocaust history should not be confined to teaching about the facts of the mass murder of the Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators but should actively and critically engage with these new challenges to uphold the integrity of Holocaust memory in the 21st century. To assist educators in this tasks, UNESCO recently launched a , as well as a series of .
- Inter-faith and intercultural dialogue can help reframe difficult conservations about antisemitism in the classroom
One of the reasons educators might be uncomfortable addressing antisemitism is that they feel unprepared to tackle difficult conservations arising from the Middle East conflict. “Competitive victimhood” is often a major hurdle, which requires an empathetic and sensitive approach. In this context, UNESCO partners with the NGO Solutions not Sides to train European educators on how to reframe the issue away from a zero-sum game, by recognizing all parties’ humanity and histories of suffering, while avoiding harmful stereotyping and demonization.
Investing in education against antisemitism and racism is a long-term commitment that demands sustained and constant efforts. As such, UNESCO had extended, with the financial support of the European Commission, its project “Addressing antisemitism through education” for another 2 years. The goal of the 2025-2027 phase is to engage with all the remaining EU Member States, as well as with Serbia, through a series of regional conferences bringing together educational authorities, experts and academics, senior teacher trainers and educators, representatives of Jewish communities and other relevant stakeholders.
