Lately, I’ve been hearing a painful and confusing message in Jewish spaces: that Holocaust education isn’t working. The idea became more prominent after Dara Horn’s widely read essay in The Atlantic questioning whether Holocaust education, as it is often taught, is sufficient on its own to address contemporary antisemitism, particularly when it is disconnected from broader Jewish history and identity.

I admire Dara Horn’s work in many ways, and I agree with her that Jewish life cannot be reduced to Jewish death. But I also believe that the way her argument has been received has had unintended consequences. Many people came away with the impression that Holocaust education itself is somehow failing. For educators, survivors’ families, and grandchildren like me who dedicate our lives to preserving memory, that message has been quietly devastating.

I don’t experience what I do as fruitless. I experience it as one of the most meaningful ways I give back to the Jewish community and to the world. And I worry that when we expect Holocaust education to “fix” antisemitism, we misunderstand what it was meant to do in the first place.

Antisemitism Was Not Created by the Holocaust

Antisemitism did not begin with Hitler, and it did not end with Auschwitz. It has existed for over two thousand years, shaped by religious, cultural, and political forces that long predate the Nazis. Expecting Holocaust education to erase that hatred is not just unrealistic. It sets this sacred work up to be unfairly judged.

Education can soften hearts. It can deepen understanding. It can build empathy. But it cannot magically override fear, ideology, or the human tendency to scapegoat.

Holocaust education was never meant to be a cure for antisemitism. It was meant to be something both humbler and more enduring: a way to preserve memory, restore humanity to the victims, and help people understand how genocide happens, so we recognize its warning signs in ourselves and in our societies.

And in those ways, it is deeply, quietly working.

What I See When I Tell My Grandmother’s Story

When I walk into a classroom, I tell students about my grandmother, Rose Silberberg.

She is not a statistic. She is a person. She had a name. She had a family. She had dreams. When students remember her name, ask about her choices, and speak about her as a real human being, something profound has happened: her humanity has been restored.

Students often talk about the moral choices Rose made. Facing dehumanization, she asked herself: What would make me feel human again? Her answer was to help others. That is why she risked her life to smuggle food to sick Jews in her camp. In the middle of horror, she chose kindness. In the middle of degradation, she chose dignity.

When students understand that, they are not just learning history. They are learning what it means to be human.

I see it in their questions. I see it in their reflections. I see it in the way they talk about gratitude for their own lives. This quiet success is made one story at a time.

How Genocide Becomes Possible

Part of Holocaust education is also understanding how this happened. I explain to students that Nazi ideology was built on a racial hierarchy. Jews were not just seen as different, but as subhuman, a so-called threat so dangerous that even Jewish children and the elderly were considered enemies.

I also tell them something harder: that Jews tried to flee Europe, but many countries closed their doors. And that my grandmother was turned in by her own non-Jewish neighbors.

These truths matter because they teach something essential: genocide is not only about monsters. It is about ideas, institutions, and ordinary people making choices.

Why We Are Measuring the Wrong Thing

When people say Holocaust education isn’t working, what they often mean is that antisemitism still exists. But that was never the right measure of success.

I don’t follow my students home. I don’t know what they will believe ten years from now. But I do know that schools keep inviting me and other grandchildren of survivors back. Teachers keep making space for these stories. That tells me that something meaningful is happening.

I also know that people change in quieter ways. Once, before I spoke, a student told me she had never met a Jew before and she heard Jews were rich because of German reparations. After hearing my grandmother’s story of being the only survivor in her family, her questions changed. She didn’t get a lecture. She met a person.

That is how real education works.

What I Hope My Grandmother’s Story Gives

My grandmother’s story is not about which political party to choose, or how to be Jewish in the “right” way. It is about what it means to be a human being.

I explain the lessons I learned from my grandmother and how grateful I am to be alive despite the Nazis’ attempt to sterilize her in Auschwitz-Birkenau. I cannot make students choose kindness, but I hope these stories inspire that choice. I cannot force empathy either, yet I often see it emerge in their reflections and thank you notes. I hope they remember Rose Silberberg, share her story, and understand that storytelling itself is a way of standing up for others.

Holocaust education is not a shield against hatred. It is something gentler and more powerful: a way of carrying memory, honoring dignity, and reminding us of our shared humanity.

That work is not broken. It is alive.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)