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Rome University offers master's in teaching the Holocaust
AFP - Saturday, January 31
ROME (AFP) - - A master's degree in teaching about the Holocaust is Rome University's way of helping to preserve knowledge about the genocide of Jews committed nearly seven decades ago, educators say.
"Soon there will be no more witnesses to the horrors of the Shoah," said Renzo Gattegna, head of the Union of Jewish Communities of Italy. "We have to find new ways of teaching young people about the past."
Gattegna helped develop the one-year curriculum, which coordinator David Meghnagi praised for its inter-disciplinary approach.
"Our students approach the subject of the Shoah through different disciplines, mainly history, art, literature and psychology," Meghnagi told AFP.
"The contribution of social sciences fosters understanding of some aspects of this tragedy, such as the psychological effects of the concentration camps on the survivors," he noted.
In its first year, most of the students were history teachers who wanted to improve their methodology, Meghnagi said. "Now we have psychologists, journalists and anthropologists, young people and older people, Italians and foreigners," he added.
The programme has become so popular that it can no longer keep up with demand, he said.
While US and British universities have long taught the history of the Shoah in a discipline usually referred to as Holocaust Studies, the new master's is unique because it specialises in teaching methodology.
Some 50 students have graduated from the programme since it began three years ago, and the third group received their diplomas on Monday, the eve of the 64th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in Poland.
The ceremony was held in a sumptuous hall of the Rome municipality, covered by Italian television.
"I enrolled in the programme because the subject interested me personally. And now what I've learned has made me want to share my knowledge of the Shoah, and to get involved in associations and research projects," one graduate said as his wife snapped pictures of him with his diploma.
Italy's fascist past continues to haunt the country, which last year marked the 70th anniversary of the imposition of anti-Semitic racial laws under the dictator Benito Mussolini.
The laws prohibited mixing between Jews and "Aryans," expelled Jewish students and teachers from the school system and imposed economic constraints, among other measures.
Some 8,000 Italian Jews were deported to Nazi death camps, and most were killed at Auschwitz.
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