14/05/2026
What role can education play in Holocaust remembrance and critical thinking?
We’re sharing key insights from the DECONSTRUCT final assessment report, based on feedback from students and teachers involved in the project.
👩🏫 Teachers remain essential
Students still identify teachers and school-based resources as their main source of learning about the Holocaust. At the same time, their information habits are changing rapidly: AI tools, online news, blogs and social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram or YouTube are becoming increasingly important sources of information.
This shift makes critical thinking and media literacy more important than ever — especially when young people encounter sensitive historical topics in digital spaces.
🎥 Personal stories make history more tangible
A central element of DECONSTRUCT was the use of newly developed IWitness learning modules. IWitness is the USC Shoah Foundation’s digital educational platform, offering video testimonies of survivors and witnesses of genocide, together with classroom-ready learning activities.
The evaluation shows that these personal testimonies helped students approach the Holocaust not only as a historical event, but also through human experiences and individual life stories. This supported deeper reflection on remembrance, responsibility, discrimination and the consequences of distortion.
📊 Strengthening media literacy and historical awareness
Students reported that the materials helped them better recognise Holocaust distortion, think more critically about information, and understand people from different cultural backgrounds.
Teachers also gave highly positive feedback: they found the training practical and useful for their professional work, especially in supporting Holocaust education, addressing misinformation, and developing students’ critical thinking skills.
The findings show that testimony-based digital learning and well-designed teacher training can play an important role in keeping Holocaust remembrance meaningful in today’s changing information environment.