In Brussels classrooms, Holocaust education collides with Gaza War narratives

A few months ago in Brussels, 82-year-old Holocaust survivor Arthur Langerman stood before a group of high school students, recounting the horrors of his childhood under Nazi occupation. He spoke of family members lost to the Holocaust and of narrowly escaping a Nazi raid himself. But before he could finish, two Muslim teenage girls abruptly interrupted.

“It’s a genocide, and it’s been happening for 75 years,” one of them declared, steering the conversation sharply toward Gaza and sparking a tense debate over Israel and Palestine.

For history teacher Olivier Blairon, who brought the students to the session, the incident reflected a growing struggle: teaching the history of the Holocaust in an environment increasingly shaped by contemporary geopolitics and raw emotions surrounding the war in Gaza.

Blairon teaches in Koekelberg, a diverse Brussels neighborhood with a large Moroccan-origin population. Since the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023, he says many of his students “identify with the violence suffered by Gazans.”

“I’ve heard antisemitic remarks,” Blairon said. “Some of my students mix things up. They conflate Jews with Israel, and some are intentionally provocative.”

His students comprised most of the group that met Langerman at the CCLJ, Brussels’ secular Jewish community center. According to CCLJ co-director Nicolas Zomersztajn, such encounters have grown more difficult in the aftermath of October 7. “The attacks made it harder to talk about the Holocaust,” he said. “Everything is more complicated in the current climate,” he added, lamenting the pressure placed on the Jewish community to constantly respond to events in Gaza.

At the Brussels Jewish Museum - the site of a deadly jihadist attack in 2014 - educators are facing similar obstacles. School visits were canceled following the October 7 massacre, and attendance remains spotty. “Some students call in sick the day of a visit,” said Frieda Van Camp of the museum’s education team. “Others quietly skip stops at nearby synagogues.”