infer intention, evaluate a claim, or build an argument from evidence.
Four Models at a Glance
The table summarises dominant tendencies. Each textbook also contains counterexamples and internal variation; the labels identify narrative emphasis, not overall quality.
Conclusion: Teaching Auschwitz as
a Historical Place
Auschwitz should not be reduced to
a general symbol of evil. Its symbolic and commemorative importance is undeniable, but a symbol without spatial, chronological, and processual specificity can obscure the different parts of the complex, the different experiences of deportees and prisoners, and the human decisions that made persecution and mass murder possible.
The analysis of all four Croatian grade-eight textbooks shows that each book opens a
different route into this history.
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The first general finding is that historical precision is more than getting a number right. It requires distinguishing deported from murdered people, Auschwitz I from Birkenau, imprisonment and forced labour from immediate mass killing, the entire camp complex from one iconic gate, and the Holocaust of European Jews from the simultaneous persecution and murder of other groups. Terminology, maps, captions, and chronology all contribute to that precision.
The second finding is that the visibility of victims has several levels. Numbers convey scale; group names preserve the specificity of persecution; faces invite recognition; biographies connect the camp with earlier lives and relationships; and testimony gives access to experience. None should replace the others. A historically responsible representation needs both the vast dimensions of the crime and the irreducibility of individual people.
The third finding is that the history of Auschwitz is also a history of organised
responsibility. Naming "the Nazis" is necessary but insufficient. Pupils benefit when textbooks show how state
administration, the SS, transport
systems, camp personnel, local collaborators, industrial enterprises, and individual decision-makers participated in different stages of persecution. Perpetrator evidence should not displace victim voices, but it is indispensable for understanding how the system worked.
Finally, images and tasks determine what pupils can do with the knowledge placed before them. A photograph can document, humanise, mislead, or become an icon detached from place.
A question can turn the same image into evidence about intention, process, and responsibility. The strongest educational representations therefore do not merely mention Auschwitz. They connect place, process, people, evidence, and responsibility - and give young readers the intellectual tools to examine those connections.