In the Netherlands we saw examples of teachers who focus on ‘complex stories’: stories of individuals, institutions and groups of professionals during World War II. These people sometimes intentionally or unintentionally contributed to the persecution of the Jews: the civil servants in the city of Amsterdam who compiled lists of the addresses of the Jewish residents of the city; the police officers who came to arrest the Jews after they had been discovered; the staff of the Dutch railways who took Jews on board their trains when they were deported to Westerbork. Sometimes people were morally on both the right and wrong side of events and some even switched sides. The approach of showing examples of these complex and multi-layered stories is a new trend in the Netherlands; it stands in contrast with the way history has been taught until recently. Traditionally, the Dutch population during the Second World War is viewed in a one-sided manner, treating them either as victims or resistance fighters, whose choices were mostly pure and correct. This almost mythological perspective presents young people with an ideal image, something to admire. But the question is how accurate and pure such depictions are. The underlying idea of complex and multi-layered stories is that in many cases people were not just ‘good’ or just ‘bad’, but that life is more complex and that often people have to constantly make (difficult) choices.
The most important outcome of our exchange programme is that all the participants got to know more about the European dimension of the Holocaust. Even today, this subject is often presented from a narrow national perspective. Schoolbooks present only limited information about what happened in different places of Europe. It was a special experience to be able to bring together a few dozen teachers, to jointly gain a broader perspective. I hope that we can continue the dialogue between teachers and the museums in Poland and the Netherlands.