Holocaust Memorial Day Trust Prohibits Discussion of Gaza (Again): One Teacher’s Response

Over the past two years, a number of teachers and educators have watched with alarm and frustration as the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust (HMDT) has sought to quash discussion of atrocities in Israel and Gaza as part of Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD).

The HMDT has now reiterated its guidance that it “does not recommend” any discussion of Israel and Gaza. Its guidance, which can be found in full here, raises several arguments in support of this position, including that:

• “There are many diverse and strongly felt opinions on current conflicts taking place around the world, and it is important to be clear that HMD is neither a time for commenting on current conflicts, nor for decisiveness.”
• The purpose of HMD is, rather “to commemorate the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, and the millions more murdered under Nazi persecution. It is also a day to recognise that prejudice still exists within our communities and to learn and commemorate where persecution led in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.”
• “Opening a discussion or making statements on the conflict [in Israel and Gaza] at an HMD event will be almost certain to divide and upset the audience – whereas HMD seeks to bring people together with a shared purpose. Further, it will take the event further from its central purpose of commemoration of the Holocaust.”
• “Focusing on the situation in Gaza at an HMD event while making no reference to other global conflicts risks appearing one-sided.”

I’ve written twice to the HMDT this year, ahead of HMDT 2025 and again ahead of HMDT 2026 to raise a number of concerns and objections. These have not been in any way addressed by the HMDT’s reissued guidance.

Instead of revisiting old letters, here I’ll offer a critique of the reissued HMDT guidance.

I hope this might offer some constructive thoughts from the perspective of a teacher with an interest in commemorating the Holocaust and other instances of genocide since 1945.

This post is not designed to be any kind of definitive “final word” on the matter, but instead a working through of some of my ongoing thoughts.

In particular, I hope it might be of use to other teachers and educators in a similar position when considering options for commemorating HMD 2026 with young people.

Telling Stories at A-Level: Chekhov, the Cholera, and the Contempt

Stories, it seems, are in vogue in the History classroom.

And for good reason. Telling a gripping tale, as Christine Counsell has recently advocated, can grip students’ imagination, revealing through memorable examples key parts of the bigger picture in a way which can inspire and enthuse.

Yet, as Claire Holliss and Jim Carroll (2025) have also noted, the use and purpose of story telling does require some careful thought, and can – despite our best intentions – lead to some surprising and frustrating outcomes.

I hadn’t been aware of Claire and Jim’s work on story telling at KS5 until this past summer, when Claire presented it at a brilliant session of the Schools History Project (SHP) conference. But by that point, I and colleagues had also been starting to think about how and why to tell stories at KS5 to students.

The Soviet Union at War: Contested Chronologies of World War Two

Dates of events might be considered objective facts, open to neither debate nor contestation.

Yet periodisation – that is, setting the start and end dates of a particular time period in history – is very much a matter of interpretation. Indeed, where the historian (or history teacher) chooses to begin or end a historical period can determine not just the length of the period in question, but also its meaning and significance.

This is made clear in the case of the Soviet Union’s Second World War by Mark Edele’s excellent 2021 overview, Stalinism at War.

The Baron’s Cloak: A Study in Dynamic Continuity?

In my previous post, I made the case for a more dynamic understanding of historical continuity. Having tried to illustrate what this might look like in practice, I now want to turn to one story in particular. That story is told in Willard Sunderland’s The Baron’s Cloak.

This brilliant book details the extraordinary and troubling life of Baron Roman Feodorovich von Ungern-Sternberg, an eccentric mystic, reactionary nationalist, and ruthlessly violent Russian nobleman of Germanic origins. It follows Ungern’s life, from his birth in Graz to his family’s settling in Estland (modern-day Estonia) via Georgia, through his stuttering induction into the Russian army before the Great War to his career as a military commander in the anti-Bolshevik White movement during the Russian Civil War.

The book can be read in a several different ways: as a riveting story in its own right, as a tale of competing nationalism and radicalisms, as an exploration of huge upheaval and change. In Sunderland’s own words, it is “a study of the Russian Empire told through Ungern’s life” (p. 5), especially in its final years, as it collapsed and was then (partially) reconstituted by a new Soviet state.

However, reading this book, I found it to provide a highly stimulating narrative of dynamic historical continuity.

Here, using several short excerpts, I’ll retell key parts of the narrative in order to draw out some of the examples of continuity it seems to reveal. As I go, I’ll return to the diagrams of historical “paths” which I provided in my previous post, illustrating how I think the excerpts illustrate these.

What happens when “nothing happens”? Rethinking continuity as a dynamic process

 

Claire Holliss was kind enough to offer her thoughts and critique on an earlier draft of this and the subsequent post, which were significantly improved by her generous and insightful comments.

A decade ago, I was given the recommendation to read Willard Sunderland’s newly published book, The Baron’s Cloak. I should have set aside the time to read it then. Better late than never, though. A decade later, I’ve finally gotten round to doing so.

Subtitled A History of the Russian Empire in War and Revolution, the book is a masterclass in microhistory, telling through the life and experiences of one man the story of the Russian empire as it lurched into the Russo-Japanese War, 1905 Revolution, First World War, Revolution of 1917, and Civil War. That man is Baron Roman Feodorovich von Ungern-Sternberg.

Baron Ungern-Sternberg, shortly before his execution in September 1921. Credit: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons