Overview

• Federal Education Minister Karin Prien has called for mandatory student visits to Nazi concentration camp memorials as part of school curricula across Germany.
• Prien insists these visits must be embedded in comprehensive and high-quality instruction to effectively foster antifascist and democratic values.
• She highlights the importance of understanding the gradual processes of disenfranchisement and dehumanization that led to the Holocaust, not just its culmination in Auschwitz.
• The proposal includes engaging students with personal family histories and facilitating interactions with descendants of Holocaust victims from Israel and Eastern Europe.
• Implementation of the proposal depends on approval by Germany’s federal states, which currently vary in their requirements for memorial visits.