The Holocaust in Arab Education- Erased!

Holocaust education is largely absent from formal curricula across the Middle East.
For generations, schoolbooks have either ignored it entirely or dismissed it as an exaggerated story used to justify the existence of Israel. In many places, the Holocaust isn’t even denied—it’s simply never taught.

This silence has consequences.

What a shame that in so much of the Arab world, the Holocaust isn’t remembered—it’s erased.
Six million Jews were murdered.
And when I first began asking questions, I was met with disturbing responses:
“Hitler was a hero.”
“They deserved it.”

With complete honesty—when I began writing this article, I tried to recall the Arabic word for “Holocaust.”
My mind went blank.
Growing up, I had never heard it. Not the word. Not the story. Not a single honest conversation about it in Arabic.

What a tragedy.
How do you hide a genocide?

And I can’t help but ask myself:
What if they had lived?
What would they have created? Invented? Discovered?
How would the world—my world—have been different?

We didn’t just lose lives.
We lost potential.
We lost art, music, science, wisdom, and soul.

And in denying their story, we lose a piece of our own humanity.

Sadly, even many Arab Christians remain silent.
But as a follower of Jesus, I cannot be.

I believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
That covenant still matters.
And I have a responsibility to speak the truth on behalf of the people He called His own.

My Jesus never taught hatred toward the Jews—He was one of them.
He worshiped in their synagogues, walked among them, healed them, wept with them.
And when He was crucified, the words above His body didn’t say “enemy.”
They said: “King of the Jews.”

When a people are denied the truth of history, they become vulnerable to propaganda, hatred, and deeply rooted antisemitism.
In a region where Jews once lived side by side with Arabs in cities like Baghdad, Damascus, and Cairo, it is heartbreaking that many today have never even heard of Auschwitz, or the stories of those who perished there.

As someone who grew up in the Middle East, I know this firsthand.
I was raised hearing only one version of the story: that Jews were our enemies.
But when I began to seek the truth for myself, I encountered something that shattered those lies:
the faces, names, and testimonies of six million silenced souls.

Holocaust education is not just a Western responsibility—it is a human one.
And in the Middle East, it holds the power to break chains of hatred that have lasted for decades.

To teach the Holocaust in our region is not to accept a political stance.
It is to affirm the value of human life.
It is to say: “Never again” means never again—for anyone, anywhere.

If we want peace in the Middle East, we must start with truth.
Because without memory, there can be no healing.
And without healing, there can be no future.

It’s time we tell the truth.
Because memory is sacred.
And silence is not neutral—it’s betrayal.