The United Arab Emirates Embassy in the United States has announced that the Gulf kingdom will add Holocaust studies to its school curricula.
According to the embassy, the content of the studies on Nazi Germany's genocidal murder of six million Jews during World War II will be developed in collaboration with Israel's official Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, and will be included in the curriculum of primary and secondary school students.
Yad Vashem released a statement following the UAE Culture ministry’s request to cooperate in shaping the new curriculum, saying that “this is a welcome step in which Yad Vashem will be happy to extend its experience and archives towards, including in developing specialized study material in Arabic.”
This initiative comes just over two years after the signing of the Abraham Accords between Israel and the UAE and following the establishment of the first and only Holocaust museum in the Arab world in Dubai.
The UAE’s decision to integrate studies about the Holocaust into its schools marks the first ever time an Arab country introduces the subject into the education system of its own volition.
Israel's new Foreign Minister Eli Cohen welcomed the move, and hailed "a historic decision." The Biden administration mission in charge of the fight against antisemitism also applauded Abu Dhabi's initiative, recalling that "the study of the Holocaust is necessary for humanity."
“It is crucial to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust,” Dr. Ali Al Nuaimi, a member of the UAE Federal National Council and mediator of the Abraham Accords, said at a November event in Washington.
“Public figures failed to tell the truth because a political agenda hijacked their narrative, while a tragedy of the magnitude of the Holocaust is not just aimed at Jews, but at humanity as a whole," he added.
Also reacting to the news, Combat Antisemitism Movement, a non-profit organization that monitors antisemitism, said it is "a major step in addressing the regional culture of Holocaust denial and normalizing relations with Israel."
In 2021, Ahmed Obeid Al Mansouri, a former member of the UAE National Council opened the region's first Holocaust memorial exhibit Dubai to address widespread Nazi genocide denial in the Arab world. Seven Holocaust survivors have since intervened to discuss the reality of the Nazi genocide, in particular with young Emirati students.
The Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), a pro-Israel organization that monitors school textbooks for antisemitism and anti-Israel bias, mentioned in November the introduction of the Holocaust in the Emirati school curricula.
The institute's director, Marcus Scheff, said he was working with the UAE Ministry of Education to develop the new curricula. Sheff, said at the time that the UAE's programs were above those of other countries in the region, stressing that there was "no evidence of hatred," and emphasizing the country's desire to "recognize the historic place of Judaism in the Arab world."
i24NEWS contributed to this article.