March 23, 2026
by Jane Caffrey
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Vision Schools Scotland – March 2026 update

NEW DIRECTOR AND DEPUTE DIRECTOR

Dr Andrew Killen and Dr Elysha Ramage have respectively been appointed the new Director and Deputy Director of Vision Schools Scotland. Andrew and Elysha will continue to work with Jane Caffrey on leading the Programme forward. Following her retirement this month, Dr Paula Cowan will continue to advise on Holocaust education and support Vision Schools Scotland in her roles as UWS Honorary Senior Fellow and Executive Director of Vision Schools Scotland.

2025 AWARDS EVENT

Our congratulations to the 15 schools that received a Vision Schools Scotland Award at our event last month at the Scottish Parliament. The links to the whole event, and to the schools’ film on Teaching the Holocaust in Primary Schools, featuring Calderwood Lodge Primary School and Wishaw Academy Primary School will be available asap. Special thanks to hosts Jackson Carlaw and Jackie Baillie, Prof. James Miller who welcomed guests, Cabinet Minister Jenny Gilruth who distributed the awards to schools, and guest speaker Judy Russell who provided a personal insight on Rev Ernest Levy.

Career Long Professional Learning (CLPL) – SAVE THE DATES

Our next online shared practice events are on Wednesday 22^nd April and 6^th May at 16:00 – 17:30.

On 22^nd April ‘Generation 2 Generation’s’ Dr Hannah Wilson will discuss the importance of second-generation Holocaust survivors sharing their experiences and life of their parent/s.

Dr Richardson from the University of Winchester will speak on his resource for sited-based Holocaust learning on 6th May 2026. Teachers from schools that received a Vision Schools Scotland award at this year’s awards event will be invited to present.

E-BOOK

Our thanks to the nine lead teachers in Holocaust education who have agreed to participate in the Vision Schools Scotland e-book on Teaching about the Holocaust in Scotland. This initiative is being led by Prof Henry Maitles, Dr Susan Henderson-Bone and Dr Elysha Ramage, with a possible publication date of the middle of 2027. Vision Schools that are interested in participating in this but who have not yet expressed an interest, should email jane.caffrey@uws.ac.uk.

WEBSITE

We are currently updating the website and constructing a “Research & Publications” tile. This will provide teachers and educators instant access to our research publications in Holocaust educational pedagogy, and publications that refer to Vision Schools Scotland. Alongside the full publications will be a “research summary” which will provide key findings and recommendations from the research.

LEVEL 6 PROGRAMME- We are delighted to confirm that some schools in the Vision Schools Scotland network will begin a pilot for a level 6 national qualification on Holocaust Education in June 2026. Tor the pilot the units of study will include RMPS, History and Modern Studies. It is anticipated that the level 6 programme will be available to all VSS network schools from June 2027.

July 30, 2025
by Jane Caffrey
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Vison Schools Scotland – Seminar for Teachers – Lublin, Poland

Vision Schools Scotland were hosted by Yad Vashem and Grodzka Gate NN Theatre Centre (the Lublin Jewish historical centre) for a week long seminar for Scottish Teachers in July.

The itinerary included:

Site visits and tours to the death camps Sobibor and Belzec;
Site visit and tour to concentration camp Majdanek;
Tours to Chelm, Josefow and Zamosc and their synagogues and commemoration centres– towns where there had been substantial Jewish populations (40%, 80% and 35% respectively) and where virtually all Jews had been killed;
A site visit to the execution site near Jozefow where 1700 Jewish women, children and older people had been killed by the 101 German Reserve Police battalion by bullet. And a reflection on what that atrocity my middle aged German reservists might suggest.
Walking tours of Lublin exploring the destruction of the ghetto there in 1941 and the killing of its Jewish population (some 30% — approx. 43,000), transported mainly to Belzec;
Time to explore and view and discuss how to incorporate resources from the Lublin historical Jewish archive into classroom practice;
Reflection and seminars/workshops on:
- Jewish Life in Poland before the war ;
- Presentation on Grodzka Gate memorial project ;
- The planning of Aktion Reinhardt ;
- Incorporating archive resources into the classroom;
- Shared practice seminars of Holocaust education, incorporating teaching about antisemitism, tensions arising from the events in Gaza, our VSS research and further research areas, and CLPL ;
- Teaching the Final Solution ;
- Three additional reflective sessions on what we saw and how it can be incorporated into classroom practice.

We further had two evening cultural events, involving Yiddish language songs and drama and reflective discussion with the artists at one of them. Photographs below.

July 14, 2025
by Jane Caffrey
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Why we must never forget the genocide in Bosnia | The Herald

Remember the Genocide in Bosnia

Henry Maitles, Emeritus Professor of Education, UWS.

Over the period of a few days in July 1995, exactly 30 years ago, some 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were murdered – most of them shot at close range – by Bosnian Serb militias, the leaders of which ended up in trials for war crimes in the Hague. Alongside these killings, there was the forced and abusive ethnic cleansing of some 40,000 Bosnian Muslim women, girls, children, and elderly. The circumstances of the murders are particularly disturbing and raise complex issues.

Some things never leave you. At a genocide scholars conference in 1998, I attended the funerals in nearby Srebrenica of some 600 Bosnian children that had been found murdered in the nearby forests. The events will stay with me forever: the impossibly small coffins; the 300,000 grieving and furious Bosnian mourners; the organised chaos of this crowd, unpoliced as the police were in barracks as some had been allegedly implicated in the crime; and the anger towards the Serbs, the West and the UN in particular.

Srebrenica was supposedly at the time a UN “safe haven”, where civilians would be under the protection of the Dutch Battalion of the UN – some 800 professional soldiers with helicopters and armoured carriers. Due to its UN status, fleeing Muslims had gravitated there. Not only did the UN force not protect them, but they handed over men and boys who were in the factory area under their direct control to brutal racist armed militias, who already had a reputation for extensive human rights abuses. The excuse from the Dutch Battalion was that they were only allowed to use force if attacked. As a human rights lawyer said at our conference, why could they not have said to the militias “you want them, you come through us”? But they didn’t and they handed them to the killers. Indeed, when the UN declares an area safe and people flock to it, if they are not protected then the UN was unwittingly collecting them together nicely in one place for the Bosnian Serb killers.

I would never suggest that these things are easy in times of war and internecine fighting. We see similar all too often in situations – in Ukraine and Gaza right now and in the alleged crimes of well-trained British elite units in Afghanistan and Iraq, recently highlighted by BBC and other media investigations. It is a dehumanising of the other.

The lessons are there for us if we want them, as they were at the end of World War 2 and in various other genocide and war crime events since then, of the inhumanity that can come when racist ideas take hold. Perhaps we need to take a step back and argue that “never again” can only be realised if we constantly and consistently reaffirm our support for human rights and we stop racist movements on their way up. As history from the 1920s onwards tells us, it is much harder when they are fully formed.

June 4, 2025
by Jane Caffrey
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Vision Schools Scotland Hosts 1st Student/Teacher Conference on The Impact of Teacher & Learning About the Holocaust in Schools

Invitation to register for Vision Schools Scotland

1st Student /Teacher Conference:

The Impact of Teaching and Learning About the Holocaust in Schools

This conference is held in partnership with Vision Schools Scotland and the University of the West of Scotland

Date: Thursday, 12th June 2025

Time: 11:00 AM – 3:30 PM refreshments and lunch included!

Location: University of the West of Scotland, Lanarkshire Campus – plenty parking!

Travelling to Lanarkshire Campus | UWS | University of the West of Scotland

Registration is free to students and teachers PLEASE REGISTER HERE!

This is the first student/teacher conference will focus on the impact of teaching and learning about the Holocaust in Schools.

It aims to provide students (S3-6) and teachers with valuable insights into understanding and teaching the Holocaust.

We are privileged to have a wide range of esteemed speakers who are keen to share their knowledge and engage with students and teachers.

Keynotes will be presented by:

Dame Helen Hyde, Fellow of the Imperial War Museum, Trustee of the Holocaust Education Trust, and Foundation for Jewish Heritage.

Joani Reid MP for East Kilbride and Strathaven

Gillian Field, Daughter of the late Henry Wuga

Including presentations from students and teachers and Vision Schools Scotland.

Please Register 1 Teacher and up to 8 students from your school from across S3 – S6.

Spaces are limited and we encourage you and your students to register now!

We look forward to welcoming you to our event! https://www.uws.ac.uk/visionschoolsscotland/

April 24, 2025
by Jane Caffrey
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Human dignity and honour’: remembering the Warsaw Ghetto uprising

Please read Emeritus Professor of Education Henry Maitles article Human dignity and honour’: remembering the Warsaw Ghetto uprising

https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/viewpoint/25094089.human-dignity-honour-remembering-warsaw-ghetto-uprising/

The Herald: April 21, 2025

‘Human Dignity and Honour’: remembering the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

Henry Maitles, Emeritus Professor of Education, University of the West of Scotland

One month after the shameful meeting of the Israeli government sponsored far right gathering in Israel to ‘combat antisemitism’, an event that most Jews of all persuasions, considered grotesque, it is worth remembering that eighty-two years ago in April-May 1943 one of the most inspiring moments in world and Jewish history was unfolding. The Warsaw Ghetto Jewish Fighting Organisation (in Polish ZOB) announced to the world: ‘All of us will probably perish in the fight…it is a fight for our human dignity and honour, as well as yours’.

By Spring 1943, the massive overcrowding and drastic shortage of food, sanitation and medicines in the Warsaw Ghetto meant that there was a large death rate from disease and malnutrition. Nonetheless, the Jews were not dying fast enough and Nazis began clearing the residents to death camps; by early 1943, there were only some 60,000 left in the ghetto.

When the Nazis entered the ghetto in Spring 1943 for the final round up, ZOB resisted by force. ZOB was a mix of Zionist and Socialist organisations, with big differences in politics, their point of unity being that all Jews, regardless of their political outlook, would end in Auschwitz. ZOB was completely outnumbered and outgunned but held out against the German army for some 5 weeks. It tied down thousands of German troops, meaning they could neither be deployed in the war or used to hunt Jews. Goebbels (the Nazi propaganda chief) fumes in his diary about Jews fighting back and with captured German weapons! It was an inspiration understood by some of the leaders of the Polish resistance, one of whom commented that ‘the blood of the ghetto fighters was not shed in vain…it gave birth to an intensified struggle against the fascist invader’. By the middle of May, the Nazis decided to burn the ghetto to the ground to avoid further German casualties. Some survivors fled through the sewers; most were captured and killed.

The uprising was part of a radical Jewish tradition which included large numbers of young Jews joining left parties and antifascist groups, including the International Brigades to fight against fascism in Spain in the late 1930s; the cemetery and monument in Montjuic in Barcelona tells us that some 15% of the International Brigaders were Jewish (indeed 50% of the USA Abraham Lincoln Brigade), a hugely disproportionate number. This radical tradition preceded this and continued to the Ghetto. One of the great historical ironies is how a large proportion of the shock troops of the ethnic cleansing (Naqba) of the Palestinians in 1948 was carried out by this same tradition, recruited from the left kibbutz movement. Pre-world war 2 this tradition had been avowedly non Zionist. A mixture of the Holocaust and western immigration controls convinced many Jews that a homeland was necessary. The Palestinians became the victims of the Holocaust victims.

The ghetto fighters left us a universal message of humanism and hope in the face of barbarism. This is a message that we need to remember as we confront racism and fascism wherever and whenever it raises its head.

February 17, 2025
by Jane Caffrey
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Vision Schools Scotland – Annual Awards at Scottish Parliament 2025

Vision Schools Scotland, held its annual awards ceremony at the Scottish Parliament on 6th February 2025. This event was sponsored by Mr Jackson Carlaw MSP and Ms Jackie Baillie MSP, with guest speaker, The Lord Mann of Holbrook.

The awards were presented to each school by Ms Jenny Gilruth MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills with a Vote of Thanks by the Rt Hon. Ken Macintosh.

Awarded schools are:

Renewal Schools:

Alva Academy

Chryston High School

Mearns Castle High School

West Calder High School

Level 1 Awards

Balerno High School

Inverurie Academy

Williamwood High School

Level 2 Awards

St Ninian’s High School, East Dunbartonshire

St Ninian’s High School, East Renfrewshire

Recognition of Commitment:

Isobel Mair School

Kirkintilloch High School

January 28, 2025
by Jane Caffrey
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Never again: why we must always remember the Holocaust – Emeritus Professor Henry Maitles

The Herald – 27 January 2025

Never Again! Remembering the Holocaust

Henry Maitles, Emeritus Professor of Education, UWS

On this day, 27^th January, in 1945, the Red Army arrived at Auschwitz. Its horrors shocked even those battle-hardened troops, many of them veterans of Stalingrad. Auschwitz was the darkest moment of the 20^th Century, perhaps of world history. It was the epitome of the Nazi Holocaust, which involved the state organized murder of 6 million Jews, over 1 million Roma, and mass atrocities towards a further 7 million civilians. The Holocaust evokes for most people the ultimate in inhumanity, hence the outrage and revulsion towards Holocaust distorters, deniers and modern day fascists. They insult the memory of survivors and other eyewitnesses who are the spokespersons of those millions without voice, who collectively tell us a story of systematic and ongoing brutality. The Holocaust must be remembered.

Firstly, the Holocaust demonstrates how genocide was committed as a “normal” routine. Holocaust scholar Hannah Arendt referred to it as the ‘banality of evil’, planned and carried out by ordinary people, like us. Secondly, the Holocaust demonstrates how a technologically advanced country used its scientific and industrial innovations for the mass extermination of people. Historian and author Zygmunt Baumann argues that the decisive factor that made the mass murders possible was not only Nazi racial policy per se but modernity itself. And, these 2 points were cemented by bureaucratic planning by the SS, the army, the industrialists, and the civil servants. This is one of the most frightening aspects of the event: the planning and execution of the Holocaust resembled normal industrial activity. As one camp commander of Auschwitz commented it was ‘murder by assembly line’.

Although the Jews and Roma were the main targets of the genocide, the Holocaust was a genocidal crime against all humanity. The German philosopher Theodore Adorno wrote that ‘the main aim of education is that there should never be another Auschwitz’. That is why programmes such as Vision Schools Scotland designed to support Holocaust Education in schools is so important. The events in Israel and Gaza should not stop Holocaust Education, although some teachers fear it quickly leads to discussions about events there. Yet, paradoxically, these events make discussing the Holocaust more important and teachers need to use these ‘teachable moments’ to have a rational and informed discussion about Gaza, the ceasefire, the future of the area. And this needs to be done without without the dangerous bandying about of critiques of Israel and indeed Zionism as antisemitic. Whilst the key ideological driver of the Holocaust was antisemitism there is a danger of antisemitism today being trivialised by an argument that labels everything anti-Israel or anti-Zionist as being antisemitic. If everyone is antisemitic, no one is antisemitic. It lets the Holocaust deniers and distorters, those who claim that the Holocaust was not so terrible, off the hook.

Keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive will not by itself stop the rise of fascism in the 21^st Century but it does make today’s Nazis’ job harder; remembering the Holocaust and commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day, perhaps particularly in schools, can contribute to marginalizing them.

https://www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/24871900.never-must-always-remember-holocaust/?ref=suit

January 27, 2025
by Jane Caffrey
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Holocaust Memorial Day – Never Again! Remembering the Holocaust

Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp complex, and the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Bosnia.

Emeritus Professor Henry Maitles and Dr Andrew Killen, UWS and Vision Schools, have written a blog to commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day 2025.

Why remember the Holocaust?

On 27th January in 1945, the Red Army arrived at Auschwitz. Its horrors shocked even those battle-hardened troops, many of them veterans of Stalingrad.

Auschwitz was the darkest moment of the 20th century, perhaps of world history. It was the epitome of the Nazi Holocaust, which involved the state organised murder of 6 million Jews, over 1 million Roma, and mass atrocities towards a further 7 million civilians.

Railway tracks into Auschwitz

The Holocaust evokes for most people the ultimate in inhumanity, hence the outrage and revulsion towards Holocaust distorters, deniers and modern-day fascists. They insult the memory of survivors and other eyewitnesses who are the spokespersons of those millions without voice, who collectively tell us a story of systematic and ongoing brutality. The Holocaust must be remembered.

Firstly, the Holocaust demonstrates how genocide was committed as a “normal” routine. Holocaust scholar Hannah Arendt referred to it as the ‘banality of evil’, planned and carried out by ordinary people. Secondly, the Holocaust demonstrates how a technologically advanced country used its scientific and industrial innovations for the mass extermination of people. Historian and author Zygmunt Baumann argues that the decisive factor that made the mass murders possible was not only Nazi racial policy per se but this allied to modernity itself.

And, these two points were cemented by the SS, the army, the industrialists, and the civil servants planning the Holocaust at Wannsee in January 1942; the bureaucratised and efficient train system to transport Jews to the death camps; huge research and development into efficient gas for the ovens; the county’s best engineering firms competing for the contract to build the most efficient crematoria; ‘healthy’ Jews not being exterminated immediately but worked to death as slave labour. This is one of the most frightening bits of the event: the planning and execution of the Holocaust resembled normal industrial activity. As one camp commander of Auschwitz commented it was ‘murder by assembly line’.

Although the Jews and Roma were the main targets of the genocide, it must be recognised not only as a part of Jewish history but as a genocidal crime against all humanity. The key ideological driver was antisemitic racism. Keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive will not by itself stop the rise of fascism in the 21st century. However, it does make modern-day Nazis’ job harder. They know that the revulsion of most people to the events in Europe in the 1940s makes it more difficult for them to win support.

Theodor Adorno, the renowned German academic argued that “the main aim of education is to ensure that Auschwitz cannot happen again”. Remembering the Holocaust and commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day, perhaps particularly in schools, can contribute to marginalising them.

Vision Schools Scotland

Unlike in England, where since 1991 the Holocaust has been a compulsory part of the history curriculum for Key Stage 3 in English secondary schools for pupils aged between 11 and 14 years, the Holocaust is not mandatory in the Scottish 3 to 18 curriculum, Curriculum for Excellence.

Holocaust Education relies on Head Teachers or Directors of Education who are committed to TLH in their schools, and to teachers of history and other subject areas who choose to teach it. That is why at UWS we launched the Vision Schools Scotland network.

Established in 2017, it’s a partnership between the School of Education and Social Sciences and the Holocaust Educational Trust. Funded by the Scottish Government, the British Government and some charities, its aims are to promote excellence in Holocaust teaching by:

Identifying and rewarding schools that embed Holocaust education in their schools
Creating opportunities for teachers to share good practice of school based Holocaust education
Promoting and presenting in person and online Career Long Professional Learning in Holocaust education to teachers, helping them develop confidence and proficiency in Holocaust teaching

The Vision Schools Scotland network continues to expand and support some 70 secondary schools in all parts of Scotland, recently expanding into Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire.

UWS Vision Schools Scotland academics with MSPs at Scottish parliament

January 27, 2025
by Jane Caffrey
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Zone of Interest – Review by Emeritus Professor Henry Maitles

Putting the Banality of Evil on Screen • International Socialism

December 12, 2024
by Jane Caffrey
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Holocaust Survivor Janine Webber BEM speaks to pupils and teachers in Aberdeen

JOINT VISION SCHOOLS SCOTLAND /HET EVENT IN ABERDEEN – October 2024

This event at St Machar Academy was attended by more than 300 students, and 30 teachers attended the Career Long Professional Learning Event that followed. Guest speaker Holocaust survivor, Janine Webber BEM spoke at both events. Pupils from 6 Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire schools attend the testimony from Janine Webber and the pupils listened with great interest to her remarkable and emotional story. The Q&A session which followed allowed Janine to respond to the many questions with incredible detail and students responded warmly to her testimony. A CLPL event followed immediately afterwards and in excess of 30 teachers from several schools attended.