UAE is the first Gulf state to teach Holocaust in schools

THE United Arab Emirates will become the first Gulf state to teach school pupils about the Nazi persecution of the Jews.

Once almost invisible in learning materials in the UAE, where Israel still appears blacked out on world maps, a full exploration of the Holocaust will be a part of the Emirati curriculum for primary and secondary school pupils.

The UAE’S ministry of education is designing a new curriculum alongside the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-SE), an Israeli organisation that monitors textbooks, curricula and teaching materials around the world.

Marcus Sheff, IMPACT-SE’S chief executive, said: “The UAE is head and shoulders above other countries’ cur- riculum in the region.”

Even without the Holocaust featuring on the school syllabus, the curriculum in the Emirates showed “no evidence of hate” or the anti-semitism prevalent in other countries in the region, he said.

Yad Vashem, the The World Holocaust Remembrance Centre in Jerusalem, is also working with the UAE’S ministry of culture and youth on curriculum development.

The Middle East’s first Holocaust memorial exhibition opened in Dubai in 2020, just months after the Us-brokered Abraham Accords that normalised relations between the Israel and the UAE, Bahrain and later Morocco and Sudan.