(Jewish Group) Amid rise in antisemitism, Yeshiva University focuses on Holocaust education

In 2008, Shay Pilnik was a Ph.D. student living in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, whose first university gig came in the form of a Holocaust course that nobody wanted to teach.

“To pitch myself as a candidate for that class was very easy,” Pilnik said about becoming an adjunct instructor at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. “Nobody wanted to touch it. It has a lot of emotional, cultural and political underpinnings.”

Fifteen years later, Pilnik says many educators still fear teaching about the Holocaust. But the need is greater than ever. Just this week, the Anti-Defamation League found that 2022 had the highest number of reported antisemitic incidents since the group began tracking them in 1979, and a 2020 study by the Claims Conference, an organization dedicated to securing compensation for Holocaust survivors, found that 49% of U.S. millennials and Gen Zers could not name a single concentration camp.

“We see the rise in antisemitism, most survivors are gone, and we see a lot of clues that the Holocaust is being forgotten,” Pilnik told Religion News Service. “Now is the time, we feel, to step up and rise to the occasion.”

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