Germany: Muslims Exempt from School Trips to Holocaust Sites?

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Gatestone Institute:

"Muslim children, too, need to come to terms with German history." — Günther Felbinger, MP with the Free Voters Party.

 

"At a time of increasingly rampant anti-Semitism and even anti-Semitic terrorism across Europe, the Steiner Bavarian plan, together with your generous Federal Islamic education program seems a recipe for Jihadism, ISIS recruitment and incitement to Jew-hatred, to be inevitably followed by attacks on other traditional Nazi victims: Roma, gays, women and disabled." — Shimon Samuels, Simon Wiesenthal Center.

 

"We must never consider it normal that for a Jewish child growing up in Germany his kindergarten, his school and his synagogue must be guarded by police. This circumstance should provide us with an incentive to combat anti-Semitism by all means available to us within the rule of law." — German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière.

 

A debate has erupted in Germany over whether Muslim students should be exempted from mandatory visits to former concentration camps as part of Holocaust education programs.

 

The dispute centers on a proposal that would require students in all secondary schools in the southern state of Bavaria to visit Holocaust memorials as part of the school curriculum.

 

Such visits are already compulsory for students who attend the Gymnasium (a type of secondary school with a strong emphasis on academic learning), and the proposal would extend that requirement to eighth- and ninth-grade students in all other types of secondary schools, including special-needs schools.