Portrayals of the Holocaust in English history textbooks, 1991–2016: continuities, challenges and concerns

This study examines portrayals of the Holocaust in a sample of 21 secondary school history textbooks published in England between 1991 and 2016. Evaluated against internationally recognized criteria and guidelines, the content of most textbooks proved very problematic. Typically, textbooks failed to provide clear chronological and geographical frameworks and adopted simplistic Hitler-centric, perpetrator-oriented narratives. Furthermore, textbooks paid limited attention to pre-war Jewish life, the roots of antisemitism, the complicity of local populations and collaborationist regimes, and the impact of the Holocaust on people across Europe. Based on these critical findings, the article concludes by offering initial recommendations for textbook improvement

International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) Report 50

SOLAS (Surface Ocean - Lower Atmosphere Study) is a new international research initiative that has as its goal: To achieve quantitative understanding of the key biogeochemical-physical interactions and feedbacks between the ocean and the atmosphere, and of how this coupled system affects and is affected by climate and environmental change. Achievement of this goal is important in order to understand and quantify the role that ocean-atmosphere interactions play in the regulation of climate and global change. The domain of SOLAS is focussed on processes at the air-sea interface and includes a natural emphasis on the atmospheric and upper-ocean boundary layers, while recognising that some of the processes to be studied will, of necessity, be linked to significantly greater height and depth scales. SOLAS research will cover all ocean areas including coastal seas and ice covered areas. A fundamental characteristic of SOLAS is that the research is not only interdisciplinary (involving biogeochemistry, physics, mathematical modelling, etc.), but also involves closely coupled studies requiring marine and atmospheric scientists to work together. Such research will require a shift in attitude within the academic and funding communities, both of which are generally organised on a medium-by-medium basis in most countries

Reclaiming 'geballte linke Energie': war in Alexander Kluge's Docu-fiction Heidegger auf der Krim

In his docufiction Heidegger auf der Krim, the German author, director and television producer Alexander Kluge rekindles the polemical debate between two towering figures of German philosophy (Heidegger and Adorno). The nucleus of the story emerges in a discussion with Heiner Müller on the role of the intellectual faced with war and dictatorship; but the text is also a direct reaction to the discussions surrounding the Wehrmachtausstellung (1995), which hinged on the involvement of the regular Armee as well as the complicity of civilians and prominent intellectuals in the atrocities of the Holocaust. Kluge puts Heidegger’s philosophy to the empirical test by confronting it with the most extreme scene of war: the persecution of the Jews on the Crimea during the Second World War. Making use of avant-garde montage techniques, Kluge scans discourses from various intellectual angles in view of their potential of salvaging “concentrated left-wing energy”. The aim is to establish (post factum) a utopian alliance that possibly could have channelled world history into a less destructive course. In an act of retroactive headhunting, Kluge calls upon a wide range of thinkers to build a trans-ideological alliance. I argue that this counterfactual text is pivotal in Kluge’s literary oeuvre because it strives to situate war within a wider, global frame. The particular geographical location of Heidegger auf der Krim – the Crimea – is juxtaposed with geo-political constellations and other historical timeframes, thus testifying to a global turn in Kluge’s documentary representations of war