Missouri schools say ‘never again’ with new Holocaust lessons for all

By Bill Motchan, Special to the Jewish Light

Published August 13, 2025

Thousands of students across Missouri will learn about the horrors of the Holocaust during the 2025-26 school year. The Holocaust education bill signed into law two years ago by former Governor Mike Parson now requires public schools to implement curriculum focused on the Holocaust for grades 6-12.

Currently, 30 states mandate Holocaust education, according to the educator resource group Echoes & Reflections. In 1985, California became the first state to require Holocaust education. In 2022, Nebraska and Oklahoma joined Missouri as the three most recent states to implement the requirement.

The Missouri law largely mirrors the Never Again Education Act passed by the U.S. Congress in 2020. The primary goal of the Missouri Holocaust education effort is to define the Holocaust, understand its implications, examine how prejudice and discrimination can escalate into violence, and define the responsibilities of individuals to uphold the principles of a democracy.

Teacher training prep

Missouri has 554 public school districts and charter schools. There are approximately 473,000 students in the grade levels included in the Holocaust education effort. For the past two years, the Missouri Holocaust Education and Awareness Commission (HEAC) has been training teachers to prepare for the mandate. The commission offers teachers resources to present the Holocaust in a historically accurate way, according to Dana Humphrey, a member of the commission.

“We’re doing what our mission says, and that’s to educate,” Humphrey said. “Now that we have this mandate to support us in what we do, we’re able to reach more teachers. All our evaluations following the training have been extremely high. They value the resources that they’re given and the strategies that they’re given to implement the teaching of the Holocaust.”

So far, the commission has trained 160 teachers representing 70 districts that are geographically diverse, Humphrey said.

“We’ve had people from all corners of the state,” she said. “With the teachers that we have trained, we have had more teachers from rural areas than suburban areas, and many of them have already been including Holocaust education. They’re just hungry for more resources because they are out there in isolation and they don’t know where to reach out and get materials.”

Curriculum framework flexibility

The Missouri Department of Elementary & Secondary Education (DESE) requires school districts to make sure their teachers are adequately prepared to teach the material by developing a professional development plan, according to Lucas Bond, DESE chief communication officer. Bond said the HEAC would continue to support their efforts and provide ongoing training and the DESE Social Studies website offers a variety of resources.

Those include the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum, which has already seen an increase in requests for tours from Missouri schools. The nuts and bolts of how schools achieve their Holocaust teaching goals is up to the school district. The DESE curriculum framework offers recommended lessons and learning opportunities with a flexible approach. Schools can create a lesson plan in one of two paths: social studies or language arts. If they choose the latter, a literature class might study “The Diary of Anne Frank.”

“Good literature teachers always provide background information for the time period of the literature that they’re studying,” Humphrey said. “So, it’s a perfect segue to getting the history as well as the personal stories, which is one of the things that we stress—that it’s not just numbers and statistics, but it’s about individual stories. One of the things that we’re really trying to do is show teachers how they can incorporate voices of survivors that ended up in Missouri in their lessons.”

The framework also provides guidance for schools, depending on how many days they will devote to the lesson plan. The minimum is one day, but some schools have already committed to a more thorough approach, up to a semester-long course. The Holocaust education legislation also designated the second week in April as Holocaust Education Week. Rogers Middle School in Affton is planning to recognize it by installing a museum-type exhibit in the school library.

School districts that have already been including the Holocaust in lesson plans have the option of continuing with the material they already are using. One of those is Ladue Middle School, which has used the resources of the St. Louis Holocaust Museum in the past. The Jewish Community Relations Council’s Student to Student program is another opportunity to help non-Jews understand Jewish customs and beliefs. More than 35 local schools—including Affton High School—welcomed Jewish students into their classrooms for these sessions last year. Some of those schools have already assigned reading assignments that align with Holocaust education, according to Lauren Abraham, who heads up the initiative.

“They have started to require the book, ‘Night’ (Elie Wiesel’s memoir), or Anne Frank’s Diary, or ‘Refugee,’ (a novel about a Jewish boy escaping Nazi Germany) in their language arts or social studies class,” Abraham said. “That has been the way many of these administrators and teachers have supported the Holocaust education bill. When they’re looking for guest speakers to come and interpret many of the terms and support the learning of these literary documents, that’s where we come into play.”

A timely educational topic

Over the past two years, there has been a sharp increase in antisemitic acts worldwide. Combined with a low awareness about the Holocaust among younger people that is an indicator that the Missouri education component comes at a critical time, according to former state representative Stacey Newman.

“Expanding the pilot program to school districts throughout the entire state could not be timelier, with the national surge of antisemitism at shocking levels,” Newman said. “Teaching Missouri students, especially those not Jewish, the reality of the Holocaust, is vital, especially now. Known antisemitic incidents this past spring at local schools indicates Holocaust education is badly needed, as much for teachers as it is for students. After testifying for the bill in 2022, it is thrilling to see the enthusiasm and dedication for the program to include all schools in the state.”