British Holocaust Education Website Receives Millionth Visitor

Launched in January 2011 at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, by the Secretary of State for Education, the London Jewish Cultural Centre’s The Holocaust Explained website has become a key educational resource in British schools for students aged 11 years to 16 years, supplementing and complementing the National Curriculum.

Adopted by the National Schools Network, the site offers pupils, in and outside of school, safe, independent learning.

This unique British initiative is designed specifically for young people with no prior knowledge of the Holocaust and provides everything that they need to know.  It is refreshed on a monthly basis and, among the many media assets, highlights each month key historical events that took place during that month in the years 1930-1945.

It was anticipated at launch that visitors to the site in the first 3 years might reach 500,000. In fact, there have been 1.3 million visits: an average of 8,500 a week.  Visitors to the site come mainly from 25 countries worldwide, ranging from Malaysia to India, United Arab Emirates, Australia, United States and the United Kingdom.

Joanna Millan, London Jewish Cultural Centre Trustee overseeing the work of the Holocaust Department, herself a camp survivor, commented, “… I know from my own experience speaking about the Holocaust at schools throughout Britain and in Northern Ireland and indeed to teachers in China, that the site is a major contributor to Holocaust Education. Students and teachers welcome the information it provides:  with easy access to oral testimony and ease of navigation. It is a major British contribution.”

From launch, the site has collaborated with the London Grid for Learning and, most recently, with the Ben Uri Gallery to provide art related learning materials on the Holocaust.