United Arab Emirates Says It Will Teach Holocaust in Schools

DUBAI (AP) — The United Arab Emirates will begin teaching about the Holocaust in history classes in primary and secondary schools across the country, the country’s embassy in the U.S. says.

The embassy provided no details on the curriculum and education authorities in the Emirates, a federation of seven sheikhdoms, did not immediately acknowledge the announcement on Monday.

However, the announcement comes after the UAE normalized relations with Israel in 2020 as part of a deal brokered by the administration of President Donald Trump.

“In the wake of the historic Abraham Accords, [the UAE] will now include the Holocaust in the curriculum for primary and secondary schools,” the embassy said in a post, referring to the normalization deal that also saw Bahrain and ultimately Morocco also recognize Israel.

Ambassador Deborah E. Lipstadt, the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism, praised the announcement in her own post.

“Holocaust education is an imperative for humanity and too many countries, for too long, continue to downplay the Shoah for political reasons,” Lipstadt wrote. “I commend the UAE for this step and expect others to follow suit soon.”

The announcement comes ahead of a planned meeting of the Negev Forum Working Groups in Abu Dhabi this week, which grew out of the normalization. The meeting will see officials from Bahrain, Egypt, Israel, Morocco, the UAE and the U.S. attend. Egypt has diplomatically recognized Israel for decades.

The Holocaust saw Nazi Germany systematically kill six million European Jews, Hy”d, during World War II. Israel, founded in 1948 as a haven for Jews in the wake of the Holocaust, grants automatic citizenship to anyone of Jewish descent.