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In Germany, textbooks are still the leading mediums when it comes to teaching and learning in public schools. Therefore, textbooks represent national narratives and constructs about the past and support the collective memory as well as frame the societal discourse about interpretations of the past. This leads to orientation for the present and future. For the learners textbooks contribute to orientation, building of identities, gaining of knowledge and judgement about merits and values. Contributions in school textbooks dealing with resistance to the persecution of the Jews as a topic are hardly to be found.
Based on the results of my last two textbook studies on German textbooks I spoke at a conference in Berlin in March 2025 about the fact, that resistance against National Socialism plays only a very minor role. Whenever resistance is mentioned in history, religion, or philosophy textbooks at different grade levels, only the “usual non-Jewish suspects” are mentioned (White Rose, Confessing Church, Dietrich Bonhoeffer). Bonhoeffer is problematic since he himself held anti-Judaic views (Friedländer, 1998). Additionally, there is almost no mention of Jewish resistance in German school textbooks.
