The Never Again Education Act (S. 2085) is a bipartisan bill to support Holocaust education on a national level. The legislation would establish dedicated federal funding – through the creation of the Holocaust Education Assistance Program Fund – to provide teachers with resources and training necessary to teach students all around the United States the important lessons of the Holocaust.
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The Act is designed to ensure that future generations learn about the atrocities that took place during humanity’s darkest hour so that the promise of “Never Again” can finally be realized. In a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise at an alarming rate in the United States, the preventive power of awareness-raising and education must be harnessed to stymie the flow of hate and stop history from repeating itself.
The House bill, introduced by Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) was passed on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, with a vote of 395 to 5, with 14 representatives abstaining. This year commemorates the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.
While the House version of the legislation would provide funding to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to develop and disseminate a repository of teaching materials, the Senate bill would establish a federal fund at the Department of Education. This Holocaust Education Assistance Program Fund would finance grants to help teachers develop and improve Holocaust education programs for middle and high school students. The funding could cover training for educators, textbooks, transportation costs for survivors to be brought to schools, and certain other educational materials that present historically accurate information about the atrocities of the Holocaust.
The bill would also direct experts at the Department of Education to work with trained Holocaust educators to conduct regional workshops to help teachers incorporate the sensitive subject of the Holocaust into their classrooms in a historically accurate and responsible way.
Education has long been deemed an essential tool of atrocity prevention. The bill is motivated by the hope that learning from the lessons of history will empower all Americans to make enlightened moral choices so that we never again stand idly by in the face of the hatred and xenophobia that form not only the root causes but permissive foundation for genocide.
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U.S. Senator Jacky Rosen (D-NV) along with Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) introduced the legislation on July 11, 2019. The bill currently has 56 co-sponsors (33 Dem, 21 Rep, 2 Ind).