(AFP) A few months ago in Brussels, Arthur Langerman was telling high school pupils about losing family members in the Holocaust and escaping a Nazi raid himself, when he was cut short by two Muslim teens wanting to talk about Gaza.
“It’s a genocide, and it’s been happening for 75 years,” interjected one of the young women, triggering a heated back-and-forth about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
For their history teacher, Olivier Blairon, the scene sums up how hard it is to teach the genocide of six million Jews during World War II since the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, triggered Israel’s onslaught on the Gaza Strip.
Blairon works in a large high school in the Brussels district of Koekelberg, home to a large community of Moroccan descent, where he said many students “identify with the violence suffered by Gazans.”
