A new law passed by authorities the city of Porto Alegre, in southern Brazil, will require all public schools to include Holocaust education in their curriculum. The measure will affect an estimated 60,000 students at 96 schools. Porto Alegre recent suffered a series of neo-Nazi incidents. The new law is the first of its kind in Brazil. Its author, Alderman Valter Nagelstein, said that including the Holocaust in the school curriculum would help prevent it from happening again. He also said he hoped it also could help curb "the kind of neo-Nazi incidents we have seen in the past."
Porto Alegre's Jewish community numbers around 15,000 and has often been targeted by skinhead groups and neo-Nazis, who desecrated cemeteries and synagogues. Police last year disrupted what they said was a plot to bomb at least two synagogues in the city. Porto Alegre's Catholic Archbishop Dadeus Grings also caused a stir when he told a local magazine that "more Catholics than Jews died in the Holocaust, but this isn't known because the Jews control the world's media." After the uproar, Grings promised to improve dialogue with Jewish leaders, to reject any denial of the Jewish death toll in the Holocaust and to repudiate the spread of ideas that could provoke anti-Semitism.
"The Holocaust was one of the worst massacres in mankind's history, yet many youths and teachers know nothing about it," Nagelstein told the ‘Associated Press’ news agency, adding: "Teaching the Holocaust in public schools will provide a better understanding of the matter and lessons to prevent it from being repeated." Porto Alegre’s Mayor José Fortunati said that by discussing the Holocaust, "we could build a more peaceful society and combat violence and intolerance."
