Paper short abstract:

The refugee crisis has triggered anxieties about integrating Muslims and Arabs in a liberal democracy. Holocaust education programs approach refugee camps and intervene against Antisemitism. This paper will discuss how the notion of tolerance structures citizen-subjectivities in neoliberal crisis discourse.

Paper long abstract:

A number of political issues in Europe have been discussed as a "crisis" including the latest influx of refugees from the Middle East. The "refugee crisis" has triggered old anxieties about integrating "Muslims" and "Arabs" in a liberal democracy. Jewish institutions and actors in Holocaust education have voiced concern that language education would not be enough to integrate refugees into liberal democratic culture. Instead, Holocaust education provided by extra-curricular programs should approach refugee camps and intervene against anti-Semitic attitudes and foster tolerance. Holocaust education programs have been deployed for the last ten years to align Muslim citizens in Germany closer with the political project of Holocaus commemoration and democratic citizenship. Now these programs are extended, without the consent of and a conversation with the targeted refugee groups. This paper will discuss how the liberal notion of tolerance structures political subjectivities in neoliberal crisis discourse. Further, it considers how tolerance as a discourse structures the definition of Antisemitism in the political context of Germany. As part of this discussion, the paper will provide ethnographic insights into how the presence of refugees unsettles the political project of past and future and how this is counteracted by institutions and actors within the field of historical-political education including a Jewish-Muslim grassroots movement. Based on ethnographic fieldwork this paper will problematize how the discourse of integrating non-European subjects through Holocaust education structures minority positions among Jewish and Muslim citizens in relation to the newly arrived refugees from the Middle East.