Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center

Illinois Holocaust and Genocide Education Mandate

In November 1987, an outbreak of vandalism directed against Jewish stores and synagogues, prompted Erna I. Gans, Holocaust survivor and President of the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois, to issue a call for action to combat such violence with education in the form of a state mandate.

Gans and other survivors urged legislators to mandate the teaching of the Holocaust as state law. Eventually, mandating Holocaust education, now known as House Bill 3, passed in both the House and Senate. Illinois became the first state in the entire country to require the teaching of the Holocaust in all public elementary and high schools, effective January 1, 1990.

In 2005, the leadership of the new Illinois Holocaust Museum played a key role in the expansion of the existing Mandate to include the study of other modern genocides, underscoring a universal lesson of the Holocaust that national, ethnic, racial, or religious hatred can overtake any nation or society, leading to calamitous consequences.

Illinois Holocaust and Genocide Education Mandate, Enacted in 2005

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1 AN ACT concerning schools.

2 Be it enacted by the People of the State of Illinois,

3 represented in the General Assembly:

4 Section 5. The School Code is amended by changing Section

5 27-20.3 as follows:

6 (105 ILCS 5/27-20.3)(from Ch. 122, par. 27-20.3)

7 Sec. 27-20.3. Holocaust and Genocide Study. Every public

8 elementary school and high school shall include in its

9 curriculum a unit of instruction studying the events of the

10 Nazi atrocities of 1933 to 1945. This period in world history

11 is known as the Holocaust, during which 6,000,000 Jews and

12 millions of non-Jews were exterminated. One of the universal

13 lessons of the Holocaust is that national, ethnic, racial, or

14 religious hatred can overtake any nation or society, leading to

15 calamitous consequences. To reinforce that lesson, such

16 curriculum shall include an additional unit of instruction

17 studying other acts of genocide across the globe. This unit

18 shall include, but not be limited to, the Armenian Genocide,

19 the Famine-Genocide in Ukraine, and more recent atrocities in

20 Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Sudan. The studying of this

21 material is a reaffirmation of the commitment of free peoples

22 from all nations to never again permit the occurrence of

23 another Holocaust and a recognition that crimes of genocide

24 continue to be perpetrated across the globe as they have been

25 in the past and to deter indifference to crimes against

26 humanity and human suffering wherever they may occur.

27 The State Superintendent of Education may prepare and make

28 available to all school boards instructional materials which

29 may be used as guidelines for development of a unit of

30 instruction under this Section; provided, however, that each

31 school board shall itself determine the minimum amount of

32 instruction time which shall qualify as a unit of instruction

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1 satisfying the requirements of this Section.

2 (Source: P.A. 86-780.)

3 Section 90. The State Mandates Act is amended by adding

4 Section 8.29 as follows:

5 (30 ILCS 805/8.29 new)

6 Sec. 8.29. Exempt mandate. Notwithstanding Sections 6 and 8

7 of this Act, no reimbursement by the State is required for the

8 implementation of any mandate created by this amendatory Act of

9 the 94th General Assembly.

10 Section 99. Effective date. This Act takes effect upon

11 becoming law.