“Genocide:” A Term Heard But Seldom Understood

This blog was written by a CFR Education intern in the summer of 2026. 

When I was younger, “genocide” was a term I often heard but seldom understood. 

In my K-12 journey, history was usually taught through rote memorization. It felt like a list of dates, names, and places to memorize rather than narratives to understand. Even complex atrocities received this treatment. The lessons would turn them into statistics. I do not even have a distinct memory of learning about the Holocaust in middle school; I learned only the statistic that six million Jewish people had died. I didn’t understand what the Holocaust fully entailed or how its horrors might relate to other atrocities throughout history. 

In high school, I decided to take a history class focused on authoritarian regimes and leaders. When we covered the Nazi regime, we learned about their propaganda tactics and Hitler’s rise to power, but we did not touch on the testimonies and broader impacts of the atrocity itself. 

By the time I got to college, I still felt like I did not have the tools to define or make sense of complex atrocities. 

It wasn’t until my time as a student journalist that I was able to learn about this topic. Following October 7, 2023, I reported on several protests and vigils and interviewed students and community members who were impacted by the attacks. I followed debates on whether the term “genocide” applied to the conflict that ensued. I had to think even more critically about the term, and I realized I had never really learned a framework to fully understand it. 

These experiences made me wonder where my K-12 education fell short. How could students better understand the impact and weight of the Holocaust? Could teachers expand those lessons to cover modern atrocities and help students better understand the fundamentals of genocide? 

A Larger Issue 

I am not the only student who left K-12 without fully understanding the Holocaust or the concept of genocide. A 2020 analysis showed that roughly 48 percent of U.S. millennials and Gen Z could not name a single World War II concentration camp or ghetto. Meanwhile, 63 percent of millennials and Gen Z Americans did not even know the statistic that six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. 

There is no data on how many people know about the millions of non-Jewish people—the Roma, the Sinti, the LGBTQ community, disabled people, and people of color— who were killed during the Holocaust as well. But studies show that Americans are largely unaware of other genocides. Only about one third of Americans know about the Armenian genocide, an atrocity that spurred some of the legal research that led to the term “genocide.” This data reveals a large deficit when it comes to not just Holocaust education, but also genocide education as a whole.

Holocaust education has been expanding in the United States since the 1990s. Today, twenty-nine states require Holocaust and genocide education. But mandates have not always translated into quality state curriculum standards and classroom teaching. A study conducted by a professor at the University of Kansas found little difference between some states with genocide education mandates and those without. In both cases, teachers were not receiving guidance on how to teach genocide.

In addition, the study showed that states with mandates had a narrower focus. For example, of the eleven states they researched, the authors found that others were rarely referred to as genocides. Four of the eleven states used “Holocaust” but never the term “genocide.” This narrow focus leaves students without a valuable framework for recognizing modern cases of genocide. It also makes it hard for students to critically engage with current debates on atrocities occurring in places like Gaza, Sudan, and Ukraine. 

AI makes all those issues even worse. A 2024 UNESCO report found that generative AI can distort Holocaust memory, falsify information, and amplify biases by inventing events and fabricating testimonies. 

Without a foundation for understanding genocide, students are left alone to navigate an online space where genocide denial and misinformation can be found with a few swipes on a phone screen. 

A New Approach in the Classroom

It wasn’t until college that I began to fully understand both the Holocaust and the term “genocide.” I learned through my experiences as a student journalist and by taking a class on Holocaust memory. In the class, we read the memoir “I Was a Doctor in Auschwitz,” written by Gisella Perl, a camp doctor who tried to save female victims. We also looked at archival footage and visited a Holocaust museum, where I read, watched, and listened to several testimonies.

For the first time, I was able to engage with the full weight of what was happening, beyond rote memorization of statistics. By reading those first-person accounts, the class helped me understand the broader scale and impact of violence of the Holocaust and other mass atrocities and genocides happening around the world. 

While through these testimonies and accounts I was able to have a greater understanding of genocide, I still wish I had more foundational instruction when I was younger.  

​The CFR Education reading “What is Genocide” is a great example of a fundamental resource that would have helped me. Not only does it provide the historical background and define genocide clearly, but it also provides case studies for students to learn and apply that framework in other contexts.

While studying the Holocaust is a pivotal part of genocide education, students should be able to apply that term to other atrocities. While working at CFR this summer, I found an “Identifying Genocide” lesson plan that can help students understand what genocide is, and prompt them to critically analyze its application to real life scenarios. 

Having these educational materials would have given me a more robust foundation earlier in my schooling. I could then have dived deeper into learning about current atrocities—and better navigated online dis/misinformation. Incorporating these into the classroom early can, therefore, help students see how genocides and mass atrocities are not just historical events; they reoccur. 

The Student’s Role

Today, I find myself thinking a lot about the importance of atrocity prevention. Seeing what atrocities have unfolded and continue to unfold, it’s hard not to be pessimistic. But my classes and student reporting have motivated me to ask, “What is my role in how collective memory of atrocities and their histories are shaped, discussed, told, and remembered?”— a question I think all students and future changemakers should be thinking about. 

However, this is a question they can only start asking once they have the foundational basis and context to understand genocide as a concept. A basis that must start in the classroom, as genocides continue to unfold, ensuring students can make sense of atrocities early on.