TikTok video creators teach the next generation about the Holocaust
Hebrew University project seeks to develop a video library for teachers in partnership with social video platform, which is also sending content creators to the March of the Living
Zev Stub is the Times of Israel's Diaspora Affairs correspondent.
Ahead of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day on April 24, social media creators are looking to leverage TikTok to educate younger generations about the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis.
This week, for the second consecutive year, TikTok Israel is bringing 14 of the country’s top content creators to take part in the March of the Living, the symbolic walk from Auschwitz to Birkenau attended by thousands of Jewish teens, adults and survivors from around the world.
The social platform, which has been accused of allowing anti-Israel and antisemitic content to proliferate, is also partnering with a new initiative spearheaded by a Hebrew University professor to use short-form videos to provide information and combat the spread of Holocaust distortion and antisemitism online.
“We have many different initiatives for Holocaust education through different universities and government ministries in Germany and Israel,” a spokesperson for TikTok told The Times of Israel.
“We are committed to eradicating the phenomenon of hatred and antisemitism and digitally preserving the memory of the Holocaust for future generations,” said Lior Weintraub, director of government relations at TikTok Israel. “These principles are expressed in this welcome initiative, which we are making a tradition this year.”
The 14 creators, each of whom has hundreds of thousands of followers, will document their four-day journey through their videos, bringing it to young audiences around the world, TikTok said.
The initiative is organized by TikTok Israel in coordination with the Israeli government. Last year’s delegation of content creators collectively produced dozens of videos that were viewed over 22 million times.
This year’s march marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II and the liberation of the concentration camps in Nazi-occupied Europe.
Clean-up efforts
TikTok has taken a proactive approach to using its platform to commemorate the Holocaust and fight online hatred among its nearly two billion global users.
Ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day in January, the company launched a set of educational resources, including an in-app hub with videos of eyewitness accounts from Holocaust survivors, visits to Holocaust memorial sites, stories of Holocaust victims, and more.
TikTok has been criticized in the past for allowing antisemitic material to spread rampantly on its platform. A November 2023 study indicated that dedicated TikTok users were more likely to hold antisemitic views than users of X or Instagram, and that there were 54 views of videos with pro-Palestinian hashtags for every view of a TikTok video with a pro-Israel hashtag in the United States.
However, threats by the US government that TikTok could be banned in the country, as well as pressure from the company’s pro-Israel investors, have forced its parent company, ByteDance, to make efforts to show that it is taking a new tack.
In a statement shared with The Times of Israel, TikTok said it uses a combination of technologies and human moderation to identify and remove content or accounts that violate its guidelines, and that it has tens of thousands of content moderators enforcing rules against expressions of hatred and racism.
“We also joined the European Commission’s Code of Conduct on Countering Illegal Hate Speech Online, and work with the World Jewish Congress to remove antisemitic content on the platform,” the company said.
While TikTok is widely associated with the younger generation, several Holocaust survivors have already recognized the platform’s value for educational purposes. Lily Ebert, a Holocaust survivor who reached millions on social media, including TikTok, before she died last year at age 100, and 88-year-old Gidon Lev have used the platform to fight against antisemitism and Holocaust misinformation.
Shoah Stories for educators
In a separate initiative, Prof. Tobias Ebbrecht-Hartmann of the Hebrew University launched a new platform called Shoah Stories, curating short-form video content to be used in classrooms and informal educational settings.
“Since 2021, I’ve been helping to organize training seminars, in Germany and worldwide, teaching educators about how to use platforms like TikTok to talk about the Holocaust,” Ebbrecht-Hartmann told The Times of Israel. “The goal is to create a space where teachers can find short videos around different topics within the field of Holocaust education, as well as educational resources to guide them in using the material.”
The project, supported by TikTok Germany with funding from the Alfred Landecker Foundation, will provide a library of trusted short videos from TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, along with teaching resources that educators can integrate into Holocaust education lessons.
“We are working with educators at different Holocaust memorials around the world, and we hope to expand our library to include material in different languages,” Ebbrecht-Hartmann said.
“These types of videos offer viewers easy access to a complex topic,” Ebbrecht-Hartmann said. “Obviously, they cannot replace learning in the classroom or visiting memorials and museums, but they can open up a person’s curiosity.”
“What makes these types of videos unique is that they can be used to focus on little details, on untold stories, on personal perspectives, and thereby create different kinds of emotional connections. That’s the extra value here.”
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