#275: “It's Almost Happening Again and We're All Standing here Saying ‘Never Again’”: What Young Europeans Activists are Learning by Comparing the Holocaust and WWII to the Gaza and Ukraine Wars

This paper explores how comparisons between the past (the Holocaust and WWII) and the present (the ongoing wars in Gaza and Ukraine) mediate different types of learning. Thematic analysis of interviews with young activists in four European countries reveals that these comparisons mediate understandings of past and present, moral orientations, and associations with familial, religious, national, and universal identities. By empirically demonstrating how these controversial analogies mediate cognitive, moral, and identity-related processes, this paper poses urgent questions for scholars of history education.