Arizona has mandated Holocaust education but so far it has failed to match the onslaught of denial on social media.
The 44-year-old father of five is now the Republican speaker of Arizona’s House of Representatives and a leading supporter of building the new education center, including backing legislation to allocate state funds. “If you don’t educate kids on what happened, you’re more likely to repeat it,” said Toma, who fled the communist regime in Romania with his family in 1986.
He sees the rise of antisemitism, particularly on college campuses, as mostly a well-meaning desire to right wrongs, in many instances overcorrecting for the long and tragic history of the Palestinian people by arguing against Israel’s right to exist. “Some of them are marching for the wrong reasons, out of confusion,” he told me. “Some of them don’t understand what’s actually happening in Israel. But I think there are among them those [who] fundamentally do hate still. At the end of the day, I think that’s evil.”
“There is a long history to [antisemitism] and you can’t bury it,” he added. “If you bury it, these young, idealistic kids will have no idea of what actually happened and what led to the current state of affairs.”
Toma, who invited Holocaust survivors to attend the opening of the legislative session in January, has joined with 30-year-old Democratic state Rep. Alma Hernandez, the first Mexican American Jewish woman to hold elected office in the United States, to ensure the Arizona Holocaust education mandate is met.
Hernandez, the lead sponsor of the original Holocaust legislation in 2021, more recently steered a funding bill through the state Legislature seeking up to $10 million to support the new education center. The final amount is still to be negotiated by House and Senate leaders, including Toma. That’s on top of a $2 million commitment last fall from the city of Phoenix.
There’s a gap, however, between the Legislature’s will and what happens in the classroom.
The superintendent of Arizona public schools, Tom Horne, recently reported that a survey of the state’s 750 districts raises serious questions about whether the mandate is being followed. “That’s why we need a bill giving it some substance, and this survey that we did from superintendents confirms that need because if over half didn’t respond it makes you think, ‘Well, maybe they weren’t doing it or doing it in a very minimal way,’” Horne said.
To remedy that, Hernandez sponsored separate legislation this session to establish a commission to determine how best to ensure the education mandate is carried out, including by assessing the approaches of other states. The bill was signed by Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs this month.
“The law is the law,” Hernandez told me. “But how are we actually ensuring that is being done? We expect students and schools to report any hate crimes, report anything that happens to Jewish students. But what are we doing to actually prevent that from happening? Hate is learned. Kids are not born hating Jews and hating Israel. They learn that over time. They learn that from people in their surroundings. They learn that unfortunately a lot of times from their friends, their parents, social media.”
