The latest salvo against anti-Semitism has come from an unexpected source—Morocco’s King Mohammed VI, who has decided to incorporate Holocaust education into his country’s schoolbooks. “The battle against this plague cannot be handled carelessly,” the king said in his September announcement, made while he was attending the United Nations General Assembly meetings in New York. “It above all depends on education and culture. In the interest of our children, it is important for us to win it because they will be the beneficiaries and our ambassadors in the future.”

Morocco has a long history of tolerance toward its Jews and largely protected them during the Holocaust, which is commemorated on International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, the date of the liberation of Auschwitz. Today, the Moroccan Jewish community comprises approximately 2,500 Jews. The king’s personal adviser, André Azoulay, is Jewish. After the king’s announcement, Audrey Azoulay—the Paris-born daughter of the adviser and now the director of UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization—tweeted: “To address anti-Semitism is to defend equal dignity for all human beings. Education is the best tool to prevent all forms of discrimination.”

Mehnaz Afridi, director of the Holocaust, Genocide & Interfaith Education Center at Manhattan College in New York City and herself an observant Muslim, says Morocco’s initiative is “a great step in eradicating Holocaust denial and encouraging students to think about issues of racism and anti-Semitism. Global anti-Semitism has many faces, and one of them is within Muslim communities, where there is much lack of knowledge.”

The United States doesn’t mandate Holocaust education nationwide, “so this is an issue here, too,” the professor adds. “If Holocaust education were mandated everywhere, we might see a difference.”