SECTION 1. Chapter 71 of the General Laws is hereby amended by adding the following section:-

Section 98. Every school district shall include in its curriculum a unit of instruction on the Holocaust and genocide, utilizing, but not being limited to, the Massachusetts History and Social Science Curriculum Framework disseminated by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Acts of genocide across the globe shall be taught consistent with the frameworks to address the notion that national, ethnic, racial, or religious hatred can overtake any nation or society, leading to calamitous consequences. To reinforce that lesson, such curriculum unit shall include the Nazi atrocities of 1933 to 1945 known as the Holocaust, and other genocides including, but not limited to, the Armenian Genocide, the Famine-Genocide in Ukraine known as Holodomor, the Pontian Greek Genocide, and more recent atrocities in Bosnia, Cambodia, Rwanda, and Sudan. The studying of this material is a reaffirmation of the commitment of free peoples from all nations to never again permit the occurrence of another genocide and a recognition that crimes of genocide continue to be perpetrated across the globe as they have been in the past, and to deter indifference to crimes against humanity and human suffering wherever they may occur.

The department shall recommend curricular materials detailing the underlying causes, international reaction, progression and aftermath of the aforementioned genocides, including those recommendations established by chapter 276 of the acts of 1998. Nothing herein shall require school districts to require genocide instruction in every year of middle school and high school, but that genocide education and instruction shall be utilized during appropriate times in the middle school and/or high school curricula, as determined by the local authority. All students should have received instruction on genocide by the time they have graduated from high school.

The department may provide trainings, seminars, conferences and materials for educators to use in the teaching of genocide.