Varying Voices for Emotional Engagement:
Holocaust Education and Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah Outtakes
By
Michael Ogilvy Watson Michael.ogwat@mail.com
Masters Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Master - Holocaust and Genocide Studies - Arts in History 2016
Universiteit Van Amsterdam Supervisor: Dr. Karel C. Berkhoff
Second Reader: Prof. Dr. Johannes Houwink ten Cate
Word Count: 21, 967
Contents
Introduction: The Nature and Significance of Holocaust Memory iv
I. Remembrance, Representation, and Education 1
The Authority of Experience 10
Alistair Richardson’s Student Centred Study 23
II. Audio-Visual Sources of the Holocaust 29
III. Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah and it’s Outtakes 40
The Outtakes 45
IV. Victims and Survivors 51
Ya'akov Arnon 58
Paula Biren 62
V. Bystanders and Perpetrators 70
The War Refugee Board 76
Perpetrators 80
Conclusion 88
Bibliography 90
Introduction: The Nature and Significance of Holocaust Memory
In recent times Holocaust remembrance has skyrocketed up the global political agenda, especially in the western world. Dan Diner, a German historian and political writer primarily concerned with the relationship between history, memory, National Socialism, the Jewish people and modernity, cites 1989 as the ‘epochal turning point’ that led to ‘a return of history… an evocation of memories largely suspended’.1 Not only are more and more countries and regions
mandating Holocaust education in schools, but it has also been accompanied by a veritable memorial and museum ‘boom.’2 In addition Holocaust representations
in television, movies, news media and literature are also at an all time high. The shock of genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina (which was especially evocative as it took place in Europe, like the Holocaust) in 1994 and 1995 meant genocide studies generally, and international law, climbed the global political and academic agendas, resulting in the creation of a number of international courts and countless scholarly works.3
In 1998 former Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson initiated the International Holocaust Remembrance Allianz (IHRA).4 Persson wanted ‘to
establish an international organization that would expand Holocaust education worldwide,’ and ‘also developed the idea of an international forum of governments interested in discussing Holocaust education’ in 2000.5 The meeting
1 D. Diner, ‘The Destruction of Narrativity: The Holocaust in Historical Discourse,’
Catastrophe and Meaning: The Holocaust and the 20th Century, ed. by M. Postone and E. Santner (Chicago, University of Chicago Press: 2003), 67.
2 J. E. Young, ‘Memorials and Museums,’ The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust
Studies, ed. by P. Hayes and J.K. Roth (Oxford, Oxford University Press: 2010), 1.
3 S. Straus, ‘Second –Generation Comparative Research on Genocide,’ World
Politics, 59, 3 (April: 2007), 477.
4‘About us,’ International Holocaust remembrance Alliance, at
https://www.holocaustremembrance.com/about-us, accessed 23rd June 2016 5 ibid.
was ‘attended by the representatives of 46 governments including; 23 Heads of State or Prime Ministers and 14 Deputy Prime Ministers or Ministers.’6 The IHRA
currently has 31 member countries, ten observer countries and seven Permanent International Partners,’ all committed ‘to the implementation of national policies and programs in support of Holocaust education.’7 In addition the United Nations
General Assembly designated January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, as ‘International Holocaust Remembrance Day,’ for member states to ‘honour the victims of the Nazi era and to develop educational programs to help prevent future genocides‘8
Holocaust education is legally mandated in Austria, France, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. In the United States, the states of California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, and New York do the same, in addition to recent legislation in Pennsylvania encouraging it’s teaching along with genocide generally.9 There are also a plethora of state and
privately funded institutions committed to Holocaust education, with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) (over 38 million visitors in
6 ibid. 7 ibid.
8 ‘International Holocaust Remembrance Day,’ United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum Holocaust: Exhibitions and Collections, at
https://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/online-features/special-focus/international-holocaust-remembrance-day, accessed 23rd June 2016 https://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/online-features/special-focus/international-holocaust-remembrance-day, accessed 23rd June 2016 9 ‘Beyond Our Walls: State Profiles on Holocaust education,’ United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum Holocaust: Resources for Educators, at
https://www.ushmm.org/educators/beyond-our-walls-state-profiles-on-holocaust-education/florida, accessed 23rd June 2016
2010),10 and Yad Vashem (second only to the Wailing Wall as a tourist attraction
in Israel since 1990) representing the largest and best funded examples.11
Holocaust denial is outlawed in Germany and Austria. In 2007 ‘the council of the European Union approved a framework decision, subsequently approved by the European Parliament, that requires all member states to criminalize ‘denying or trivialising crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity,’ with the Holocaust and Rwanda representing the only undisputed instances of genocide.12
Many more indicators of the importance of Holocaust education and awareness globally could be cited, all confirming that there is great political weight behind the cause. Evidently governments and people all around the world are in agreement with the assessment of English historian and Holocaust scholar David Ceserani that if and when ‘taught properly,’ the events of the Holocaust ‘remain disturbingly relevant.’13
These developments have led many scholars to conclude that the Holocaust has taken on a memory status of unrivalled global significance. Diner makes a convincing case for it being the ‘core event of out time,’ and the ‘negative core of European self-understanding.’14 During the Second World War extreme
ideologies concerning the future of humanity arose, with the Western principle of freedom (liberalism), and the Soviet principle of equality (communism) making 10 F. Haig, ‘Introduction: Holocaust representations since 1975,’ in Modernism
and Modernity 20, 1 (January, 2013), 1.
11 A. Goldberg, ‘The ‘Jewish Narrative’ in the Yad Vashem global Holocaust museum,’ Journal of Genocide Research 14, 2 (June, 2012), 189.
12 G. Lewy, Outlawing Genocide Denial, The Dilemmas of Official Historical Truth, (Salt Lake City, University of Utah Press: 2014), 1.
13 D. Cesarani, ‘Does the Singularity of the Holocaust Make it Incomparable and Inoperative for Commemorating, Studying and Preventing Genocide? Britain's Holocaust
Memorial Day as a case study,’ Journal of Holocaust education, (2001), 10(2), 54. 14 Diner, 67-68.
up the basis for the Cold War.15 However the Nazis also had envisioned a
particular future for humanity based on Aryan supremacy and ‘the subordinate and eventual destruction of peoples considered, on the basis of quasi-scientific biological criteria, unworthy to live.’16 Diner argues that ‘the alliance of the
former and future protagonists of universal civil war only confirms the fact the historically extremely short but eminently dense period between 1941-45 should be regarded as an interval exception… which… imprints the whole century.’17 In
this ‘very dense period of time three or four different historical currents- Anti-semitism, ethnic cleansing, racial warfare and the practices of euthanasia, were fused and thus culminated into an exceptional human catastrophe,’ and this ‘culmination of different barbarous trends seems’ to be why it ‘is commonly told in different versions and different periodizations.’18
But Diner concludes that ‘the construction of an appropriate historical narration for an event unprecedented in its brevity and extremity, somehow disconnected from past and future, still remains and insurmountable task,’ and ‘the only serious attempt to deal with it histriographically is to accept its irreconcilability with that saeculum’s core narratives.’19
Despite these inherent difficulties with narrating or representing this past, renown Israeli historian and Holocaust scholar Yehuda Bauer notes how the Holocaust has become ‘a symbol of evil in what is inaccurately known as Western Civilization, and the awareness of that symbol seems to be spreading all over the
15 Ibid. 71 16 Ibid. 74 17 Ibid. 71 18 Ibid. 78 19 Ibid. vii
world.’20 It is both a ‘specifically Jewish tragedy and therefore a universal
problem of the first magnitude.’21 Bauer also contends the Holocaust is a unique
crime because Jews were murdered solely for being Jewish, and an attempt to that end was made on a global scale.22 While many baulk at claims of Holocaust
uniqueness, and Bauer has more recently preferred to speak of ‘unprecedentness,’ the crime undoubtedly has an elevated status and recognition. Daniel Levy, German–American political sociologist and Associate Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, argues that ‘the Holocaust is by now decontextualized as a concept and dislocated from space and time, precisely because it can be used to dramatize any act of injustice.’ It is ‘a symbol of genocidal Holocaust rather that a real historical event.’23
Holocaust memory, Levy argues, ‘is a screen to reframe suffering in national contexts,’ and ‘this memory imperative has become an important source of state legitimacy.’24 Levy even contends it has caused a ‘cosmopolitanization of
memory’: a shift from attempts at a unified memory culture based on the nation state to ‘the proliferation of memories’ that ‘complicates the future by providing competing options.’25
Whatever one’s view of the Holocaust, addressing and working through its history and aftermath may well be of universal concern to humanity. Therefore the quality of education about it is of the upmost importance. This 20 Y. Bauer Rethinking the Holocaust, (New Haven, Yale University Press: 2001), x.
21 Ibid. xiv
22 Ibid. xiv and 66.
23 D. Levy, ‘Changing Temporalities and the Internationalization of Memory Cultures,’ Memory and the Future: Transnational Politics, Ethics and Society, ed. by Y. Gutman, A.D. Brown and A. Sodaro (London, Palgrave Macmillan: 2010), 18. 24 Ibid. 19
25Ibid. 20 and 29
thesis will explore the challenges associated with teaching the Holocaust, and suggests that interview outtakes from Claude lanzmann’s landmark Holocaust film Shoah, released online by USHMM in September 2015, are an educational resource uniquely suited to confront these difficulties. Indeed this thesis only scratches the surface of the myriad ways these outtakes might be used to teach lessons about the Holocaust. Primarily only extracts in English are analysed, but much of the utility of these clips could no doubt be extended to those interviews that were conducted by Lanzmann in other languages, such as German, French and Polish.
Chapter I: Remembrance, Representation, and Education
This chapter will explore the importance of Holocaust remembrance, and its manifestation in education and representation. While the waters are muddy and the critics shrill, conclusions can be drawn. Most importantly for the latter chapters, parallels between the challenges in narrating or representing the Holocaust, and teaching it will be shown. The most important tension to note is the Holocaust resistance to formal narrative structures, which creates a great difficulty for educators and artists alike, given the seemingly innate need to present some kind of narrative when imparting lessons.
Remembering the Holocaust is beset with difficulties, which can be observed in efforts to represent or narrate it. Berel Lang, author of Holocaust
Representation: Art within the Limits of History and Ethics (2000), has eloquently
surmised how:
‘The denial of individuality and personhood in the act of genocide; the abstract bureaucracy that empowered the “Final Solution,” moved by an almost indistinguishable combination of corporate and individual will and blindness to evil, constitute a subject that in its elements seems at odds with the insulation of figurative discourse and the individuation of character and motivation that literary “making” tends to impose on its subjects.’26
The difficulties arise from the salient fact that ‘there will be a difference between a representation and its object unrepresented, with the former adding to or altering the other.’27 As such a representation ‘in addition to its manifest
content, represents the exclusion of others,’ which is a particularly difficult 26 B. Lang, ‘The Representation of Limits,’ Probing the Limits of Representation, ed. by S. Friedlander (Massachusetts, Harvard University Press: 1992), 316. 27 Ibid. 300
challenge to overcome with the Holocaust, given it holds so much moral weight and significance.28
In short, the Holocaust is resistant to the standard narrative structure of a satisfying beginning, middle and end. American-born historian of European intellectual history, most known for his work in trauma studies Dominick LaCapra, notes how ‘reaching some sort of closure’ in this way, provides the reader or viewer ‘with pleasure.’29 This end result, he adds, is inappropriate for
an encounter with the Holocaust: ‘in art, the terms for works that bring unearned, premature pleasure is Kitsch- the harmonizing and sentimentalizing rendition of disconcerting potentially traumatizing subjects.’30
American Professor and Chair in the department of Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago Eric L. Santner, whose writings primarily concern poetry, post-war Germany, and the Holocaust, has argued that:
‘To take seriously Nazism and the “Final Solution” as massive trauma means to shift one’s theoretical, ethical and political attention to the psychic and social sites where individual and group identities are constructed, destroyed and reconstructed. This mode of attention is one which […is…] addressed to issues that are more primitive than the purpose, narrative or otherwise, of gaining pleasure and avoiding pleasure… a mode of attention that requires a capacity and willingness to work through anxiety.’31
28 Ibid.
29 D. LaCapra, ‘Lanzmann’s Shoah: “Here There Is No Why,”’ Claude Lanzmann’s
Shoah: Key Essays, ed. by S. Liebman (Oxford, oxford University Press: 2007), 199.
30 Ibid.
31 E.L. Santner, ‘History beyond the Pleasure Principle: Some Thoughts on the Representation of Trauma,’ Probing the Limits of Representation, ed. by S. Friedlander (Massachusetts, Harvard University Press: 1992), 153. (my emphasis)
This mode of attention is hard to replicate, and while we will see later that Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah is praised for doing just that, most representations of the Holocaust conform to traditional narrative norms. Yet as a genre, there is nothing more critically successful than the Holocaust film: ‘Beginning with the 1959 movie The Diary of Anne Frank, there have been 22 Oscar nominees that, in one way or another represented the Holocaust, and since Shelley Winters won for Best Supporting Actress in 1959, 20 of these movies garnered at least one Academy Award.’32
Representations of the Holocaust themselves are also the necessary means by which any encounter with this past must take place, and for most people, popular representations (films, museums) are their only encounter with it. Popular representations of the Holocaust through film boomed in the 1990’s, a delayed reaction often theorised as related to the Cold War, especially given its political adoption into the American national narrative. Francesca Haig notes ‘empathy and identification are firmly ensconced as the preferred popular modes of engagement, perpetuating depictions of the Holocaust as both sacred and unique.’33
This is clearly evident in the first Holocaust film I saw, The Pianist (2003), which won the Oscars for best actor, director and adapted screenplay. Based on the memoir of Polish-Jewish pianist and composer Władysław Szpilman, the audience follows Szpilman struggle to survive the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto practically on his own. Wehrmacht officer Wilm Hosenfeld spares him after Szpilman plays him Chopin's Ballade in G minor. While I, and many others 32 “Ida’ Wins: The Count Is Now 20 Out Of 23,’ Tablet, at
http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/189157/ida-wins-the-count-is-now-20-out-of-23, accessed 30th June 2016
like me, enjoyed this film, such a story cannot be said to have taken ‘seriously Nazism and the “Final Solution” as massive trauma.’34
Alvin H. Rosenfeld, director of the Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism at Indiana University and Professor of Jewish studies and English, has echoed Santner’s sentiment, claiming that only by acknowledging differing Holocaust narratives ‘can we hope to understand how the past reaches most of us at all.’ 35 History ‘therefore implicates both the event and its representations.’
He goes on to point out that Holocaust memory ‘broadly conceived may depend less on the record of events drawn up by scholars than on the projection of these events by writers, filmmakers, artists and others.’36 This is due in no small part to
the fact ‘for most people… the event is simply not accessible apart from its representations.’37 Popular representations of the Holocaust then are inevitably
the main means by which the world at large engages with this past.
Leaders of the IHRA’s Education Working Group have also noted this and are concerned. They argue teachers of the Holocaust are ‘still too often using fictional films.’ The biggest threat the Holocaust’s historical memory faces today is of becoming ‘a history that is often referred to but is not really known.’ 38 This
is also seen in the results of Holocaust Education Development Programme (HEDP) study of schools in England and Wales in 2008-2009. It found that 76% of teachers said they were likely to teach the Holocaust using a film, with
34 Santner, 153
35 A.H. Rosenfeld, The End of The Holocaust, (Indianapolis, Indiana University Press: 2011), 2
36Ibid. 37Ibid. 3
38 K. Street, ‘A Slowly Evolving landscape,’ Past Forward (USC Shoah Foundation, Summer: 2013), 32.
Schindler’s List (1993) the overwhelming favourite.39 The film was also
distributed in edited form to all schools in England and Wales.40 Representations
then are not only the necessary means by which we encounter the Holocaust, but films and other popular representations generally are recourses (some might say crutches) for teachers facing the difficulties of Holocaust education, that are used
too much at the expense of real engagement.
Despite their seemingly necessary role in spreading the memory of the Holocaust, representations have also been heavily criticised for spreading untruths, and diluting the significance of Holocaust memory. Rosenfeld has noted the ‘history of the Holocaust becomes broadly accepted only as its basic narrative undergoes change of a kind that enables large numbers of people to identify with it.’41 Levy agrees: ‘the diminishing significance of particular memories is
accelerated through the Americanization, that is, the universalization of Holocaust representation.'42 Rosenfeld believes this has muddled what used to be
‘commonly understood’ as the three main groups in the Holocaust story: ‘the victims, their murderers and the great majority of people in the surrounding societies.’43
These days, Rosenfeld argues, the previously minor roles of “survivors” and “rescuers” now ‘enjoy a substantially heightened profile’ while other roles ‘are being kept from emerging as part of the essential narrative.’44 He fears today
39 A. Richardson, Holocaust education: An Investigation Into the Types of Learning
that Take Place When Students Encounter the Holocaust, Unpublished Doctor of
Education Thesis, (Brunel University, April: 2012) at
http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/bitstream/2438/6595/1/FullTextThesis.pdf, 27, accessed 23rd June 2016 40 Pettigrew, 45 41 Rosenfeld, 1 42 Levy, 18 43 Rosenfeld, 1 44 Ibid.
the more universalized Holocaust’s memory is ‘a less taxing version… still full of suffering to be sure, but a suffering relieved of many of its weightiest moral and intellectual demands and consequently easier to bear.’45 Likewise Ross Poole,
Philosophy and Politics lecturer at The New School University in New York, has criticised how popular representations all too often ‘replace a difficult and demanding encounter with a too easy sense of moral enrichment at the sight of goodness in its struggle with evil,’ surely an undoubted consequence of the elevation of survivor and rescuer stories like The Pianist and Schindler’s List.46
These depictions ‘do not do justice to the horror of a situation whose evil consists precisely in its near successful attempt to make moral goodness impossible.’47 When television, movies, literature and newspaper are the primary
means by which people get their information about the Holocaust, rather than from historical experts ‘alarm bells should begin to ring.’48
This criticism of the dangers of a more universalised Holocaust narrative also extends to popular discourse and many Holocaust museums. Hungarian concentration camp survivor Imre Kertész comments how ‘the Holocaust appears to be ever more unintelligible the more people talk about it… (it) recedes ever more into the distance, into history, the more memorials to it we construct… the unbearable burden of the Holocaust has given rise to forms of language that appear to talk about the Holocaust, while never even touching the reality of it.’49
Jurgen Matthäus, German historian and head of the USHMM’s research department, has also noticed the trappings of such discourse in the popular 45 Ibid. 11
46 R. Poole, ‘Misremembering the Holocaust: Universal Symbol, Nationalist Icon or Moral Kitsch?,’ Memory and Future, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 38. 47 Ibid.
48 Ibid. 39
media since the 1990s: ‘The Holocaust has become a staple of the media addenda,’ and unsurprisingly ‘the decision about what to publicize is often driven by the urge to depict new, dramatic, or otherwise moving stories; behind these present-day priorities and the powerful images they produce, the complexity of historical reality can vanish from sight.’50
Referring to Holocaust museums, German Studies professor and Holocaust Survivor Ruth Klüger has commented that they ‘convey a sense of permanence, the idea of ‘collection,’ as opposed to separation and loss… the various Shoah museums and reconstituted concentration camp sites… tell you what you ought to think, as no art or science museum ever does. They impede the critical faculty.’51
Diluting the horrors and complexities of the Holocaust in this way has diminished its significance. Rosenfeld sees evidence of this in the ‘array of cultural pressures that challenge its place as a pivotal event in modern European and Jewish history.’52 One such pressure comes from the formally marginal group
of Holocaust deniers. Actors from the far political left and right have turned denial into a legitimate point of view, most notably in France, but also elsewhere.53 An Anti-Defamation League opinion poll conducted in 2009 in seven
European countries (Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Spain, and the United Kingdom) found that 44% of respondents ‘believed that Jews talk too much about the Holocaust.’54 The implication is clear to Rosenfeld: ‘Sometimes
50 J. Matthäus, ‘Conclusion: What have we learned?,’ Approaching an Auschwitz
Survivor: Holocaust testimony and its transformations, ed. by J. Matthäus (Oxford,
Oxford University Press: 2010), 121.
51 R. Kluger, Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered (New York, Feminist Press at the City University of New York: 2001), 198.
52 Rosenfeld, 242 53 ibid.
expressed as irritation, sometimes as resentment, an attitude of impatience with the Jews and rejection of stories about their victimization is now palpable, and not only on the margins.’55
Other evidence of this trend can be seen in ‘certain European countries today, most prominently but not only in the Baltic republics, [where] one finds a growing tendency to equalize the crimes of Hitler and Stalin and a call for the creation of new institutions and public ceremonies to jointly remember the victims of both dictators.’56 This was evident on April 2, 2009, when over 400
members of the European Parliament voted in favour of setting aside August 23, as a “European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism.” 57 If
successfully instituted, Rosenfeld argues, it ‘would render Holocaust Remembrance Day superfluous and, in a relatively brief time, no doubt would lead to its dissolution.’58
In less concrete terms the late Tony Judt, British historian and essayist specializing in European history, also noted changes in perceptions of the Holocausts in 2008 while he was a professor at New York University:
‘Students today do not need to be reminded of the genocide of the Jews, the historical consequences of Anti-semitism, or the problem of evil. They know all about these—in ways their parents never did… But I have been struck lately by the frequency with which new questions are surfacing: “Why do we focus so much on the Holocaust?” “Why is it illegal [in certain countries] to deny the Holocaust but not other genocides?” “Is the threat of Anti-semitism not
55 Ibid. 56 Ibid. 244 57 Ibid. 245 58 Ibid.
exaggerated?” And, increasingly, “Doesn’t Israel use the Holocaust as an excuse?” I do not recall hearing those questions in the past.’59
Whether universalized representations of the Holocaust have spread its memory or simply reflect this spread, the concerns that this more sanitised encounter with the Holocaust might work against its profound implications for humanity are well founded.
However in the words of James E. Young Distinguished University Professor of English and Judaic Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, whose work is primarily concerned with narrative theory, cultural memory studies, Holocaust studies, and visual culture ‘none of us coming to the Holocaust afterwards can know these events outside the way they are passed down to us.’60 So while popular universalised representations and narratives of
the Holocaust may be damaging to the significance of its memory, narrative itself cannot be abandoned, and indeed it played an important role in the event itself:
‘The events of the Holocaust are not shaped post factum in their narration, but that they were initially determined as they were apprehended, expressed and then acted upon. In this way, what might once have been considered merely a matter of cultural, religious, or national perspective of the Holocaust assumes the force of agency in these events: world views may have both generated catastrophe and narrated it afterwards. Thus perceived, history never unfolds independently of the ways we have understood it; and in the case of the
59 T. Judt, ‘The ‘Problem of Evil’ in Postwar Europe,’ The New York Review of
Books, (February 14, 2008)
60 J.E. Young Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust: Narrative and the
Consequences of Interpretation (Bloomington, Indiana University Press: 1988),
Holocaust, the interpretation and structural organization of historical events as they occurred may ultimately have determined the horrific course they took.’61
The Authority of Experience
In response to this conundrum of narrating the Holocaust, educational and representative efforts have tended to draw heavily from stories by survivors and victims, referred to as the ‘authority of experience.’62 This originated from
the canonical status attributed to early Holocaust representations, like Eric Wiesel’s Night (1960), Primo Levi’s If This is a Man (Italian 1947, English 1959), and the diary of Anne Frank (Dutch 1947, English 1952).63 These first hand
accounts were the surest way to answer how we represent a trauma ‘so extreme that it has been seen as inexpressible by it’s very nature.’64 The success of Claude
Lanzmann’s film Shoah (1985), the majority of which consists of extended extracts from Lanzmann’s interviews with those who witnessed the Shoah in various ways, asserted the authority of experience even further.65Freelance
educator Shira Magen, previously of Yad Vashem and currently working at the Snunit Center for the advancement of web-based learning has argued the ‘personal voice’ of survivors ‘enhances the effectiveness of the learning process.’66
She even sees them as ‘crucial to education,’ for two reasons. Firstly because the Nazis intended to ‘eliminate every Jew they could get their hand on,’ and 61 ibid. 5
62 Haig, 2 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid.
65 A.S. Gross and M.J. Hoffman, ‘Memory, Authority and Identity: Holocaust Studies in Light of the Wilkomirski Debate,’ Biography, 27.1 (2004), 27 66 S. Magen, ‘Using Testimony in Holocaust education,’ Yad Vashem: The
International School for Holocaust Studies, at
http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/education/learning_environments/testimon y.asp, accessed 23rd June 2016
obliterate any evidence of the crime, the fact survivors are ‘able to speak of what happened… is of great power and importance.’67 Second ‘since the Holocaust was
a series of atrocities inflicted by people on people and a matter of great moral and ethical significance, it is crucial that the human experience of the victims be told in the first person so that it may be at least partly understood.’68
There are other notable documentary films that draw on the ‘authority of experience’ by complimenting attempts to tell the historical tale with ‘talking heads.’ Predominantly these are survivors who briefly speak to the specific events in question. One example is the BBC’s 2005 six-part television series ‘Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution.’ Mostly survivors are used but former perpetrators also offer their reflections, although there is little exploration into the motivating factors that influenced their support of the Nazi party. At one point the narrator states: ‘the majority of SS working at Aushwitz seem to have carried out their jobs with few qualms.’69 While the extracts from
witnesses at different levels do offer some insights, like the binding nature of higher orders, the clips used are too short to really be considered in any way equivalent to Shoah’s extensive exploration of the machinery of destruction in it’s presented interview extracts. The personal stories of the witnesses remain complimentary to the historical story of the origins of Auschwitz and the Final solution. Their interview extracts are complimented with short dramatizations of the decision-making process, and life in the camp. While the series goes over undoubtedly important detail, it is telling that in the grand scheme of the
67 Magen 68 Ibid.
69 ‘Part Four: Corruption,’ Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution, BBC, at https://www.netflix.com, 13:40-14, accessed 23rd June 2016
Holocaust only the story of Auschwitz can be told, which of course only accounts for a sixth of the Jewish victims.
The main issue with the ‘authority of experience’ is that the victim or survivor perspective usually predominates. The victims are only one of the three groups ‘so central to any analysis of the Holocaust,’ the others being perpetrators and bystanders.70 The victim perspective, and empathy with it, ‘has become the
privileged mode of engaging with the Holocaust’ in recent decades, and extends to museums, film, literature and news media.71 As for the perspective’s ability to
teach history, Dan Stone, Professor of Modern History and Director of the Holocaust Research Centre at Royal Holloway University London, notes that although historians are often justly criticized for overlooking the victims, and ‘speaking of the Jews as mere objects to whom things happened… one cannot escape the fact that the vast majority of Jews caught in the Nazi empire had little room for manoeuvre, and that ultimately their destinies remained largely outside of their control.’72
Bauer appears to agree, making the point that engaging solely with the emotional aspects of the Holocaust is not truly facing its trauma, which requires confronting and pondering the facts (or as Santner has put it, working through
anxiety).73 He also makes the point we may well have to forego identification to
confront difficult truths about victim’s actions, and discover potential lessons, warnings or encouragement.74
70 D.G. Schilling, ‘The Dead End of Demonizing: Dealing with the Perpetrators in Teaching the Holocaust,’ New Perspectives on the Holocaust: A Guide for Teachers
and Students and Scholars, ed. R.L. Millen (New York, New York University press:
1996), 196. 71 Haig, 4
72 D. Stone, Histories of the Holocaust, 5 73 Bauer, xii
Perhaps the best demonstration of the power of this accepted bias to impede the critical faculty came with the Wilkomirski debate in the mid to late 1990s. Benjamin Wilkomirski’s book Fragments (1995) was a seemingly unintentional fraud, written from the perspective of a child during the Holocaust: ‘Wilkomirski retained the emotional traumas that lie at the heart of his emotional dissociation, but substituted for the actual events of his early childhood… with events drawn from the history of Jews in the Holocaust.’ 75 Most surprisingly it
took three years for the fraud to be discovered, long after it received widespread critical acclaim, won a number of prestigious awards, had been translated in 12 languages, and Wilkomirski had been elevated to public media figure in the United States.76 So while the victim perspective has authenticity, it also has its
blind spots and is worryingly opposed to the critical method.
In any event a person’s emotional identification is always particular to that person, and sometimes the victims are actually overlooked. Carolyn Brina’s 2003 study, based on her experiences teaching her third level undergraduate social psychology module: the Holocaust and other massacres: A comparative
study of genocide, at the University of the West of England, observed how her
British students engaged emotionally far more with the liberating British Soldiers than any victims.77 She also cited the famed Castlemount High School
incident in the United States, where a number of Black and Hispanic Students jeered and laughed at violence towards Jews during a class screening of
Schindler’s List (1993).78 Brina did not find these students disengaged, but above
75 Gross, 31 76 Ibid. 29
77 C. Brina, ‘Not Crying, But Laughing: The ethics of horrifying students’
Teaching in Higher Education, 8, 4, (October: 2003), 525.
all bound up with their own position in American society.79 In this way Brina
echoes Margot Stern Storm’s view that the Holocaust is ‘a tarnished mirror of history,’ and students reactions are tied into their own societal position.80
Barry van Driel recounts a similar experience when a travelling exhibition from the Anne Frank House (Anne Frank in the World), came to America in the late 1980s.81 It ran smoothly in the predominantly white, middle class town of
Santa Cruz, but in the mainly Latino school district of Watsonville, the students appeared to be at best disinterested, and at worst annoyed to be there. Van Driel received the curt reply ‘they are all white’ when he asked why this was. He concluded that ‘for these teenagers this was the story of white violence perpetrated against white people half a world away. No wonder they were only minimally interested – it had nothing to do with them’82
There have also been calls for greater emphasis on the voice of the perpetrator, ‘which to date has been largely marginalised within Holocaust education.’83 Donald G. Schilling teaches a course on German history and the
history of the Holocaust at Denison University, and has warned against propagating demonic depictions of perpetrators. This serves to provide ‘a straight forward explanation of many aspects of the Final Solution’ as ‘the work of evil psychologically deformed men,’ and lifts ‘much of the burden of guilt from’ the average person as well as freeing ‘us from troubling questions about the capacity of normal human beings to participate in an evil project and commit acts 79 Ibid. 520
80 M. Stern Storm and W.S. Parsons, Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and
Human Behavior (Watertown Massachusetts, International Educations: 1982), 2
81 B. van Driel, ‘Some Reflections on the Connection Between Holocaust education and Intercultural Education,’ Intercultural Education, 14, 2, (June: 2003), 129.
82 Ibid. 83 Grey, 92
of brutality and murder.’84 The ‘grave limitations’ of this perspective have been
exposed by perpetrator scholarship, and at any rate demonization ‘cuts us off from a deeper, more complete understanding of human behaviour… our capacity for evil, and therefore our ability to guard against future atrocities.’85
Likewise, in his review of The Act of Killing (2012), a film focused on perpetrators of atrocities in Indonesian, Ted Braun makes the point that dehumanization is a crucial step in the genocidal process and ‘if victims, other survivors, and their supporters turn around and dismiss the murderers as inhuman monsters- demonize them as something other than people- surely we run the risk of perpetuating and endless cycle of violence.’86 Clearly then there is
an imperative for Holocaust remembrance, representations and education to expand its horizons beyond the limitations of the dominant victim/survivor perspective.
Such expansion is easier said than done, however, as seen by the confusion on how to teach the Holocaust, and the radically different methodologies employed by countries who are heavily invested in it. In 1989 Harris lamented the Holocaust was a ‘null curriculum,’ defined by what was omitted rather than included, (echoing Lang’s thoughts regarding narrative and the Holocaust) a ‘paradoxical curriculum which exists because it does not exist.’87
The aforementioned HEDP of England and Wales reflected many of the difficulties Holocaust education faces. Usually taught in year 9 (13-14 year olds) History classes, 41% of teachers agreed or strongly agreed it was ‘very difficult’ 84 Schilling, 197-8
85 Ibid. 198
86 T. Braun, ‘The Killer Within,’ Past Forward (USC Shoah Foundation, Spring: 2014), 27.
87 M. Harris, ‘Teaching the Null Curriculum: the Holocaust,’ British Journal Of
to teach the subject effectively, with time constraints the most frequently cited issue, with 42% feeling insufficient time could do more harm than good.88 The
teachers’ questionnaire also revealed significant gaps and misunderstandings in teacher’s knowledge of relatively recent research in the field.89 The study
concluded that the conviction with which teachers approached the subject combined with misconceptions disseminated in popular culture (as noted by Rosenfeld and Levy), might jointly conspire to cause the spread of inaccuracies.90
In 2007 Cowan and Maitles argued ‘studying the Holocaust teaches citizenship targets that are central to the development of well-rounded young people.’91 While few would disagree, Alistair Richardson points out that
‘definitions of what precisely these ‘targets’ are, or indeed what a ‘well-rounded’ person is, remain undefined and elusive.’92 When attempts have been made to
explicitly teach a citizenship or anti-racist agenda using the Holocaust, the coordinators have been unhappy with the outcomes.93
Jane Clement’s 2006 study, which endeavoured to explore what kinds of learning processes took place in Holocaust education, offers an explanation as to why this is. She proposes that because the Holocaust addresses the ‘emptiness’ outside of the normal structures within which we would normally view society a ‘sea of confusion’ is evoked.94 In this sea both teacher and student ‘flounder
88 A. Pettigrew and S. Foster et al, Teaching About the Holocaust in English
Secondary Schools: An empirical study of national trends, perspectives and practice,
(London, institute of Education, University of London: 2009), 87. 89 Ibid. 102
90 Ibid.
91 P. Cowen and H. Maitles, ‘Does Addressing Prejudice and Discrimination Through Holocaust education Produce Better Citizens?,’ Educational Review, 59, 2 (May: 2007), 128.
92 Richardson, 54 93 Ibid.
94 J. Clements, ‘A Very Neutral Voice: teaching about the Holocaust,’ Educate, 5, 1 (2006), 46.
together,’ empowering the student by upending the traditional teacher-student relationship through ‘emotion and exploration.’95 It appears then that Clements
agrees with Santner that engagement with the Holocaust requires facing and working through anxiety. Clements therefore observed effective learning about the Holocaust was ‘both a destructive and creative process’, and that it was up to the students to construct their learning and position themselves in relation to it.96
This is supported by the HEDP study’s findings that teachers ‘appeared to consider their pastoral relationships with students in ways that some had not necessarily experienced before.’97 Whether intentional or not, this
relinquishment of mastery over the subject by the teacher allows the student to construct their own learning. Clements concluded that following this experience with lessons that try to explain this past (i.e. racism, prejudice, citizenship) would constitute a wrestling back of power from the student to the teacher, undermining their emerging, self-constructed learning.98 The fact IWitness’
autonomous model, which will be explored in more detail in the next chapter, has been noted for its ability to foster increased interest in the Holocaust, would seem to support the finding that empowering students to take charge of their own learning is a necessary component of successful Holocaust education.99
Another demonstration of the lack of agreement over how to best educate people about the Holocaust comes in the stark contrast in approaches to this past employed by Israeli, and German museums and monuments. The new Yad 95 Clements, 46
96 Ibid.
97 Pettigrew, 92 98 Clements, 46
99 C. Beaver, ‘IWitness Evaluation Report,’ Past Forward (USC Shoah Foundation, Summer: 2013), 31.
Vashem (2005) is the exemplar par excellence for emotional identification with the victims. While the drawbacks of this method have already been discussed, Amos Goldberg, a senior lecturer at the department of Jewish history and contemporary Jewry and at the school of literatures at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, neatly surmises how the encouragements to identify with the victims at all costs ‘blocks any nuanced understanding of the event’, and by ‘melancholic means the museum supresses any ‘otherness’ that would make the story of the Shoah more complex, interrupted in the melodramatic processes of identification, and destabilize the identity of the Western (individual and collective) self.’100
When visiting the museum German curators were appalled by what they saw as ‘emotional manipulation.’101 This is hardly surprising because in nearly
every measurable unit German Holocaust museums and monuments do the exact opposite to Yad Vashem. Israeli scholar Gad Yair has noted this recently in her examination of 19 memorial and documentation sites throughout Germany. She finds four themes that undermine or neutralise the potential of the exhibits: ‘overabundance of information, neutrality of tone, dull presentation, and the disconnection of information from meaning.’102 She highlights how neutral
phrases like “one third did not survive,” in effect render ‘the atrocities agentless,’ which obviously is an unsatisfying engagement with this loss of life.103 There is
clearly much confusion and disagreement over how best to teach the Holocaust,
100 Goldberg, 187
101 G. Yair,’Neutrality, Objectivity and Dissociation: Cultural Trauma and
Educational Messages in German Holocaust Memorial Sites and Documentation Centers,’ Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 28, 3 (Winter: 2014), 484.
102 Yair, 487 103 Ibid. 494
but if we take Israel and Germany’s national efforts as two ends of the spectrum, we can see a tension between emotional and neutral-critical engagement.
In a 2010 study of German education on National Socialism Meseth and Proske also noted this tension, referring to it as under-moralizing: ‘forms of communication in which the moral condemnation of Nazi crimes is not clearly identifiable,’ and over-moralizing: ‘communication where moral judgements about individuals are reached.’104 In their view ‘over-moralizing threatens to
cross the ethical boundaries of the teaching profession, but in avoiding it, teachers run the risk of not doing justice to the moral dimensions of the issue and the broader educational mission.’105In the study four case studies were
analysed, with only one seen as wholly desirable. In this study, the class watched the German documentary Machtergreifung about Hitler’s rise to power, which offered ‘a diversity of perspectives on historical events and ultimately provides no clear explanation of Hitler’s success in seizing power.’106 The class discussion
that followed was also inconclusive, the teacher choosing simply to moderate with brief questions and by calling on students ‘allowing him to recede from the conversation entirely at times.’107 Meseth and Proske noted this approached
yielded a ‘systematic resilience on the twin dangers of over-moralization and under-moralization.’108 Despite the apparent lack of guidance, students touched
on current academic debates by using their own particular pre-existing knowledge, the moral terrain of the topic, and their own understanding of 104 W. Meseth and M. Proske, ‘Mind the gap: Holocaust education in Germany, between pedagogical intentions and classroom interactions’ Prospects, 40, 2 (June: 2010) 207.
105 ibid. 106 ibid. 215 107 ibid. 108 ibid. 216
themselves as ‘complete individuals.’109 Clearly then there is little danger in
failing to reach unified conclusions on this past, in fact failing to reach a conclusion or consensus may be the most desirable outcome.
Remarkably, despite their contrasting approaches, memorials in both Israel and Germany tend to marginalise perpetrators. At Yad Vashem Goldberg notes how neither perpetrators or bystanders are dealt with in any serious manner, and the events are portrayed ‘divorced from their worldly ‘cause and effect’ dimensions,’ like they are ‘a given’ revealing some eternal truth about the world- that is what defines a myth.’110 At best Goldberg sees the museum
displaying ‘a very narrow ‘intentionalist’ approach’ which was already out-dated in historiography by the mid 1980s. In Germany Yair notes a legacy of disassociation from post-war Germany has become embedded in today’s exhibits. In post-war Germany the Allies made a distinction ‘between Germans on the one hand and Nazis on the other.’111 By trying only the top Nazi leaders they ‘seemed
to ascribe responsibility for the war and the Holocaust to the Nazis, the SS and the Gestapo, thereby allowing Germans to dissociate themselves from their recent past and collective identity.’112 Yair notes how the exhibits ‘convey a sense
of alien “otherness”- as if during the period of the crimes Germany had been occupied by some foreign power.’113
Despite the waters of Holocaust education being so muddy, we can draw insights from recent studies (some of which have already been mentioned), and informed reflections from scholars and survivors. Eric Weisel has always been 109 ibid.
110 Goldberg, 197 111 Yair, 502 112 Ibid. 113 Ibid. 467
adamant and consistent in his view the Holocaust should be taught as an ‘unanswerable question,’ showing an appreciation of the Holocaust particular resistance to the narrative structure.114 The late Gillian Rose, a consultant to the
Polish Commission for the Future of Auschwitz in the 1990s when the Polish government took over the running of the Museum, also offers her philosophical reflections on Holocaust education. In Rose’s view in order to ‘explore our mutual entanglements in power,’ instead of offering ‘one-dimensional conceptualisations of power,’ the aspiration should be for an ‘alternative description of mutual positioning and their breakdown,’ which ‘reopens the way to conceive learning, growth, and knowledge as fallible and precarious, but risk-able.’115 This risk ‘refers to the temporarily constitutive positioning of each other
which form and reform both selves.’116
According to this perspective there is a necessary normalising or relativizing of unfathomable evil.117 Critics of such normalisation, and there are a
great number including Claude Lanzmann, would content this positioning ‘shows no respect for those who died such horrible deaths, and, it is depends on discredited methods of knowledge, which also expired… in the gas-chamber.’118
Bauer is highly critical of those who argue the Holocaust is something that cannot be explained so no attempt should be made. He contends this ‘attempt to escape historical responsibility’ renders the perpetrators ‘tragic victims of forces beyond human control,’ when in fact the ‘murder was committed by humans for
114 Quoted in Richardson, 49
115 G. Rose, Mourning Becomes the Law: Philosophy and Representation (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 1997), 14.
116 Ibid. 117 Ibid. 34 118 Ibid. 35
reasons whose sources are found in history and which therefore can be rationally analysed.’119
These mystifiers achieve the opposite of their aim of victim identification because ‘you cannot identify with what is inexplicable,’ and so ‘to say the Holocaust is inexplicable, in the last resort, is to justify it.’120 Rose sees in this
‘refusal to ‘relativize’ a deeper fear: that we would then be part of that relativity
without there being any overarching law determining our participation.’121 This
would appear to be in accordance with the mutual ‘floundering’ between teacher and student that Clements observed, the view students learning was a ‘destructive and creative process,’ and the findings of the aforementioned study by Meseth and Proske. It also supports the findings of the HEDP study that reflection, discussion and debate was generally favoured over formal or written assessment.122
Alistair Richardson’s Student Centred Study
One study in particular is especially revealing in regards to how to teach the Holocaust. The point of difference in Richardson’s study is unlike most other research in the field of Holocaust education (which is notably scant at any rate),123 it does not focus on the teacher’s perspective, but the students. His
intention ‘was to investigate the world of the learner and their experiences,’ with a ‘particular emphasis’ on students ‘emotional engagement.’124Richardson had
been a teacher for 16 years, specialising in Religious Studies in Key Stage 2-5 119 Bauer, 38 and 7
120 Bauer, 7 and 38 121 Rose, 35
122 Pettigrew, 44
123 Interview with Maria van Beurden Cahn on 24th May 2016, in author’s
possession
before undertaking this study and Professional Doctorate due to his interest ‘in how Religious Studies teachers teach controversial or sensitive issues,’ and his increasing awareness ‘of the transformative and affective potential of such teaching,’ which led him as a result ‘to question how pupils engage emotionally with these topics.’125 The English school in question was nominally selective boy’s
school from 13-16 with a mixed sixth form.126 The school population was
predominantly white from professional middle-class backgrounds, with academic results well above the national average.127 The Holocaust was taught at
the end of the History curriculum at the end of the summer term in year 9, the logic being that students were more informed about the crucial context of the Second World War.128 The head of history’s priorities had been historical
accuracy and correct terminology e.g. the difference between a concentration camp and an extermination camp.129 The learning experience also featured an
annual visit of a Holocaust survivor.130 Given this, it would have to be conceded
that the conditions for learning about the Holocaust were fairly optimal, and certainly the IHRA cannot expect much more. Students were also taught about the Holocaust in Religious Studies during one Summer term with a greater ‘emphatic’ focus, a screening of Schindler’s list, and plenty of time for free discussion.131 Richardson concluded students ‘had received a relatively extensive
and well-intentioned programme of Holocaust education at this school.’132
125 ibid. 11 126 ibid. 57 127 ibid. 128 ibid. 64 129 ibid. 66 130 ibid. 65 131 ibid. 66 132 ibid. 68
After conducting extensive interviews with the students Richardson came up with a number of finding, here are some of the most relevant ones:
‘The experience had been an emotionally distressing and complex one for them. They had not had time to discuss their emotions or their emotional learning in the classroom and this remained an area many students struggled to come to terms with moving forward.’
‘Some students had experienced issues of trust and provenance, leaving some unsure as to which sources of Holocaust knowledge were legitimate’133
‘Some students saw the experience as being a ‘gateway’ event, demarking their move from childhood to adulthood’
‘There was evidence of students giving ‘learned’ or ‘expected’ responses regarding the Holocaust, in an apparent attempt to distance themselves from the event and to adhere to societal norms’ (in accordance with Kertész observation of a Holocaust language that avoids dealing with the reality of this past)
‘They had begun to make connections between the Holocaust and other events from history and the contemporary world, but these
connections were diverse and lacked depth of understanding or maturity of perspective’134
Richardson did not see these findings as reflecting failings, but instead highlighting ‘the complexity of the event… if the Holocaust is to be even partially understood, students encounters with it must necessarily be diverse. As actors in a socially constructed space they must necessarily act upon it as well as within it, and this will create different ‘truths’ for different students.’135 Clearly this
conclusion supports the theory of Rose that learning about the Holocaust must consist of ‘mutual positioning.’
The last point regarding weak connections to the present day is a troublingly wide reaching and persistent issue for Holocaust education. Hersovich, another leader of the IHRA’s Education Working Group, has noted linking the Holocaust to contemporary events has been a consistent weakness in the efforts of Holocaust education.136 Mary M. Clark, director of the Columbia
Center for Oral History, the oldest university-based oral history public archive, also highlights that this concern is so pressing given horrific events are such a staple of the modern day media agenda, which has led to a ‘new indifference,’ something she sees as the ‘central ethical dilemma of our time.’137
Richardson proposes that only by ‘acknowledging and accepting the place of both academic (‘surface level’) learning and emotional (‘affective’) learning’ will students be ‘able to begin to assimilate this learning into their developing 134 ibid. 165
135 ibid. 136 Street, 34
137 M.M. Clark, ‘Holocaust Video Testimony, Oral History, and Narrative
Medicine: The Struggle Against Indifference,’ Literature and Medicine, 24, 2 (Fall: 2005), 268.
worldview (their ‘connective’ learning) and move forward as Holocaust literate young people’138 Richardson argues that in order to do this teachers need to
engage with the many ‘contested spaces’ that make up the Holocaust, like for example explorations in culpability, victimhood and territorialisation of memory.139 Primo Levi drew attention to these spaces as the ‘grey zone’ of the
Holocaust, which demonstrate the limits of our judgement ‘from the relative safety of our perspective.’140 Richardson concluded ‘for a teacher to create a
“dialogic space” within a “contested space” they need to be confident, skilled and critical,’ and will need a detailed ‘understanding of the nature of these conflicts.’ He calls for educators to embrace these complexities as opposed to ignoring them in favour of ‘comfortable explanations,’ that ‘can only lead to the universalization of un-truths, which leaves students untrusting of the provenance of knowledge and open to manipulation by revisionism.’141
This approach resonates with the work of Jaques Semelin, French historian, psychologist, political scientist and founder of the Online Encyclopaedia of Mass Violence, who observed ‘it is as if the closer the scholar draws to the fundamental core of human cruelty, the more he is faced with a sort of ‘black hole’ that resists any sort of understanding via the intellect.’142 If scholar
find this to be the case after years of research, fostering this understanding in young people by emphasising these ‘black holes’ or ‘grey zones, or ‘contested spaces’ is clearly a desirable outcome. Richardson argues the ‘educators need to 138 Richardson, 166
139 ibid. 173-4
140 P. Levi, ‘The gray zone,’ in The Holocaust: Origins, Implementation, Aftermath, ed. O. Bartov (London, Routledge: 2000), 252.
141 Richardson, 177 and 186
142 J. Sémelin, Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacres and Genocide, (Hurst & Company, London: 2013), 7.
view the Holocaust not simply as a ‘space’ that students inhabit for a time, but as a ‘space’ they dwell in ad infinitum and which they will, in turn, shape as they assume the mantle of commemoration going forwards into the future,’ and it will ‘be inhabited by different students in different ways.’143
Richardson also makes the point that ‘if we are to reject the universalization… we have no choice but to return to the particular-the testimonies of those who experienced the Holocaust.’144 Hersovich concurs,
asserting the power of human voices and stories ‘lends credibility to the scope of the Holocaust and… breaks it down to its smallest but essential component, impact on human lives. The emotional charge, the passion that can be inspired by oral history cannot be duplicated by any other means.’145 Clark also argues
Holocaust oral history in particular ‘carries with it the capacity to address the resurgence of violence and indifference in global contexts.’146 Nearly all of the
scholars referenced so far have also warned these sources have to be accompanied by a respect for the historical method, meaning other sources are required to compliment testimony.
What this debate regarding the importance of remembering, representing and educating about the Holocaust appears to show is that imposing a narrative structure on the Holocaust is beset with difficulties. At the same time, ultimately students and people generally need some kind of narrative to make an event feel real, to engage them emotionally. In light of these challenges, it is hardly
143 Richardson, 172 (my emphasis) 144 ibid. 180
145 Street, 34 146 Clark, 269
surprising then that survivors have become the cornerstone of Holocaust education.
Chapter II: Audio-Visual Sources of the Holocaust
In the words of Kay Andrews, lecturer at the Institute of Education’s Centre for Holocaust education at the University of London, for those working in Holocaust education around the globe ‘one question has been raised repeatedly over the past years: How do we ensure that the survivor voice continues to be heard when individuals are no longer able to tell their stories?’147 One example of this concern
comes from a 2010 country report by the United Kingdom to the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust education, Remembrance and Research: ‘given the reality that there are now fewer and fewer first-hand witnesses able to speak in schools, a critical and immediate challenge is to consider how best to ensure that the voice of the survivors continues to play a central role in educating about the Holocaust, for example through the sensitive and appropriate use of recorded interviews.’148
147 K. Andrews, ‘A Damned Good Cry,’ Past Forward, (USC Shoah Foundation, Summer: 2013), 14.
148‘United Kingdom Country Report 2010,’ Task Force for International
Cooperation on Holocaust education, at
In response to such concerns there has been a surge, sine the 1990s, to collect video recordings of survivors stories in a variety of collections.149 As such
we are entering ‘The Digital Era of Holocaust education.’150 The largest collection
of interviews is the Visual History Archive for the University of Southern California (USC) Shoah Foundation, more than 53,000 testimonies of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses available free online.151 Jewish survivors account
for approximately 49,400 testimonies, rescue and aid providers 1,100, Sinti and Roma 400, liberation witnesses and liberators 360, political prisoners 260, Jehova’s Witnesses 80, War Crimes trial participants 60, eugenics survivors 13 and homosexuals 8.152 Most of the testimonies contain ‘a complete personal
history of life before, during and after the interviewees first-hand experience with genocide,’ and so can be characterised as life story interviews.153 The
interviews average two and a half hours in length. The archive is fully searchable and ‘hyperlinked to the minute,’ which allows anyone to ‘retrieve entire testimonies or search for specific sections within the testimonies through a set of more than 60,000 key words and phrases.’154 This is a clear point of difference
from other archive collections, like USHMM Oral History Collection, which features a similar cross section of interviewees, but is complete only with a brief summary paragraph on each interview.155 The collection is housed at USC within
149 M. Grey, Contemporary Debates in Holocaust education, (New York, Palgrave MacMillan: 2014), 84.
150 Ibid. 99
151 ‘About Our Archival Collections,’ USC Shoah Foundation, at https://sfi.usc.edu/collections, accessed 23rd June 2016
152 ‘The Archive,’ USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive Online, at http://vhaonline.usc.edu/about/archive.aspx, accessed 23rd June 2016 153 ‘About Us,’ USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive Online, at http://vhaonline.usc.edu/about/about.aspx?, accessed 23rd June 2016 154 ibid.
155 ‘United States Holocaust Memorial Museum oral history collection,’ United
the Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, whose three strategic priorities are ‘Research, Education and Access.’156
Steve Kay, the Dean of Dornsife College, reflects that the collections ‘unprecedented size and search capacities can become an international playground for creative thinkers- who will find new ways to identify the patterns-and unravel them.’157 Not only can teachers and students search this archive
freely, but there is also USC Shoah’s accompanying IWitness website. This Website, created in 2003, has lesson activities that allow students to integrate testimony smoothly into history learning in an autonomous fashion.158 IWitness
also features survivor and witnesses interviews from genocides in Rwanda and Armenia as well as the Nanjing Massacre.159 The IWitness project ‘is built on the
importance of listening to one voice at a time,’ which shows a clear appreciation of the ‘authority of experience.’160
There is also an awareness of the difficulties associated with teaching and narrating the Holocaust: ‘although it has been decades since the Holocaust, people still struggle to learn what they can about it. It may be impossible to understand, but it is important that we try.’161 In addition teachers have the
capacity to create their own activities, which may be accessed by anyone around
http://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn504457, accessed 23rd June 2016
156 ‘About Us,’ USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive Online
157 S. Kay, ‘Using Stories as Data and Data to Tell Stories,’ Past Forward (USC Shoah Foundation, Spring: 2014), 25.
158 ‘Activities,’ IWitness USC Shoah Foundation, at http://iwitness.usc.edu/, accessed 23rd June 2016
159 ‘About Us,’ IWitness USC Shoah Foundation, at
http://iwitness.usc.edu/SFI/About.aspx, accessed 23rd June 2016 160 ibid.
the world, and teachers are even able to upload video and sources from other collections besides the Visual History Archive.
IWitness is designed for ‘student-centred learning,’ allowing students to ‘use technology to become more active learners’ while encountering these varying personal narratives.162 The rationale is that this ‘empowers them to
participate in their own learning by providing them with the tools to think critically, investigate, develop projects, analyse and collaborate with others.’163
For each activity students are asked to consider, collect, construct and communicate their reflections on extracts from the archive, and ‘this user-driven approach to searching testimonies has consistently been noted by students as one of the features they most like when using IWitness.’164 The depth and breadth
of testimony that students engaged with during recent classroom tests was found to be ‘significantly higher than anticipated.’165
One such activity is ‘A thing of the past? Antisemitism past and present,’ which begins by introducing Anti-semitism through a number of different
162 ibid. 163 ibid. 164 Beaver, 30 165 ibid.
