The Educational Use of Holocaust Novels

This book is a collection of seventeen scholarly articles which analyze Holocaust testimonies, photographs, documents, literature and films, as well as teaching methods in Holocaust education. Most of these essays were originally presented as papers at the Millersville University Conferences on the Holocaust and Genocide from 2010 to 2012. In their articles, the contributors discuss the Holocaust in concentration camps and ghettos, as well as the Nazis’ methods of exterminating Jews. The authors analyze the reliability of photographic evidence and eyewitness testimonies about the Holocaust. The essays also describe the psychological impact of the Holocaust on survivors, witnesses and perpetrators, and upon Jewish identity in general after the Second World War. The scholars explore the problems of the memorialization of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union and the description of the Holocaust in Russian literature. Several essays are devoted to the representation of the Holocaust in film, and trace the evolution of its depiction from the early Holocaust movies of the late 1940s – early 1950s to modern Holocaust fantasy films. They also show the influence of Holocaust cinema on feature films about the Armenian Genocide. Lastly, several authors propose innovative methods of teaching the Holocaust to college students. The younger generation of students may see the Holocaust as an event of the distant past, so new teaching methods are needed to explain its significance. This collection of essays, based on new multi-disciplinary research and innovative methods of teaching, opens many unknown aspects and provides new perspectives on the Holocaust

2018

This project specifically examines three narratives that are part of the genre of Holocaust Literature: Elie Wiesel's Night, Art Spiegelman's Maus, and John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and the way in which each of these texts contributes to collective Holocaust memory and traumatic literature: as a memoir, graphic novel, and work of fiction, respectively. The paper draws on Anne Whitehead's work on memory, as well as other trauma and memory theorists: Cathy Caruth, Pierre Nora, Maurice Halbwachs, and Marianne Hirsch to offer a close rhetorical and structural analysis of each text analyzed through a traumatic theoretical lens. This thesis discusses the intersection of pedagogy and theory, highlighting the importance of Holocaust trauma as a topic in the high school classroom. Using criteria borrowed from The Call of Memory: Learning about the Holocaust through Narrative: An Anthology, the merits of using each of the three texts in the classroom respectively will be considered. The perspective each of the individual texts brings to collective memory will be analyzed, as well as the uses and limits of each of these particular texts as representations of trauma.

1997

Every November, as the world remembers the devastation of Kristallnacht, I teach the Stories of the Holocaust course. The idea of teaching the Holocaust through first person narratives of victims, perpetrators, bystanders, and rescuers took shape during a visit to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum with my father, a survivor of the Holocaust. It was in this visit that I fully realized the power of narratives as I uncovered the hidden narrative I share with my father. His inability to speak his experiences shaped my personal vision of who I am, of my father, and of the world. My father's silence kept me from fully knowing him and myself. In the absence of my father's stories, I shaped him in the image of Holocaust stereotypes. I perceived his silence in my life as the helpless weakness of the victim. Amidst the haunting images housed in the museum, my father began to tell me his escape stories. In his stories, I encountered my father the hero, and saw him as I had never seen him before, through eyes of compassion and deep admiration. This encounter with my father's heroism put me in touch with my own and I was moved to create the Stories of the Holocaust course.

Ethics & Bioethics

In the article, the author analyses the impact of the tragic experiences during the Holocaust on contemporary ethics and literature. Such considerations coincide with yet another anniversary – the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, celebrated globally as Holocaust Memorial Day. The article also considers the reasons why testimonies from Holocaust survivors have not had an adequate impact on society. The author argues that trivialisation of the Holocaust tragedy occurred in modern science and it is related to the fact that traditional ethics has not been able to convincingly explain why the Holocaust occurred in the most civilised nations. Thus, Holocaust testimonies should be constantly popularised in society for the good of all mankind. Literature seems to be the best form of mass media for this task and it is also a recorder of human emotions. According to the author, it is essential that humanity is protected this way against the possibility of a similar tragedy occu...

Holocaust Studies

Education and the First World War Centenary Battlefield Tours Programme. His research interests include the teaching, learning and assessment of history, Holocaust education, and the study of school history textbooks and curriculum, nationally and internationally. He has written more than fifty scholarly articles and book chapters focused on teaching and learning history and he has authored or co-authored six books. His most recent co-authored publication was the groundbreaking national study: What do students know and understand about the Holocaust? (2016). Dr Eleni Karayianni works as a Research and Evaluation Officer at the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education. She is currently involved in the dissemination of the Centre's latest research to educational practitioners and also participates in the design of future research. She holds a PhD in History Education awarded by the UCL Institute of Education in 2012. Her research interests focus on issues of national and international identity formation in history education. She also has wide teaching experience at both primary and university level.

Teksty Drugie, 2013

A team of six scholars reviewed the empirical research literature in 15 languages to provide a mapping of Teaching and Learning about the Holocaust. The book is a free PDF download here: https://holocaustremembrance.com/sites/default/files/research_in_teaching_and_learning_about_the_holocaust_web.pdf

The Holocaust roughly spanned from January 30, 1933 to May 8, 1945, that is when Adolf Hitler of the Nazi Party became the Chancellor of Germany to the time the war in Europe officially ended. The Jews, who were blamed for Germany’s ills were supposed to be subjected to total annihilation through a propaganda campaign which ultimately led to the destruction of the Jewish community on a very large scale. Schindler’s Ark (1982) by Thomas Keneally and The Book Thief (2005) by Marcus Zusak provide a narrative account of the Holocaust which led to the deaths of two thirds of European Jews and one third of the total Jews worldwide. This paper demonstrates the horrors in the reign of Adolf Hitler and how well the two novels retrace history. It entails to rediscover the ‘truths’ which are represented through fictional accounts of the events that took place during the genocide.