Search results for: Holocaust education

The Holocaust Studies Program of Western Galilee College, the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Virginia, and the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Hartford announce the fourth international interdisciplinary conference and workshop on The Future of Holocaust Testimonies to be held on 8–10 March 2016 in Akko, Israel. Survivors and their testimonies have been central to Holocaust research and memorial culture, but as fewer and fewer survivors remain among us, we need to consider how and in what forms Holocaust scholarship and the memory of the Holocaust will continue. One critical focus will certainly be the legacy that survivors leave behind in the forms of written, audio, and video testimonies, as well as in the transmission of their testimony to their children and grandchildren, who have their own stories to tell, as well as to researchers. In addition, those who are not survivors or their descendants seem destined to play an increased role in the transmission of the history and memory of the Holocaust.

A commitment to empathetic understanding shaped the field of religious studies; although subject to critique, it remains an important teaching practice where students are charged with the task of recognizing, and perhaps even appreciating, a worldview that appears significantly different from their own. However, when the focus of the course is historical trauma there are significant epistemological and ethical reasons empathetic understanding may not be our best pedagogical strategy. Drawing primarily on my experience teaching a general education class “The Holocaust and Its Impact” at California State University, Bakersfield, I advocate replacing empathetic understanding with engaged witnessing as a pedagogical framework and strategy for teaching traumatic knowledge. To make this case, I delineate four qualities of engaged witnessing and demonstrate their use in teaching about the Holocaust.

The MOFET Institute and The Massuah Institute for Holocaust Studies are convening an international seminar on Teaching the Holocaust with Witness Testimonies in the 21st Century on June 16-17, 2015. The seminar will examine different approaches to teaching the Holocaust while integrating the voices of witnesses to the Holocaust through the use of methods adapted from various disciplines (history, cinema, arts, literature, etc.)

Recently, the Israeli Ministry of Education initiated a mandatory nationwide curriculum for Jewish kindergarten children focusing on the study of the Holocaust. This initiative raises general questions regarding the inclusion of sensitive historical issues in curricula for young children. In this article, we use the new Holocaust curriculum as an instructive case through which to address the broader questions about what might constitute an appropriate and acceptable curriculum in early childhood.