[UlrikeSchuhFricke]

I am a German teacher and my problems with the topic are slightly different from the ones mentioned in the mails so far.
Many of our pupils show signs of what has been called "Holocaust fatigue". They believe that they already know everything they need to know when they reach the German year ten when the 30's are one of the main History topics. The pupils' impression is not completely wrong as sometimes primary school teachers deal with some aspects like the Hitler Youth in the first school years and often other subjects than History deal with the Holocaust. At the same time we notice that the pupils do not know or remember much about the Holocaust and they do not know how it could/did happen mostly in broad daylight. But "Holocuast fatigue" makes it very difficult to motivate the pupils to once again have a closer look at what really happened and why the majority of the German people cooperated or turned a blind eye. Still today most of the ones actively involved in the genocide feel and show no remorse.
Another aspect which makes it difficult to teach this topic (and infuriates me personally) is the fact that quite a number of politicians and intellectuals want to make us believe that we should stop looking back at that time and simply should concentrate on other things. Very often the pupils feel that they are directly blamed for the things their grandparent generation did and understandably the kids resent this.
The number of witnesses decreasing makes it difficult to confront the pupils with the real horrors of the concentration camps or what it meant opposing the system.
I have tried out many different ways not only to motivate my pupils for a more or less scientific approach but also to make them feel and understand what was going on. I have found that documenatries and films like "Schindler's list" are a good way to get the pupils interested in the fate of different people and make them
feel empathy.
Another approach which I have tried out successfully, is to use literature and paintings, especially the drawings made by victims of the Holocaust.
With older (Sixth Form) pupils I often use Adorno's description of typical features of what he called an "authoritarian character" and which he believd to be the ideal recipient of any form of racist ideology. The list can be translated into a questionaire and the pupils mostly discover that they themselves show many signs of an authoritarian character. The initial responses are anger, frustration, disbelieve, questioning the reliability and validity of the questionaire. But after the first outbursts they want to find out what really happened and what turned people into (to use Goldhagen's title) "willing executioners" and of course that they never would turn into a willing executioner. What is even more important for me at the end of the unit we try to find out how we can avoid another Auschwitz and what our speacial situation as Germans still today is and will always be. The pupils still don't want to be blamed for the activties of their grandparents but they see that we have a special obligation not to forget and not to minimizeor downplay the unbelievable atrocity and inhumanity of the Holocaust.
One approach which was mentioned in the previous mails was to confront the pupils with statements/websites which deny the Holocaust. This sounds very interesting and I will try this out with one of my next year ten History classes. By the way denying Auschwitz and the Holocaust is a crime in Germany and directing the pupils to websites which do exactly this is a bit tricky and requires asking the parents' permission. But so far the parents have always given their consent.

[A Finemess]

A fascinating and thought provoking contribution Ulrike. Thanks. I am reminded of a contribution to the UK magazine "Teaching History" a couple of years ago. The author suggested that history teachers often make the mistake of teaching the Holocaust as a moral issue rather than an historical one. Once one gets over the initial shock of this, I think this is actually a very helpful comment. For example, I now always place the issue in its context by doing a "living timeline" which includes anti semitic actions such as the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, the massacre of the Jews in York in the Middle Ages etc. This encourages the pupils to consider the Holocaust as something which was not unique to Germany.

As Historians what we should be pointing out to our pupils perhaps is the fact that the Holocaust of the 1940s was only unique in its scale and that this was a reflection of its place in time rather than its location in central Europe.

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The pupils' impression is not completely wrong as sometimes primary school teachers deal with some aspects like the Hitler Youth in the first school years and often other subjects than History deal with the Holocaust.

Interesting to note that our German colleagues appear to suffer from some of the same problems we experience over here! I often get very frustrated at the fragmentation of the curriculum and the way in which it dilutes the impact of hugely important issues!

[John]

Ulrike Schuh Frike
Do you think that 'Holocaust fatigue' could be a wider European issue? By which I mean, do you think that Europe has been become obsessed by the Holocaust and Nazi Germany?
Do you think that there are any other relevant historical European issues which could better serve your students interests, other than the Holocaust.
Do you teach about the fire bombings at Dresden? If you do, are the reactions of your students different to those of the Holocaust?
Do you see in your school any signs that neo-nazism might be on the increase or the decline? If you can answer these questions for me, I'd be very appreciative.

[Stephen Drew]

I am drawn to the thought that maybe a 20th century genocide study could be the way to go here.

The deliberate murder of millions of Ukrainian and Russian peasants by Stalin and the Soviet Union in the 1920s / 1930s could be a good comparative study.

We could also compare this to the deliberate murder of millions of Chinese peasants by Mao and the Chinese Communists in the 1960s.

The disasters of totalatarian regimes in the 20th century is a possible way into this whole issue. The use of propaganda, tapping into latent prejudices and the use of secrecy to cover up horrific actions is a very interesting historical study.

I would always argue that the Holocaust is different to all other things that we study with our students. Any comparison with things such as the British destruction of target cities such as Dresden etc. is of course interesting on a much smaller scale, but when compared to the actions of totalatarian despots such as Hitler, Stalin and Mao it is not in the same league.

[Dan Moorhouse]

John, on Dec 30 2003, 11:52 AM, said:

Ulrike Schuh Frike
Do you think that 'Holocaust fatigue' could be a wider European issue? By which I mean, do you think that Europe has been become obsessed by the Holocaust and Nazi Germany?
Do you think that there are any other relevant historical European issues which could better serve your students interests, other than the Holocaust. 
Do you teach about the fire bombings at Dresden?  If you do, are the reactions of your students different to those of the Holocaust?
Do you see in your school any signs that neo-nazism might be on the increase or the decline? If you can answer these questions for me, I'd be very appreciative.

John, these are interesting questions but they could lead the thread off topic which I don't want to see happening. If anyone wishes to discuss these questions, please start a new thread. I don't want this thread to be a discussion as to whether or not teaching the Holocaust is relevant, its purpose is quite simply to generate ideas about how best to teach it. That assumes that the contributor is teaching it, or is interested in teaching it. Comparisons with other Genocides are clearly quite valid, and do help to place things into historical context. Debates about the rights and wrongs of things such as Dresden need to be discussed elsewhere.

[D Letouzey]

This "Holocaust fatigue" has been described in the French medias :
http://www.goethe.de...er/frwalser.htm
I have also read on the controversy about an exhibition on War crime.

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As Historians what we should be pointing out to our pupils perhaps is the fact that the Holocaust of the 1940s was only unique in its scale and that this was a reflection of its place in time rather than its location in central Europe.

Unique in its scale ?
I should continue to make the difference between the Dreyfus Affair and the planned Destruction of the European Jews : there has been a long term antisemitism, but as an history teacher, I have to focus on why so many where killed between 1940 and 1945.
This debate has been renewed by the creation of a Holocaust Memorial Day (in French, which has added "how to prevent new genocide" - “Journée de la mémoire de l’Holocauste et de la prévention des crimes contre l’humanité »
http://www.ac-nancy-...TML/memoire.htm

In French, I have tried to summarize the main issues of this essential teaching :
http://dletouzey.fre...eda/enshoah.htm
http://dletouzey.fre...da/enshoah2.htm
One of my main sources is Georges Bensoussan (Centre de Documentation Juive contemporaine) who made 2 conferences for the Cercle d’étude de la déportation et de la Shoah
mai 2000 : http://aphgcaen.free.../bensoussan.htm
déc 2002 : http://aphgcaen.free...bensoussan2.htm

I shall set 4 POV : human, historical, political, teaching

Human :
Being French, I have met mainly people who suffered nazi policy :
- in my family, one uncle escaped death between Norway and Germany ; my father should have gone for the STO, but as many “jeunes réfractaires”, he refused to go and had to hide himself for several months.
- At school, we had several survivors’s testimonies : Simon Igel had been deportee at AuschwitzIII (Monowitz), Jacques Geindre was sentenced to death in 1944, near Lyon, and that’s miracle if he still lives.
I have accompanied survivors in Auschwitz, in Birkenau, in Mauthausen.
Most of these men and women do make the difference between young germans (or austrians), and those who choose to help the nazi regime.
http://aphgcaen.free.fr/cercle.htm


Historiography :
until 1972, french history was dominated by a gaullist or a communist view : for them,the Vichy regime was a puppet goverment, all French had resisted against the german occupation.
A film, “Le chagrin et la pitié”, a book (Robert Paxton, La France de Vichy) set an opposite view : for them, all French had searched accomodation and were nazi auxiliaries.

We have also to be cautious about the victimisation tendancy, frequent in the recent historiography.


Politics :
This history has strong political commitments, in France, in Europe, in the Middle-East.
In French, Maurice Kriegel studied « Trois mémoires de la shoah : Etats-Unis, Israël, France » (à propos du livre de Peter Novick, " L’Holocauste dans la vie américaine ") in Le Débat 117, nov-déc 2001. This paper should be translated and be online. Just a small point from this paper : in Washington, there is an Holocaust Memorial, but no afro-american or indian memorials.

In 1987, Le Pen tried to help “les assassins de la mémoire”, -those who want to believe nobody was killed in Birkenau,- using the word “detail” about the Holocaust (13/09/1987).
http://www.anti-rev....92b/part-6.html

Now, France is shown by Bushists and by Sharon as an antisemitic country. Sharon ‘s french followers try to “stigmatiser” all those who think that another policy is possible in Palestine.
Of course, it is impossible to ask people from Algeria or Marocco to support his policy.

In Israel, this history is totally linked to politics. Claude Lanzmann who made Shoah has also made a film in praise of Tsahal. Some of those who escaped the Holocaust have fought in 1948 against Palestinians (Naqba – Nakbah)


Education :
- Simple facts, first : in France, the history of the second world war was taught in Terminale, at the beginning of the last year in lycee.
From this year on, it will be taught in première, in may or … in june.
Most survivors of WW2 are worried by this change.

Then, it is difficult to spent more than 2 hours studying The Destruction of the European Jews
In a 1965 textbook, there was only 9 lines on this subject…
Of course, “to compensate”, there is a Memorial day in January…


3 arguments, to end this long message :

- I agree that Holocaust teaching is an historical task .
But can we avoid teaching moral judgement ?
I do agree also about studying democratic or authoritarian characters.
I think we need time to try and explain how a country, a generation choose a dictator and his racist policy.
In France, now, most of our pupils read Primo Levi, either for his insight view of the nazi camps, and for the pages where he tries to explain, but not to “understand” nazi racism.
http://hgtice.free.fr/peda/bac03cd.htm

- We have also to teach the Algerian war of independence.
Some French soldiers were torturers.
But historians don't forget that, at that time, a strong French minority fought this policy and these methods.
http://www.usfca.edu...erm/algeria.htm

As an historian, I insist both on the "general, social, cultural, political context", and on the individual behaviors who lead to these crimes.
What is frightening, is to read George Steiner : Music concerts did not stop during nazis crimes. Culture cannot protect us from a genocide.

- For me, nazism was a pathology of nationalist ideology.
In a way, the building of a united and democrat Europe was and is the BEST answer to this pathology.
But only if we don’t teach a mythological european history, trying to forget that our countries wanted to rule the continent, and that they used violence and wars to achieve it.
And if we bear on mind that the recent success of right wing politics in many countries, the triumph of a liberal economic policy may question some of us.

This post has been edited by D Letouzey: 31 December 2003 - 08:33 AM

[Dan Moorhouse]

For those of you able to read German, Ulrike has done as suggested by John Simkin and posted in his mother tongue on the international forum. This is available in the Deutsch section of the International forum.

[UlrikeSchuhFricke]

I am astonished that so many colleagues replied to my posting.
For me teaching the Holocaust is the most important and most challenging topic because it shows what human beings are capable of - good and bad.
And I agree to my French colleague that the Holocaust is not only unique because of the sheer number of people brutally murdered but unique in human history so far. It was the first planned attempt to extinguish a people, a culture with the means of industrial production. I do not want to compare the Holocaust to any other genocide because this means for me "belittleing" what really happened. And I want to make my pupils understand that the Holocaust was not the only and first attempt of genocide but that it was without precedent in its complete lack of any morality and that the ones actively involved in it felt no constraint and killed indiscriminately without any feelings of pity and regret. And this is another thing which I want to make my pupils see that ordinary people like you and me and not psychopaths murdered on a daily basis and till today do not show any signs of feeling guilty. Most of those who were put on trial for the things they had done did not confess guilty; on the contrary many saw themselves as victims of the German system of justice (there is an interesting German documentary about women on duty in the concentration camps and one of the most brutal torturers and killers complained bitterly about being in prison).
And I think it is important to show the pupils how easy it is to manipulate people still today; there is a very interesting experiment called "Blue Eyed" which shows this. I think it is based on a British experiment and shows how easily even grown-ups can be turned into people who start hating abusing others because some have blue eyes others have not. The novels "The Wave" and the "War of the Classes" fictionalize similar sociological experiments in the USA.
On the one hand I agree with the point that anti-semitism has a long tradition in European history and that every nation has its fair share of discrimination against the Jews but on the other hand the Holocaust was very different from the traditional forms as it was based on race and racism and not on religion. You might have heard of Edith Stein; she was born a Jew but converted to Catholicism and joined a convent but she too was murdered. And I think it is important to make this difference and its consequences clear. A Jew in former times could save his/her life by converting but this did not help him/her in Nazi Germany. Many Jews in Germany were completely assimilated and lived like their Christain neighbour but this did not save them.
I have never tried to use some of Primo Levi's texts in my lessons but I think it might be worth while trying as the texts offer information and give an insight into what Auschwitz really must have been. Primo Levi's story also is a good example that the Holocaust or better its effects on the victims did not end with 1945, which is yet another important point for the pupils to see and understand.
I agree that it is necessary to teach this topic as objectively as any other topic, but there must be more than historical facts. It might be due to my teaching Politics as well that teaching the Holocaust for me is part of teaching citizenship: to make my pupils see and understand (and hopefully act accordingly)that democracy and Human Rights must be protected - not only on a political or even global level but every day and e.g. in school: no bullying, no derogatory remarks, no sniggering when someone makes a mistake etc.
I am not sure if school and education can do something against the rise of Neo-Nazism. The problem is that those who join know exactly what happened in Germany and they support those ideas and movements because they want another Holocaust, this time not only directed against the Jews but nearly every ethnic minority. As I said I do not know if or how much education and teaching the Holocaust can help against these movements but the lesson I learnt from that particular time of German history is that I must do my best to not let such a thing happen again and I do not want to be blamed (as I blamed my parents and their whole generation) of not having done anything against another rise of barbarism.
"For me, nazism was a pathology of nationalist ideology.
In a way, the building of a united and democrat Europe was and is the BEST answer to this pathology.
But only if we don’t teach a mythological european history, trying to forget that our countries wanted to dominated the continent, and that they used violence and wars.
And if we bear on mind that the recent success of right wing politics in many countries, the triumph of a liberal economic policy may question some of us. "
I wholeheartedly agree with this.

[D Letouzey]

- Many thanks to Ulrike fort starting this discussion, and for his last message.
You may read Primo Levi, If this a man, 1976 addendum :
"How do you explain nazis' hate against Jews ?"
http://hgtice.free.f...cd.htm#extraits

Who can find, on the net, the full question 7, in english, or in italian ?
http://digilander.li.../gglibri-00.htm

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Racism of course is not a german problem or indeed a European problem

Andy,
I may distinguish between nationalism and racism.
Hitler used the first to came to power.

This is why I did refer to Europe : we are not preparing for the next "european civil war"
(I use it in a general meaning, not in Ernst Nolte 's view).
That 's a big difference with our "arrière-grand-parents".

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It is very difficult to manipulate critical thinkers

If only you could be right !!!
In France also, history teachers pretend to teach "critical thinking".
But your may know that in France, we have had a 21 april 2002...

Happy 2004
Daniel

This post has been edited by D Letouzey: 17 January 2004 - 09:21 AM

[UlrikeSchuhFricke]

I think that I share some of Daniel's scepticism concerning "critical thinkers" but I also share Andy's view because trying to teach and encourage pupils to question rules. laws our teaching seems to be the only way to strengthen democracy and Human Rights.
France did have the elections and the LePen affair but the outcry and demonstartions which followed (late, but better late than never) also spoke a very clear language.

[D Letouzey]

Le Nouvel Observateur has just publish a Hors série magazine on "La mémoire de la Shoah".

Nothing on Internet, yet.
http://www.nouvelobs..._43/index2.html

But an important question : Holocaust history with (Philippe Mesnard) or without images (Claude Lanzmann) ?

In 2004, we may discuss this issue, if you agree.
Daniel

[Dan Moorhouse]

In the talk that prompted me to start this thread the issue of image usage was raised. It is a very important area to discuss. In my first year or two as a teacher I used lots of images that now I wouldn't use. Some of the images were quite horrific, both still photos and moving picture. I'm not sure what I gained from using these images, other than a short sharp shock for a few children. Now I tend to make use of a wider range of images but limit the number of 'graphic' images that are used.

[John]

Dan - Why do you limit the content of Holocaust pictures? What benefits does this have over showing graphic pictures?

This post has been edited by John: 01 January 2004 - 05:14 AM