[D Letouzey]

Holocaust and Images

2 remarks :
- If this text needs some corrections, let me know. I shall edit it.
- My students are 17 or 18. This may be important to understand this message.


Several issues :
- How were these images made ?
- What sense may they have today, where images are everywhere ?
- What should be the best strategy for teaching the holocaust ?

1 – From a French view, part of the debate can rely on the comparison between 2 main films :
Nuit & Brouillard (Alain Resnais) vs Shoah (Claude Lanzmann).
http://dletouzey.free.fr/resnais.htm

NB was made in 1956. In it, German camps are seen mainly as jails for political “resistants” who have fought the nazi rule in their country. No direct mention of the destruction of the European Jews by Hitler and the nazis.
Shoah was made later (1985), at a time when the killing of the European Jews was no longer « a detail ».
During 9 hours Lanzmann filmed witnesses and survivors of this destruction of men. He had that nazis wanted also to destroy all traces of the jewish life.
But he refused to use archive images. For him, only words could express this man-made horror.

For 20 years, French teachers have been using mainly Nuit & Brouillard. It was easier to get it, the film was far shorter than the original 9 hours of Shoah. The shorter version of Shoah,in DVD, needs nore than 3 hours.

Another question : how can films deal with the Holocaust memory ?
2 recent examples :
In Schindler ‘s list, Speilberg shows only showers, not gaz chambers.
Benigni ‘ La vita e bella have set other questions.

2 - Images and Webpages
In 2001, I went to Auschwitz with some survivors.
http://picasaweb.goo.../Auschwitz2001#

What logic guided me in my choice of 30 images ?
First, to think of these men and these women : Raphael, Renée, Yvette, Jacques, Maurice.
Then to differentiate Auschwitz I and Birkenau.
The last one suggests the conflict between polish and jewish memories :
the small israeli flags were put, the same day, by young israelians
http://dletouzey.fre...rs/monument.jpg

All these photos are in color, except one about hungarian Jews.

F Ghesquier and C Krajewski have made another website :
http://home.nordnet....quier/cadre.htm


3 - Images and the historians

Several questions, for the historians :
Who made the images we may use :
- the german tortioners ?
- the deportees (we know some examples in Birkenau, or in Mauthausen) ?
Mauthausen images where shown during the trials of the nazis.
In justice, can an image be used as a legal point ?

But most images were made after the opening of the camps :
That was the case in Bergen, where Sydney Berstein took advice from Alfred Hitchcock and from Peter Tanner.
He used a long “plan-sequence”, to avoided cut and montage.
Some of these images, showing the “mechanic” burial of the corpses had a reverse effect, and were not shown for some years.
Some Russian films were made just after the opening of the camps.

2 sources, among others :
. http://www.holocaust...uhmmmguides.htm
11 . Be sensitive to appropriate written and audio-visual content
. H-Holcaust (H-Net) http://www.h-net.org/~holoweb/


- 4th and last question : what role the images may play in teaching ?

I have used several minutes from a really good documentary from George Stevens (D-Day to Berlin).
The sequence showing the american soldiers arriving in Dachau is short, but very effective.
Normally, these images are not used apart from texts and other sources, from photos taken in 2001 in Birkenau… For me, they show both what horror did the american soldiers discovered in 1945, and how they reacted when some kapos tried to hide themselves among the survivors !!

Some psycho-analysts say there may be, in theses images,
a « fascination pour l’horreur ».
But as an historian, we must contextualise.
Death representations have totally change in our modern societies.
(in french, Christian de Cacqueray « La mort confisquée : essai sur le déclin des rites funéraires »
We have also to teach the difference between today and the past, between facts and fictions.

The last time I used these images in a video, it was just before a jewish survivor came to tell his own “life” in Auschwitz-Monowitz.
But some years ahead, as history teachers, we shall be let alone to teach what a politician and his racial system did to destroy millions of men.

This post has been edited by D Letouzey: 17 January 2010 - 12:52 PM

[Dan Lyndon]

I was wondering what plans people have been making to commemorate this years Holocaust Memorial Day on January 29th - the theme this year is about the genocide in Rwanda as it is the tenth anniversary - you can find details here;

http://www.holocaust...ion/tmemory.asp

[Carole Faithorn]

Now I am no longer in the classroom, I regret I have no plans to share, but I have resurrected last year's thread about Holocaust Memorial Day here:
http://www.schoolhis...&st=0#entry4796

Can I suggest that people wishing to share their plans for the Day contribute their ideas in that thread rather than this one.

Dan.... was it a typo, or is HMD really on Jan 29th rather than the 27th this year?

[Carole Faithorn]

Searching for he thread mentioned above I found this post made some time ago by Stephen Drew.

Since several posters here have raised the issue of Holocaust denial I thought it might be of interest again.

Holocaust Denial

[Dan Lyndon]

You are absolutely correct Carole, it is the 27th January.

[Gidz]

Sorry about this -

Ulrike opened up a fascinating conecpt ina long message to the forum last week and it's giving me trouble -

I am still struggling with the concept opened up by Ulrike of "Holocaust Fatigue"? Could someone please clarify this statement and perhaps explain why I am having such trouble with this term?



Gidz

[neil mcdonald]

When I have heard this term it is used alongside other forms of fatigue i.e charity fatigue etc. The idea that witnessing the history of the Holocaust can fatigue a person is possible although it is an issue which I hope never to encounter, that said, Dan's comments regarding the play station generation and their ability to view violence so readily is a cause of concern if we are to address the violence of the Holocaust and other elements of our History. I think one way to deal with this is to show the Holocaust as the way the Nazis practised it - cold and calculated. I will be showing my Year 13s the conspiracy film to show them how calculating the Nazi regieme was in the Holocaust becuase by doing that it removes the gore factor that can fatigue the student and instead replace it with the shock of how it was planned.

[UlrikeSchuhFricke]

I think Neil explained the term "Holocaust fatigue" very well.
I personally came across the word in a Time editorial: an American professor who was teaching at one of the universities of Berlin and who is Jewish himself (his parents had to leave Germany) was embarrassed by the students' reactions when he suggested talking about the Holocaust. The students told him they already knew everything there was to know and that they had done the topic various time at school and that they had had enough of it. When he started asking question he and the students noticed that they knew nearly nothing, or had forgotten everything.
I think an important key to understanding "Holocaust fatigue" is that the pupils do not want to be blamed for the crimes committed in the Nazi era. They want to understand what happend in Nazi Germany and they want to know how it could happen but they do not want to be blamed for what happened in the past.
Due to our history Holocaust fatigue is maybe a very German feeling
" I think one way to deal with this is to show the Holocaust as the way the Nazis practised it - cold and calculated."
Cynical as it may sound but I think this is an effective way of dealing with the topic.

[Dan Moorhouse]

A selection of images that I'm considering using when I teach Year 11 this topic in a few weeks time:

Nazi sponsored anti-semitic artwork that was used to increase anti-semitic feeling amongst the people, such as these examples from The Eternal Jew.
Also images of book burning, boycotts etc. such as the ones on this page.

Images such as the ones on this page that illustrate the enforced wearing of badges to identify a person as being a Jew.

Kristallnacht

Segregation of Polish Jews following the Invasion of Poland.

Resistance - The Warsaw Ghetto

Einsatzgruppen, though I'm not sure yet which images I'll select.

There are a range of interesting images that may of use on this site. They range from photographs of pre-war persecution and propaganda through to the implementation of the final solution.

Mengele and camp selection

Deportation

Kracow Ghetto. Includes identity cards, images of daily life in the ghetto.

Autschwitz - a slide show. Didn't seem to work particularly well, the images can be grabbed from here if it doesn't load.

A simple google search will find any of the more gruesome images that I might use with some of the more mature students.

[neil mcdonald]

I wanted to clarify a point I made. Firstly, fatigue opf any kind can occur - Dan mentioend the issue of violence and the History of the Great War/WW2. fatigue of this kind is symptomatic of not a nation but of the 24 hour global society where for the first time children are being shown the effects of the world. Children see the vanquished in Chechyna or Kosovo or Rwanda and see the parallel with the Holocaust but in doing so become jaded to it. In the past say in the 1930s it is doubtful such scenes would be shown in the cinemas. Secondly I talked about teaching the Holocaust in a cold and calculated way - I DO THIS ONLY WITH OLDER STUDENTS. My aim is to get them to hit back and show the emotion by doing so. I hope this clarifies my post.

[Dan Moorhouse]

Whilst browsing the EU Virtual School site I came across a link to Learning about the Holocaust through art. ? It contains a wide range of paintings by over 20 artists which can be browsed by artist or place. The site also has a good teachers guide and a range of differentiated resources for use with students: differentiated by age group appropriateness frst and foremost. The web directory of Holocaust related links is also fairly extensive.

There are pkenty of images available here, many of which I hadn't come across before. I found this one quite interesting, not seen this style of Holocaust art before:

[donald cumming]

Has anyone tried using 'Maus' by Art Speigelman to teach the Holocaust? Its a graphic novel (and now on DVD I believe) written by an artist whose father survived Auschwitz. Its an amazing interpretation, incredibly moving, and has gripped pretty much every student I've shown it to. One special needs class stand out in particular - it was my first year of teaching and the first time I had got them to sit in their seats without being reminded!

Its powerful stuff, and they can contrast it to other evidence at all sorts of levels.

Donald

[neil mcdonald]

Doing Holocaust Art is a very good idea. I got some year 9s to do an art project based on a holocaust artist and then research the context of the artists work in the Holocaust.

[Carole Faithorn]

donald cumming, on Mar 25 2004, 05:40 PM, said:

Has anyone tried using 'Maus' by Art Speigelman to teach the Holocaust?

Yes. I have. Maus is absolutely brilliant and works just as well with Y12 & 13 as Y9.

It's one of the books (well it's 2 books) that I will never be parted from.

I hadn't heard that it was available on DVD though. I must see if I can find it.

[MissKay]

I use Maus in the following way...

• Give pupils one of 4 different pages from the book, selected to show various 'scenes' and to reflect the escalation.
  
• Put pupils in groups of 4 (with others with different pages) to discuss their page and put them in chronological order.
  
• Compare each page with other evidence, to set the 'personal' story in context.

By this stage in Year 9 pupils are beset by lazy cynicism - "You can't trust any source" etc. - so I find it's best to confront this head-on and so this is part of a sequence of lessons where pupils look at Holocaust denial. We look at various personal representations of the Holocaust (Schindler's List, Anne Frank etc.) and compare them with other evidence. I've been criticised for this approach in the past - by people who say it is 'too big' to treat in such a way - but you can't expect pupils to 'turn off' their critical thinking skills. As part of the enquiry is to examine why people may deny the Holocaust, it provides the opportunity to discuss the difference between an interpretation and a lie...

Pupils always come to the conclusion that, of course, the Holocaust happened and was far worse than the representations can communicate. They also develop an understanding of why history is such a powerful and controversial subject.