Isolated Islands? Memory of the Holocaust in Formal and Non-Formal Education. The Case Study of Post-Communist Poland

Existing studies revealed several conflicts around the memory of the Holocaust in Poland: between understanding the need to teach about the Holocaust and indifference toward anti-Jewish graffiti; a conflict around the perception of Polish help to Jews; and the competing images of Polish and Jewish suffering during World War II. Those conflicts will be addressed in the paper as reflecting educational gaps in the Polish education system (lack of bad memory). This paper will look at the consciousness of young Poles, in terms of attitudes toward Jews, the Holocaust and memory of the Holocaust. The data presented are the preliminary results of the author’s longitudinal study „Attitudes of Young Poles toward the Jews and the Holocaust”. Quantitative and qualitative studies include field studies and participant observation of educational projects in Tykocin, Treblinka, Warsaw, Lublin, Bodzentyn and Kielce. The paper will present some components of the development of education about the Holocaust in Poland. There is a need to evaluate the attempt to bring back the memory of Jewish neighbours in some of the states of Central and Eastern Europe, a process with an ongoing effort to renovate monuments, destroyed cemeteries and synagogues. The number and scope of such initiatives in Poland indicate that civic institutions and individuals are intensifying their efforts to teach their fellow citizens about the Holocaust, however their impact should be assessed in detail.

Panel 9: Aftereffects and Memory of the Holocaust

Panel 9: Aftereffects and Memory of the Holocaust Stefanie Rauch, University of Leicester, United Kingdom: “British Responses to the Film ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’” Download paper (login required) Emily Stiles, University of Winchester, United Kingdom: "The Evil They Helped to Defeat: Exhibiting the Holocaust in Britain's National Museum of Modern Conflict" Download paper (login required) Kara Critchell, University of Winchester, United Kingdom: “The Heart of Holocaust Education: Holocaust Survivors and the Construction of Holocaust Consciousness in Britain" Download paper (login required) Noemi Staszewski, University of Frankfurt, Germany: "The Drama of Getting Dependent on Assistance in the Shadow of the Shoah: Working Experiences with Old Age Survivors in Germany " Download paper (login required) Chair: Emily Dabney and James Burnham Sedgwick, Clark UniversityComment: Marianne Hirsch, Columbia University

Opening Keynote: History, Politics, and Education: Teaching about Holocaust and Genocide

Format: 5 minute introduction, 20 min per speaker, 30 minute discussion Moderator: Debórah Dwork, Strassler Center, Clark University

Sublime Lessons: Education and Ambivalence in War Exhibitions

This paper examines how experiences of the sublime are regulated in the war exhibitions of modern museums. Ambivalence is a key feature of the sublime because subjects are forced to negotiate simultaneous feelings of terror and awe in the face of something unrepresentable like war. This paper analyses how war exhibitions dispel ambivalence by resuscitating a Kantian sublime full of resolution, catharsis and transcendence. In this context, potentially destabilising encounters with horrific objects (e.g. guns, bombs, shrapnel) are neutralised by didactic 'Lessons of War' and celebratory narratives of victory. Using examples from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Imperial War Museum in London and the Smithsonian Institution, this paper illustrates how conventional war exhibitions reproduce a politics of consensus by carefully managing the experience of the sublime.

Anti-semitism and the Holocaust.

Su contenido se adapta a los temas de las especificaciones AS y A2 para AQA y OCR B. Abarca los orígenes del antisemitismo en el siglo XIX y los sucesos que tuvieron lugar en Alemania entre 1933 y 1945. Estudia el Tercer Reich, el impacto de la Segunda Guerra Mundial y los acontecimientos que condujeron a la Solución Final. También, se consideran los debates historiográficos de este período de la historia y las cuestiones sobre la negación del Holocausto.