The Holocaust edition Issue 141 / December 2010 This special edition is brought to you in collaboration with RegulaRs Articles the Institute of Education, editoRial 02 University of London IOE editoRial 03 Ha secondaRy news 04 05 david wateRs Berlin and the Holocaust: a sense of place? 11 ian PHilliPs A question of attribution: working with ghetto coveR image photographs, images and imagery Woman Wearing Mantilla, Triumphs sHow 18 Roman Halter, IWM Collections Morgan Baynham roman Halter is a Holocaust survivor. His entire family were 20 ChristopheR edwaRds and siobHan o’dowd killed in the genocide. The edge of knowing: investigating students’ prior He recalls: ‘on the Sabbath, understandings of the Holocaust sitting in the ladies’ gallery 27 PeteR moRgan in the synagogue, it was How can we deepen and broaden post-16 students’ fashionable for Polish Jewish women to wear a Mantilla. My historical engagement with the Holocaust? Developing a mother looked wonderful in it.’ rationale and methods for using film 34 wolf KaiseR Nazi perpetrators in Holocaust education Polychronicon 40 annual David Cesarani 42 Kay andRews conference Finding a place for the victim: building a rationale for 2011 educational visits to Holocaust-related sites 50 alice PettigRew 13 & 14 May 2011 – Limited lessons from the Holocaust? Critically considering Manchester Conference the ‘anti-racist’ and citizenship potential Centre NUTSHELL 56 See the centre of HA News for a 57 Paul salmons full programme and booking form Universal meaning or historical understanding? The Holocaust in history and history in the curriculum MOve me on 64 The Historical Association 59a Kennington Park Road London SE11 4JH mummy, mummy... 68 Telephone: 020 7735 3901 Fax: 020 7582 4989 President Professor Anne Curry deputy president Heather Scott Edited by Publication of a contribution in Teaching HoNorAry treasurEr Kingsley Jones Arthur Chapman, Edge Hill University, Lancashire History does not necessarily imply the Historical HoNorAry secretary Dr Trevor James Katharine Burn, Institute of Education, University of London Association’s approval of the opinions expressed chief executivE Rebecca Sullivan Christine Counsell, University of Cambridge Faculty of Education in it. The Secondary Committee of the Association Michael Fordham, Hinchingbrooke School, Cambridgeshire has particular responsibility for matters of interest © The Historical Association 2010 to secondary teachers and schools. all rights reserved. Suggestions and comments are very welcome registered charity 1120261 and should be sent to: the Chairholder, guest EditorS Incorporated by Royal Charter c/o The Historical Association. Advertising Paul Salmons, Institute of Education, University of London full page/half page/insert Kay Andrews, Institute of Education, University of London Teaching History is published quarterly by The enquiries to telephone: 020 7820 5985 Historical Association. It is available at substantial Printed in Great Britain by discounts to members. Membership of the Blackmore, Longmead, publisher Rebecca Sullivan Shaftesbury, Dorset, SP7 8Px Association with Teaching History is £48.00 for design & layout Martin Hoare individuals, £83.00 for secondary schools, ISSN 0040-06109 CovEr design Reid Smith [email protected] £30.00 for concessionary members. Editorial All the interpretations that teachers and seeing differently? Phillips reports work dominate Holocaust-related travel. These students co-construct in history lessons are completed with PGCE students: a scaffold sites, typically, represent sites of death shaped by the assumptions and decisions that of questions with which to deconstruct rather than life and, Andrews argues, teachers make and by the preconceptions of images is presented and applied to archive do not enable students to engage with their students. We inevitably start out with images and to the analysis of Hollywood the true scale of the Holocaust as a pan- assumptions about what the Holocaust was representations. Peter Morgan outlines European phenomenon that relates to and ideas – more or less explicit – about our innovative approaches to film and ways Salonika and Norway as profoundly aims in teaching about it. There are always of integrating different types of film into as to icons of atrocity like Auschwitz- other choices that we could have made – the classroom, exploring how we can use Birkenau. She offers suggestions about about the content; about the enquiries that feature film as an interpretation of the past, how site visits might be used to explore the frame our interrogation of that content; examining archival film footage as evidence narratives of the victims of Nazi atrocity about the sources and resources that we and exploring the construction of historical in ways that focus on the diverse lives work with. The materials we use have also documentaries as interpretations. and communities that the Nazis set out inevitably been shaped by decisions about the to annihilate. nature of the Holocaust and by their creators’ Chris Edwards and Siobhan O’Dowd aims: textbooks frame the past in particular describe how they set out to scope a group Both Alice Pettigrew and Paul Salmons ways, as do films, documentaries, travel of Year 8 students’ prior learning and contribute to an ongoing debate about the itineraries, and exhibitions. Furthermore, as preconceptions about the Holocaust as aims of Holocaust education. Pettigrew’s is always the case in history, source materials part of their preparation for teaching the contribution is unique, in the pedagogic are never innocent: relics of the past are topic in Year 9. Their findings show just debate to date, because it is grounded in shaped by their original context as well as by how important it is to think systematically systematic research into what English their interpretation. Our students are never about what students bring to their learning: teachers perceive the aims of Holocaust blank slates either: their preconceptions much of what the authors discovered education to be. Salmons’ contribution always shape the sense that they make of surprised them and sharpened their brings a profound knowledge of the what they learn. thinking about how to move students on. archives of Nazi atrocity and of resistance to it to bear on arguments about aims. This edition offers an important contribution Understanding the Holocaust involves Both authors come to similar conclusions to the history education community’s understanding why the people who by different routes. Pettigrew interrogates evolving thinking about the ways in which perpetrated the Holocaust did the things the claim, reported by many teachers in our teaching and learning practices interpret that they did. As Wolf Kaiser shows, this the IOE’s national research, that Holocaust the Holocaust. All the articles presented here is a complex question, since explaining the education should have broad citizenship ask questions about the ways in which things Holocaust means explaining the actions aims, and concludes, in the light of have often been done or make suggestions of individuals in very diverse positions leading work on anti-racism, that these about doing things differently. The articles whose actions were shaped by individual aims must remain empty pieties unless express a number of perspectives: those of choices in the framework of structures we attend closely to specific social and classroom teachers, of teacher educators, of that they had partially created themselves. historical contexts. Salmons questions museum curators; and also – through the Exploring these issues takes us away from the reluctance of many history teachers contribution of the Institute of Education’s the simplistic Hitler-centric explanations to provide an historical rationale for the (IOE’s) Holocaust Education Development of the Holocaust to which many students study of the Holocaust, arguing that if we Programme – of specialists in Holocaust subscribe, and is likely to help students are genuinely to understand it, we must education. better appreciate both the enormity and approach it through the discipline of the complexity of the Holocaust. history. It is only by taking the Holocaust David Waters’ article represents a sustained seriously as history that we can do justice reflection on how a city – Berlin – and its Kay Andrews, Alice Pettigrew and to those who – in the midst of death and histories can be used to promote historical Paul Salmons’ articles express research destruction – struggled to preserve an learning. Which Berlin histories are visible and practice perspectives in Holocaust archive of evidence indicting Nazi crimes. and commemorated in the fabric of the city education arising from the IOE’s extensive Arthur Chapman and which are not? How and why do public research and development programme. Katharine Burn histories of Berlin change? How can we help Christine Counsell students explore these issues as they walk Andrews raises questions about the Michael Fordham the city? Waters draws on an impressive eastern European destinations that Editors range of sources to develop novel itineraries through Berlin that ask students to think about place and about the ways in which histories can be placed and displaced. Both Ian Phillips and Peter Morgan write about film. Holocaust imagery is very familiar, even clichéd. How can we get pupils thinking about it in novel ways and 2 Teaching History 141 December 2010 The Historical Association Institute of Education Editorial Much has changed