Education with Testimonies, Vol.4 Education with Testimonies, Vol.4 INTERACTIONS Explorations of Good Practice in Educational Work with Video Testimonies of Victims of National Socialism edited by Werner Dreier | Angelika Laumer | Moritz Wein Published by Werner Dreier | Angelika Laumer | Moritz Wein Editor in charge: Angelika Laumer Language editing: Jay Sivell Translation: Christopher Marsh (German to English), Will Firth (Russian to English), Jessica Ring (German to English) Design and layout: ruf.gestalten (Hedwig Ruf) Photo credits, cover: Videotaping testimonies in Jerusalem in 2009. Eyewitnesses: Felix Burian and Netty Burian, Ammnon Berthold Klein, Jehudith Hübner. The testimonies are available here: www.neue-heimat-israel.at, _erinnern.at_, Bregenz Photos: Albert Lichtblau ISBN: 978-3-9818556-2-3 (online version) ISBN: 978-3-9818556-1-6 (printed version) © Stiftung „Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft” (EVZ), Berlin 2018 All rights reserved. The work and its parts are protected by copyright. Any use in other than legally authorized cases requires the written approval of the EVZ Foundation. The authors retain the copyright of their texts. TABLE OF CONTENTS 11 Günter Saathoff Preface 17 Werner Dreier, Angelika Laumer, Moritz Wein Introduction CHAPTER 1 – DEVELOPING TESTIMONY COLLECTIONS 41 Stephen Naron Archives, Ethics and Influence: How the Fortunoff Video Archive‘s Methodology Shapes its Collection‘s Content 52 Albert Lichtblau Moving from Oral to Audiovisual History. Notes on Praxis 63 Sylvia Degen Translating Audiovisual Survivor Testimonies for Education: From Lost in Translation to Gained in Translation 76 Éva Kovács Testimonies in the Digital Age – New Challenges in Research, Academia and Archives CHAPTER 2 – TESTIMONIES IN MUSEUMS AND MEMORIAL SITES 93 Kinga Frojimovics, Éva Kovács Tracing Jewish Forced Labour in the Kaiserstadt – A Tainted Guided Tour in Vienna 104 Annemiek Gringold Voices in the Museum. Videotaped Testimonies as Objects of Cultural and Historical Heritage in the Jewish Cultural Quarter Amsterdam 115 Madene Shachar, Michal Sadan Educational Programmes Based on Child Survivor Video Testimonies in the Yad LaYeled Children‘s Memorial Museum/Ghetto Fighters‘ House Israel 130 Anika Reichwald The Search for an Appropriate Approach. Video Testimonies and their Use in the Jewish Museum Hohenems INTERACTIONS 7 CHAPTER 3 – TESTIMONIES IN EDUCATION EXPLORING THE USES OF VIDEO TESTIMONIES 145 Susan Hogervorst Distanced by the Screen. Student History Teachers and Video Archives of Second World War Interviews in the Netherlands 154 Irmgard Bibermann The International Research Project Shoah in daily school life. How do Pupils Use Videotaped Eyewitness Interviews with Survivors in a Tablet Application? 168 Ilene R. Berson, Michael J. Berson Tattered Dolls and Teddy Bears Tell Tales of Hope and Perseverance: Developing a Pedagogic Paradigm for Teachers‘ Use of Holocaust Testimony to Engage Young Students in Exploring Social Injustices 181 Maria Ecker Angerer ”What exactly makes a good interview?“ Educational Work with Videotaped Testimonies at _erinnern.at_ 192 James Griffiths, Louise Stafford Context ist Key. A Study on Primary-Aged Children‘s Learning with Testimonies of Holocaust Survivors MULTIFARIOUS PRACTICES IN EDUCATION WITH VIDEO TESTIMONIES 205 Arlene Sher Combatting Afrophobia and Teaching about Moral Choices. Using Testimonies in Educational Programmes about the Holocaust and Genocide in the South African Context 216 Dorothee Wein Voices of Survivors at Sites of Perpetrators. Educational Approaches to Video Testimonies at the Topography of Terror Documentation Center 229 Tony Cole, Darius Jackson “I wonder where I will be tomorrow”. Using Filmed Testimony to Develop Historical Knowledge and Understanding of the Holocaust with British Primary School Children and Students with Special Educational Needs (SEN) 240 Birte Hewera Survivors as Subjects of Documentation. The Witnesses and Education Film Series by Yad Vashem and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem 252 Carson Phillips “The Limits of My Language Are the Limits of My World”: Using Recorded Testimonies of Holocaust Survivors with English Language Learners 8 INTERACTIONS 266 Kori Street, Andrea Szonyi Videotaped Testimonies of Victims of National Socialism in Educational Programs: The Example of USC Shoah Foundation‘s online Platform IWitness 280 Dorothee Wein, Šárka Jarská, Natalia Timofeeva The Web Application Learning with Interviews. Forced Labor 1939 –1945 for German, Czech and Russian schools. Common Ground and Country-specific Differences 298 Teon Djingo Tracing Videotaped Testimonies of National Socialism for Educational Programmes. The Macedonian Case 305 Iryna Kashtalian The Educational Use of Videoed Memoirs and Material on the History of the Minsk Ghetto and Maly Trostenets Extermination Site 321 Peter Gautschi Videotaped Eyewitness Interviews with Victims of National Socialism for Use in Schools 343 INDEX OF AUTHORS INTERACTIONS 9 PREFACE The systematic treatment of eyewitness testimonies from survivors of the crimes of the National Socialists has not entered into the standard repertoire of historical science. Still less has it found a place in classroom and extra- curricular education in many countries. With the spread of oral history as a discipline to the German-speaking countries and above all with the grow- ing willingness in Germany, Austria and Switzerland in particular to face up to the criminal past of the Nazi regime, increased efforts have been made to identify, preserve and process this treasure of memory as a further source of historical knowledge in addition to the classic documents. At the same time, there was growing consternation at the realisation that the last sur- vivors of Nazi crime, who were able to bear personal witness to their expe- riences, sufferings and coping strategies, would soon be dead. All that also corresponded with a much belated shift in focus in society and politics to the victims themselves, who wished – after decades of mainly public denial of the wrongs done to them – to receive due recognition and increasingly did so. Through facing up to past events and the establishment of a memory culture at the individual level, the anonymity of a million-fold evil was given a face and a voice. And it was not merely fortuitous that these developments were strengthened and focussed in the context of the political debate on the long rejected calls for compensation for the victims of Nazi crimes, namely the many millions of slave labourers and concentration camp inmates. In 2000, the German Bundestag decided that the public Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” (Stiftung “Erinnerung, Verant- wortung und Zukunft”, EVZ) had been established by a federal law not only to pay so-called symbolic compensation to former forced labourers and other victims but also (quote from the law): “to keep alive the memory of the injustice inflicted on the victims [of National Socialism] for coming generations”. In the first few years, the EVZ Foundation fulfilled this commitment primarily by supporting personal encounters between victims of National Socialism and INTERACTIONS 11 young people. At the same time it was clear that, in the foreseeable future, it would no longer be possible to pass on memories in this way. Following the example set by other institutions (for example, the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies launched in 1979, the USC Shoah Foundation interviews initiated by Steven Spielberg in the 1990s and Yad Vashem), the Foundation set up an international project in which former slave and forced labourers were asked about their life histories. Between 2005 and 2007, almost 600 interviews were conducted in 26 countries. In cooperation with the Freie Universität Berlin, these interviews were later prepared for the digital archive Forced Labor 1939–1945. Memory and History and were made available to the public for research, training, and educational and media purposes. During this process of coming to terms with the past, the Foundation’s intention was not to brush over the crimes and systemic relationships in favour of promoting undue identification with the testimonies of former victims of National Socialism. Nor would it have been possible to analyse and understand the dynamics of Nazi rule solely from the perspective of the victims. The aim was rather to open up an additional perspective or even different perspectives of former victims which are essential to understanding the history of National Socialism, perspectives which for various reasons and many decades had played only a subordinate role in research and education. One particular challenge we face today, therefore, is to uncover the wealth of documented victim perspectives while at the same time avoiding any exaggerated elevation of the testimonies. The reports of the survivors are not “final” truths. The “status” of the testimonies – what do they stand for? – is one of the basic questions of educational work with these documents. Moreover, we are aware that even personal memory is not a fixed narrative but changes over time. Subjective memory follows current public discourses in order to validate its relevance. Despite that, even changing subjective narratives can claim authenticity, which makes them attractive for educational purposes. They also open the door to further important questions – about perpetrators and structures, about the scope for independent individual action, about the possibility of resistance, about