Through psychological lenses: university students' reflections following the “Psychology of the Holocaust” course

Abstract

While Holocaust related activities and educational programs around the world are growing in number, published reports on their impact are scarce, especially on the university level. The free responses of 94 Jewish‐Israeli university students who took the course “Psychology of the Holocaust” yielded eight themes. The results reflect a change of emphasis and movement from a mainly particularistic interpretation of the Holocaust to a more universalistic understanding of the Holocaust. This movement is explained by the occurrence of two reflective processes: situational and universal reflexivity of genocide and reflexivity regarding the personal and collective impact of genocide.

Keywords:

• Holocaust education
• attitudes
• Jewish‐Israeli university students
• reflexivity

Acknowledgement

We dedicate this article in loving memory of Prof. Dan Bar‐On, a pioneer and groundbreaking researcher and scholar, an academic mentor for the first two authors, and a dear colleague of us all, who passed away prior to this publication.

Notes

1. The 26 CDs were also available on the course website, which also included a forum in which students were able to discuss various issues relating to the course.

2. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of all the owners of the various movies and documentaries mentioned for their permission to include their work in the course material: Ove Nyholm, “The anatomy of evil” (2005), producer Janne Giese; Zimbardo, Phillip, “Quiet Rage: The Stanford prison experiment” (1973), Philip G. Zimbardo, Inc.; “Into the arms of strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport” (2000), directed by Mark Jonathan Harris; Carol Rittner, “The courage to care” (1986), produced and directed by Robert Gardner; Timewatch, BBC, “Children of the Third Reich” (1993), produced by Catrine Clay; Warner Brothers Entertainment Inc.

3. The course was a joint venture of the Ben‐Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) and the Open University of Israel (OUI). Although the contents of the course are identical in both universities, the modes of its delivery vary depending on the institution. As the modes of teaching were different and the number of students at the OUI answering the questionnaire was small (11 of 30) their responses are not included here, although their answers were quite similar in many respects to those provided by their counterparts at BGU. The development of the course was made possible through the support of the Planning and Budgeting Committee of the Council of Higher Education, Israel, and the Claims Committee.

4. All the names used in this article are pseudonyms. Furthermore, we did not correct the respondents' use of grammar and syntax in our translations, in our attempt to be as true as possible to the written texts.