Holocaust education in transition from live to virtual survivor testimony: pedagogical and ethical dilemmas

ABSTRACT

This article explores the pedagogical challenges and ethical dilemmas related to the use of Virtual Interactive Holocaust Survivor Testimony (VIHST) in place of live survivor testimony. The National Holocaust Centre and Museum (UK) uses 3D interactive digital as an attempt to replicate the meaningful learning experiences of listening to a live survivor. Data was collected through interviews with survivors and museum staff. Key findings include how survivors are chosen to participate, whether testimonies can or should be edited for pedagogical purposes, and challenges associated with virtual testimony that do not exist with live survivor testimony.

KEYWORDS:

• Holocaust
• testimony
• virtual interactive Holocaust survivor testimony
• Holocaust education
• museum education
• virtual testimony

Acknowledgements

We wish to extend our gratitude to the Holocaust survivors and staff at the National Holocaust Centre who graciously participated in this study and for their exhaustive effort working with pupils.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Foster et al., What Do Students Know, 7.

2 Schweber, Making Sense.

3 Totten, “Holocaust Education,” 223–50.

4 See, e.g. Dawidowicz, “How They Teach,” 65–83; Shawn, “Current Issues,” 15–8; Totten, “A Holocaust Curriculum Evaluation,” 148–66; Salmons, “Teaching or Preaching,” 139–49; Donnelly, “Educating Students,” 51–4; Lindquist, “Guidelines for Teaching,” 215–21; Pettigrew et al., “Teaching About.”

5 Pettigrew et al., “Teaching About”; Marcus and Mills, “Multiple Perspectives,” 178–95; Marcus, Stoddard and Woodward, Teaching History with Museums.

6 Novick, The Holocaust.

7 Stein, Reluctant Witnesses.

8 Trezise, Witnessing Witnessing, 1.

9 Barton and Levstik, Teaching History; Endacott and Brooks, “An Updated Theoretical,” 41–58; Yilmaz, “Historical Empathy,” 331–7; Zemblyas, Loukaides, and Antoniou, “Teachers’ Understandings of Empathy.”

10 Barton and Levstik, Teaching History.

11 Zemblyas, Loukaides, and Antoniou, “Teachers’ Understandings of Empathy.”

12 Barton and Levstik, Teaching History; Endacott and Brooks, “An Updated Theoretical,” 41–58.

13 Endacott and Brooks, “An Updated Theoretical,” 43.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid.

17 Zemblyas, Loukaides, and Antoniou, “Teachers’ Understandings of Empathy.”

18 Barton, “Teaching Difficult Histories,” 12.

19 Zemblyas, Loukaides, and Antoniou, “Teachers’ Understandings of Empathy.”

20 Historical Association, T.E.A.C.H..

21 Ibid.

22 Ibid.

23 Walsh, Hicks, van Hover, “Difficult History,” 18.

24 See Ioannides, Magnenat-Thalmann, and Papagiannakis, Mixed Reality; Liarokapis et al., Visual Computing.

25 Bekele and Champion, “A Comparison.”

26 See, e.g. Azuma, “A Survey,” 355–85; Bower et al., “Augmented Reality in Education,” 1–15; Lee, “Augmented Reality in Education,” 13–21; van Krevelen and Poelman, “A Survey,” 1–19.

27 Milgram and Kishino, “A Taxonomy,” 1321–9; van Krevelen and Poelman, “A Survey,” 1–19.

28 Bekele and Champion, “A Comparison.”

29 Johnson et al., “If This Place,” 112–6.

30 Newman and Associates, Authentic Achievement.

31 Greenspan, “Survivors’ Accounts,” 414–27.

32 Schweber, “Fundamentally 9/11,” 392–417.

33 Wineburg, Historical Thinking.

34 Stein, Reluctant Witnesses.

35 Wertsch, “Texts of Memory,” 9–12.

36 Hirsch and Spitzer, “The Witness,” 152.

37 Wieviorka, “On Testimony,” 24.

38 Popescu, “Introduction,” 1.

39 Trezise, Witnessing Witnessing.

40 Ibid.

41 Pinchevski, Transmitted Wounds.

42 Waxman, “The Holocaust,” 55–66.

43 A notable new contribution is Schultz’s “Creating the ‘virtual’ witness”, which dismisses the ability of the Forever Project to provoke empathy for users.

44 Kansteiner, “Transnational Holocaust Memory”; Zalewski, “Holography, Historical Indexicality, and the Holocaust”; Zungri, “Digital Media and Holocaust Museums”.

45 Traum et al. “New Dimensions in Testimony”

46 Skarbez, Brooks, and Witton, “A Survey,” 1–39; Slater, “Place Illusion,” 3549–57.

47 Glesne, Becoming Qualitative Researchers; Patton, Qualitative Research.

48 Glaser and Strauss, The Discovery.

49 As with all accounts of the past individual memories and narratives are flexible, shaped by current circumstances and intervening experiences. Moreover, survivors’ memories in these testimonies are being recounted many decades after they occurred. This combination of factors does not in any way diminish the trustworthiness of their accounts any more so than others’ recounted memories. The staff’s reluctance to “correct” or even challenge survivors’ accounts reflects their personal attachments to the survivors and their prioritizing what they deemed respectful interaction over relentless truth-seeking.

50 Schweber, “Holocaust Fatigue,” 48.

51 Ibid., 48–55.

Additional information

Funding

Funding for this study was provided by a Dean’s Research Incentive Grant from the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut.

Notes on contributors

Alan S. Marcus

Alan S. Marcus is a Professor in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction and is a University of Connecticut Teaching Fellow. His scholarship and teaching focus on history museum education and teaching history with film. Alan collaborates with museum educators across the United States and internationally, is a Faculty Fellow for the Holocaust Institute for Teacher Educations at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and runs an education abroad program for pre-service teachers in Nottingham, England. Alan earned his Ph.D. from Stanford University in curriculum and teacher education. Prior to attending Stanford, he taught high school social studies in Georgia.

Rotem Maor

Rotem Maor received her Ph.D. from Bar-Ilan University where her research focused on the attitudes of adults that were socially rejected during their school years towards minority and foreigner groups. She also has masters and bachelor degrees from Bar-Ilan University and completed a post-doctoral position at the University of Connecticut.

Ian M. McGregor

Ian McGregor is a post-doctoral scholar at the University of Connecticut with a research focus on human rights education, citizenship education, and teaching controversial and difficult history. Ian received his BA degree and MAT degree from Louisiana State University and his Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut. He is a former high school social studies teacher in Louisiana and currently teaches courses in the University of Connecticut teacher education program.

Gary Mills

Gary Mills is an Associate Professor of History Education at the University of Nottingham, England where he works with the history PGCE program, MA, and doctoral students. His main research interests center around the teaching of sensitive and controversial issues in history with a particular interest in the teaching of the Holocaust and other genocides. He is Chair of the National Holocaust Centre and Museum's Academic Advisory Board and an education advisor to the Centre and Museum. He has worked in Rwanda with the Kigali Institute of Education exploring how beginning history teachers teach about the 1994 Genocide and through this teaching promote better community cohesion.

Simone Schweber

Simone Schweber is the Goodman Professor of Education and Jewish Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Among her many publications are the books Teaching the Holocaust (2007) and Making Sense of the Holocaust: Lessons from Classroom Practice (2004). She is a former Director of the Mosse/Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies and a frequent consultant for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Simone received a BA degree from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. from Stanford University.

Jeremy Stoddard

Jeremy D. Stoddard is a Professor and Faculty Chair of Secondary Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research focuses on the intersection of teaching and learning difficult and marginalized historical and contemporary topics through media. He is the former editor of Theory & Research in Social Education and the Principle Investigator for PurpleState, a US Department of Education funded grant focused on media and democratic education. Jeremy has a BA from Hamline University and both an MA and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is a former middle school teacher.

David Hicks

David Hicks is a Professor of History and Social Science Education at Virginia Tech. David holds a BA (Honors) in Social History from Lancaster University (UK), a Postgraduate Certificate in Education in History and Social Science Education with distinctions in theory and practice from Leeds University, an MA in History from the State University of New York at Cortland, and a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction from Virginia Tech. David taught middle and high school social studies in New York and served as a museum curator/educator at the History Museum of Western Virginia on the ‘29 Let’s Go’ D-day exhibit.