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ABSTRACT
This article explores uses in English Key Stage 4 History teaching (ages 14–16) of The Jäger Report. It discusses how the report can be used to illustrate the initial phase of the Holocaust in Lithuania, following the German invasion of The Soviet Union. It also considers the ethical complexities of using this source in teaching, including the risks of data reductionism, and steps that can be taken to mitigate this risk. Finally, it considers how the source can be used in dialogue with the words of witnesses and survivors to challenge the voices of the perpetrators.
KEYWORDS:
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Key Stage 4 refers to years 10–11 in the English education system, undertaken between the ages of 14–16, and leading to the GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) public examinations. A comparative table of school year nomenclature across the United Kingdom is offered in Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Department for Education United Kingdom Country Report 2010, Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research, Appendix 2.
2 Dieckmann and Suziedelis, “The Persecution and Mass Murder of Lithuanian Jews During the Summer and Fall of 1941,” 100–1.
3 Crane, “Choosing Not to Look” 309–30; Zelizer, Remembering to Forget, 1–2, 6.
5 Gilbert, The Holocaust, The Jewish Tragedy, chap. 13; Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution, chap. 7.
6 UCL Centre for Holocaust Education, “An unfolding genocide,” 5.
7 Notable providers of teaching and learning resources include Yad Vashem, The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, The Wiener Library and The Imperial War Museum, London.
8 Foster and Burgess, “Problematic Portrayals and Contentious Content Representations of the Holocaust in English History Textbooks,” 26.
9 UCL Centre for Holocaust Education, “Spaces of Killing,” 6.
11 UCL Centre for Holocaust Education, “Spaces of Killing,”13.
12 Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution; Friedländer, The Years of Extermination, Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945; Snyder, Black Earth; Beorn, Marching Into Darkness.
13 https://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/online-exhibitions/special-focus/desbois; https://www.yadvashem.org/education/educational-materials/learning-environment/babi-yar.html; Foster et.al., Understanding the Holocaust, How and Why did it Happen?
14 Szczepinska, “The Holocaust by Bullets, A study Guide for Educators,” Yahad in Unum; Foster and Burgess, “Problematic Portrayals and Contentious Content Representations of the Holocaust in English History Textbooks,” 20.
15 https://www.yahadinunum.org/; Pettigrew et al., “Teaching About the Holocaust in English Secondary Schools: An Empirical Study of National Trends, Perspectives and Practice,” 42–43, 52–53.
16 Pettigrew et al., “Teaching About the Holocaust in English Secondary Schools: An Empirical Study of National Trends, Perspectives and Practice,” 8.
17 For a discussion, see Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–1945, Nemesis, 461–4.
18 My teaching drew on the ideas of Snyder, Black Earth, chap. 6, and idem, Bloodlands, chap. 5. For instructions to the Wehrmacht, see Friedländer, Years of Extermination, 210–11; Rees, The Holocaust, 205–7. For information on other agencies ideas were drawn from Aly, “The Planning Intelligentsia and The Final Solution.”
19 Klier, “The Holocaust and The Soviet Union,” 277.
20 https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/gallery/einsatzgruppen-maps; https://www.yahadinunum.org/what-is-the-holocaust-by-bullets/.
21 UCL Centre for Holocaust Education, “An Unfolding Genocide,” 6; Idem, “Explaining the Holocaust,”13.
22 Klee et al., Those Were the Days, 46–58.
23 Wette, Karl Jäger, Mörder der litauischen Juden, 28–9; http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2012/04/jager-report.html.
24 The Jäger Report (https://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/works/jaeger-report/htm/intro000.htm.).
25 Porat, “The Holocaust in Lithuania, Some Unique Aspects,” 159–71.
26 The authenticity of The Jäger Report, and the extent of the killing it records, is widely accepted by scholars. However, the composition of the document is riddled with arithmetical errors, with the result that the presented total of victims 137,346 is not correct. This paper calculates the total as 137,439, while other historians have varied by small amounts.
27 For the structure and leadership of the Einsatzgruppen, see Beorn, The Holocaust in Eastern Europe, At the Epicenter of the Final Solution, 130.
28 ‘Evidence for the Implementation of the Final Solution: Electronic Edition, by Browning, Christopher R’ in Irving v Penguin Books (1996), via HDOT.org.
29 Matthäus, “Key Aspects of German Anti-Jewish Policy,” 22; for further discussion of Hamann, see Dean, “Local Collaboration in the Holocaust in Eastern Europe,” 127.
30 UCL Centre for Holocaust Education, Prof Yehuda Bauer lecture “Holocaust Distortion” (July 15, 2020).
31 Matthäus, “Key Aspects of German Anti-Jewish Policy,” 17.
32 Browing, Origins of the Final Solution, 253; Matthäus, “Key Aspects of German Anti-Jewish Policy,” 18.
33 Matthäus, “Key Aspects of German Anti-Jewish Policy,” 22.
34 The Jäger Report, 2, 5 (https://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/works/jaeger-report/htm/img002.htm.en.html).
35 Rees, The Holocaust, 206; Friedländer, The Years of Extermination, 207.
36 The Jäger Report, 7. (https://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/works/jaeger-report/htm/img007.htm.en.html).
38 The Jäger Report, 5. (https://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/works/jaeger-report/htm/img005.htm.en.html).
39 The Jäger Report, 3. (https://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/works/jaeger-report/htm/img003.htm.en.html). The Aglona Hospital massacre is referenced in United States v Ohlendorf, 423.
40 UCL Centre for Holocaust Education, “Agency and Responsibility,” 2.
41 Idem, “Explaining the Holocaust,” 13.
42 The Jäger Report, 7. (https://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/works/jaeger-report/htm/img007.htm.en.html).
43 BBC Television, The Nazis, A Warning from History, 1997 Episode 5, ‘The Road to Treblinka.’ (The relevant section begins at 19:00 min.)
44 Matthäus, “Key Aspects of German Anti-Jewish Policy,” 17–8.
45 An audio transcript of the interview is available at Laurence Rees’ website http://ww2history.com/testimony/Holocaust/Member_of_Einsatzgruppe.
46 MacQueen, “Lithuanian Collaboration in the “Final Solution”: Motivations and Case Studies,” 9.
47 Faitelson, The Truth and Nothing but the Truth, Jewish Resistance in Lithuania, 81.
48 The Jäger Report, 1, 6. (https://phdn.org/archives/holocaust-history.org/works/jaeger-report/htm/img001.htm.en.html).
49 Text of Kovner’s call to resist from https://blog.ehri-project.eu/2019/06/12/first-call-for-resistance/. For more on Kovner, see https://www.jewishpartisans.org/partisans/abba-kovner; and https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/eichmann-trial-testimony-of-abba-kovner.
50 Littman, War Criminal on Trial, Rauca of Kaunas, 100.
51 Testimonies of Abraham Malnik, witness to the Fort IX Massacre https://www.ushmm.org/exhibition/personalhistory/media_oi.php?MediaId=1089&th=ghettos and of Mordechai Zeidel, Ponar Forest survivor and partisan https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/irn502920.
52 Yahad in Unun, “Study Guide: Investigating the Holocaust by Bullets,” 7.
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Notes on contributors
Alastair Dunn
Alastair Dunn gained a DPhil in History from The University of Oxford and is a member of the leadership team at Ampleforth College.