The Use of First-Person Accounts in Teaching About the Holocaust

REFERENCES

• Bauer, Y. (October 1976). ‘Contemporary History—Some Methodological Problems’, History: The Journal of the Historical Association, 61(203): 333–43.
   Google Scholar
• Bauman, J. (Summer 1992). ‘Entering the World of a Holocaust Victim: Schoolchildren Discuss a Memoir’, The British Journal of Holocaust Education, 1(1):14–24.
   Google Scholar
• Baumel, J.T. (Winter 1993). ‘Through a Child's Eyes: Teaching the Holocaust Through Children's Holocaust Experiences’, The British Journal of Holocaust Education, 2(2): 189–208.
   Google Scholar
• Benz, S. (in press). ‘Culture shock and I. Rigoberta Menchu’, in Teaching and Testimony: Rigoberto Menchu and the North American Classroom, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
   Google Scholar
• Coles, R. (1989), The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
   Google Scholar
• Facing History and Ourselves (1989). Facing History and Ourselves: Elements of Time, Brookline, MA: Author.
   Google Scholar
• Feig, K. (1990), ‘Non-Jewish Victims in the Concentration Camps’, pp. 161–78, in Michael Berenbaum (ed.) A Mosaic of Victims: Non-Jews Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis, New York: New York University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Friedlander, H. (1979). ‘Toward a methodology of teaching about the Holocaust’, Teachers College Record, 80(5):519–42.
   Google Scholar
• Friedlander, H. (February 1991), ‘Nature of Sources for the Study of Genocide’, Social Education, (Special Issue on ‘Teaching About Genocide’ edited by Samuel Totten and William Parsons) 55(2): 91.
   Google Scholar
• Hartman, G. (February 1991), ‘The Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies: Yale University’, Social Education (Special issue on ‘Teaching About Genocide’ edited by Samuel Totten and William Parsons), 55(2): 120.
   Google Scholar
• Hurwitz, L. (1989), ‘Life in the ghetto’, pp.129–33, in, Alan Adelson and Robert Lapides (eds.) Lodz Ghetto: Inside a Community Under Siege, New York: Viking.
   Google Scholar
• Johnson, M. (1989), ‘Perspectives on Oral History by the Historian Martin Gilbert’, pp.288–90, in Facing History and Ourselves (eds.), Facing History and Ourselves: Elements of Time, Brookline, MA: Facing History and Ourselves.
   Google Scholar
• Jones, R. (in press), ‘Having to Read a Book about Oppression: Encountering Rigoberta Menchu's Testimony in Boulder, Colorado’, in Teaching and Testimony: Rigoberta Menchu and the North American Classroom, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
   Google Scholar
• Kuzmeskus, J. (in press). ‘Writing Their Way to Compassionate Citizenship: Rigoberta Menchu and Activating High School Learners’, in Teaching and Testimony: Rigoberta Menchu and the North American Classroom, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
   Google Scholar
• Langer, L. (1989), ‘Interpreting Oral and Written Holocaust Texts’, pp.310–16, in Facing History and Ourselves (eds.), Facing History and Ourselves: Elements of Time, Brookline, MA: Facing History and Ourselves.
   Google Scholar
• Langer, L. (1989), ‘Preliminary Reflections on Using Videotaped Interviews in Holocaust Education’, pp.291–7. In Facing History and Ourselves (eds.) Facing History and Ourselves: Elements of Time, Brookline, MA: Facing History and Ourselves.
   Google Scholar
• Levin, N. (1989), ‘The Importance of Survivor Testimony’, pp.278–84. In Facing History and Ourselves (eds.) Facing History and Ourselves: Elements of Time. Brookline, MA: Facing History and Ourselves.
   Google Scholar
• Levi, Primo (1988), The Drowned and the Saved, New York: Summit Books.
   Google Scholar
• Parsons, W. and S. Totten (1993), Guidelines for Teaching About the Holocaust, Washington, DC: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
   Google Scholar
• Rittner, C. (1990). Foreword: ‘The Triumph of Mmemory’, pp.xi–xv, in Michael Berenbaum (ed.) A Mosaic of Victims: Non-Jews Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis, New York: New York University Press.
   Google Scholar
• Totten, S. (1991). ‘First-Person Accounts of Genocidal Acts Committed in the Twentieth Century’, pp.321–62, in Israel Charny (ed.), Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review, Vol. 2, London and New York: Mansell Publishers and Facts on File, respectively.
   Google Scholar
• Totten, S. (Fall 1987), ‘The Personal Face of Genocide: Words of Witnesses in the Classroom’, Social Science Record: The Journal of the New York State Council for the Social Studies, (Special Issue on ‘Genocide: Issues Approaches, Resources’ edited by Samuel Totten) 24(2): 63–7.
   Google Scholar
• Totten, S. (1991), Introduction, pp.xi–xxv, in Samuel Totten (ed.) First-Person Accounts of Genocidal Acts Committed in the Twentieth Century: An Annotated Bibliography., Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
   Google Scholar
• Varas, P. and C. Collins (in press). ‘The Freshman Experience at Willamette University: Teaching and learning with Rigoberta Menchu’, in Teaching and Testimony: Rigoberta Menchu and the North American Classroom, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
   Google Scholar
• Wiesel, E. (1979), Letter to President Jimmy Carter. Report to the President, Washington, DC: President's Commission on the Holocaust.
   Google Scholar
• Wiesel, E. (1969), Night, New York: Discus Books.
   Google Scholar
• Key Texts and Resources Relative to First-Person Accounts in Teaching the Holocaust
   Google Scholar
• Adelson, Alan and Robert Lapides (eds.) (1989), Lodz Ghetto: Inside a Community Under Siege, New York: Viking. A remarkable volume which presents the story of the Lodz Ghetto through the voices of the victims and survivors as expressed in memoirs, diaries, notebooks, sketches of the ghetto, announcements, and so on.
   Google Scholar
• Adler, Stanislaw (1981), In the Warsaw Ghetto: 1940–1943—An Account of a Witness: The Memoirs of Stanislaw Adler, Jerusalem: Yad Vashem. 334 pp. From 1940–43 Adler was a member of the Jewish Council in Warsaw, initially in the legal department of the Jewish Police Auxiliary and then as the director of the Housing Office. To avoid the deportations, he escaped and hid in the ‘Aryan’ section of Warsaw. His diary describes the many different facets of life and death in the Warsaw Ghetto.
   Google Scholar
• Barkai, Meyer (ed.) (1962), The Fighting Ghettos, Philadelphia: Lippincott. 407 pp. Included in this text are excerpts from scores of memoirs by ghetto fighters, those who survived and those who did not. They were culled from the over 2,000 memoirs and other primary documents in the archives of the Ghetto Fighters House in Israel.
   Google Scholar
• Bauman, Janina (Summer 1992), ‘Entering the World of a Holocaust Victim: Schoolchildren Discuss a Memoir’. The British Journal of Holocaust Education, 1(1): 14–24. An interesting qualitative study of how one teacher in England used a ‘ghetto memoir’ (Winter in the Morning: A Young Girl's Life in the Warsaw Ghetto and Beyond, 1939–1945 by Janina Bauman). It examines the students' (fourth form or tenth graders') responses to the book as well as the pedagogical strategies employed by the teacher.
   Google Scholar
• Baumel, Judith Tydor (Winter 1993), ‘“Through a Child's Eyes”: Teaching the Holocaust Through Children's Holocaust Experiences’, The British Journal of Holocaust Education, 2(2): 189–208. This piece describes an interesting teaching unit that teachers may wish to consider adapting to their own classes.
   Google Scholar
• Berenbaum, Michael (1993), The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust as Told in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Boston, MA: Little, Brown Sc Co. 240 pp. This volume is packed with excerpts from first-person accounts (diaries, memoirs, poetry, oral accounts, testimony) by survivors and victims of the Holocaust.
   Google Scholar
• Byer, Lisa and Lauren Cohen (eds.) (1986), Journal of Testimony, Volume III. ‘The Legacy’. Cleveland Heights, OH: Cleveland Heights High School (13263 Cedar Road, Cleveland Heights, OH 44118. Contact person: Dr Leatrice B. Rabinsky). This booklet, designed by high school students who were enrolled in a course entitled ‘Literature of the Holocaust’, contains interviews of Holocaust survivors, biographical pieces about Holocaust survivors, and poetry about the Holocaust written by the students.
   Google Scholar
• Cargas, Harry James (1993), Voices from the Holocaust, Lexington, KY: The University of Kentucky Press. This volume contains interviews with such notables as Simon Wiesenthal, Jan Karski, Yitzhak Arad, Leon Wells, Emil Fackenheim, Elie Wiesel, Dorothee Soelle and others.
   Google Scholar
• Chamberlain, Brewster, and Marcia Feldman (eds.) (1987), The Liberation of the Nazi Concentration Camps 1945: Eyewitness Accounts of the Liberators, Washington, D.C.: United States Holocaust Memorial Council. 214 pp. In this volume, the United States Holocaust Memorial Council has gathered extraordinarily powerful eye-witness accounts and testimonies of the individuals who were ‘variously involved in the horrors of the Holocaust and the physical, if not emotional or mental, release of the liberation’. It includes accounts by survivors, war correspondents, medical personnel, the military, chaplains, and others.
   Google Scholar
• Facing History and Ourselves (1989), Facing History and Ourselves: Elements of Time: Holocaust Testimonies, Brookline, MA: Author. 402 pp. This resource text is a companion manual to the Facing History videotape collection of Holocaust testimonies. It includes transcriptions of the videos in the collection (integrated with descriptions of the speakers), as well as background information and guidelines for using them in a classroom. It also includes a number of outstanding essays on various aspects of Holocaust video testimonies and their use in the classroom.
   Google Scholar
• Friedman, Ina R. (1990), The Other Victims: First-Person Stories of Non-Jews Persecuted by the Nazis, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. This volume (which was especially developed for a readership comprised of fourth through ninth grade students) presents first-person accounts by individuals other than Jews who suffered at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust years. The stories of a young Gypsy, a homosexual, a Jehovah Witness, a black, a Czech schoolboy, a physically handicapped person, a civil disobedient, and others are highlighted.
   Google Scholar
• Gutman, Israel (1994), Resistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. This draws on diaries, letters, and other sources in an authoritative account of the April 1943 Jewish revolt against Nazi forces.
   Google Scholar
• Hilberg, Raul, Staron, Stanislaw and Josef Kermisz (eds.) (1979), The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow, New York: Stein and Day. 420 pp. This diary, by the controversial chairman of the Warsaw Ghetto Judenrat (the Nazi-appointed organisation that administered every aspect of life in the ghetto) was initiated on 6 September 1939 and concluded on 23 July 1942. Not only did Czerniakow see to the daily running of the ghetto, but he was often forced by the Nazis to take decisions as to which Jews would be deported to the death camps. He committed suicide when he was ordered to round up children for the death camps. Historian Nora Levin has called this ‘one of the most powerful documents of its kind in all of Holocaust literature’.
   Google Scholar
• International Military Tribunal (1947–1949), Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 14 November 1945-October 1946, Nuremberg; 42 vols. [Known as the Blue Series.] This is a major and invaluable source for early and detailed first person testimony. See also: Nuremberg Military Tribunals (1949–1953). Trial of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals Under Control Council Law No. 10, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 15 vols. [Referred to as the Green Series.]
   Google Scholar
• Langer, Lawrence (1991), Holocaust Testimonies: The Ruins of Memory, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. ‘An analysis of the unique ways in which oral testimony of survivors contributes to our understanding of the Holocaust. It also sheds light on the forms and functions of memory as victims relive devastating experiences of pain, humiliation, and loss. Drawing on the Fortunoff Video Archives for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University, Langer shows how oral Holocaust testimonies complement historical studies by enabling us to confront the human dimensions of the catastrophe.’
   Google Scholar
• Langer, Lawrence (1982), Versions of Survival: The Holocaust and the Human Spirit, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. A detailed examination of survivors' responses (both autobiographical and literary) to the Holocaust.
   Google Scholar
• Mendelsohn, John (ed.) (1982),. The Holocaust: Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes, New York: Garland Publishing, Inc. This series contains primary documents on various facets of the Holocaust. The series is divided into four main sections: Planning and Preparation; The Killing of the Jews; Rescue Attempts; and Punishment.
   Google Scholar
• Rothchild, Sylvia (ed.) (1981), Voices from the Holocaust, New York: New American Library. Culled from the 250 people living in the United States of America who were willing to tape their memories of the Holocaust for the William E. Wiener Oral History Library of the American Jewish Committee, these accounts tell of life before the Holocaust, life during it, and life in the United States after the war. The individuals whose stories are told herein represent most European countries and every ‘social level and shade of belief in Jewish life’.
   Google Scholar
• Totten, Samuel (1991), First-Person Accounts of Genocidal Acts in the Twentieth Century: An Annotated Bibliography, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Two chapters in this volume (‘Holocaust’, pp.91–260, and ‘Fate of the Gypsies During the Holocaust Years’, pp.261–73) include several hundred annotations of first-person accounts by survivors, rescuers, liberators and others.
   Google Scholar
• Wiesel, Elie (1969), Night, New York: Bantam. In this powerful memoir, the reader is presented with a stark and graphic first-hand account of the destruction of the Jewish community of Sighet in Transylvania, the establishment of two ghettos in Sighet in 1944, the nightmarish deportation to Auschwitz, and the brutally degrading treatment and horrific slaughter of the Jews by the Nazis. It is told by Eliezer, a 15-year old survivor, who is torn from his family home and Orthodox way of life, and transported to Auschwitz where he loses not only all his family but his faith in God. It also relates Wiesel's experiences in Birkenau, Buna, and Buchenwald. It presents an extremely powerful examination of the ramifications of the Holocaust: ‘the relationship between man and God, man and man, and man and himself’.
   Google Scholar