Gross, Zehavit, et. al. Eds. As the Witnesses Fall Silent: 21st Century Holocaust Education in Curriculum, Policy and Practice. Springer, 2015. Accessed 30 September 2017, download.e-bookshelf.de/download/0003/9280/24/L-G-0003928024-0013271353.pdf
This collected work opens up with a discussion of the importance of teaching the Shoah effectively as “a way to making a better world, to protecting human rights and strengthening democracy – and even to preventing genocide.” (p.3)
Yet there is the strong realization that “we cannot predict how new generations will relate to this terrible past and what it means for us going forward.” (p.4) There is much discussion of the need for much more empirical research, international collaboration across countries – and “richer exchanges across languages” (p.5)
This collection of essays – which includes Eli Wiesel’s famous German Parliament Address of 2000, provides insights into the way the Holocaust is taught, the way it is included in the curriculum, and policy practices surrounding it in contemporary society.
Several essays address the question of why the teaching of the Holocaust is still relevant to current generations of students….”giving the gift of vigilance to a conflict-ridden world” (p.49)
p. 21-25 – In these pages is the full speech that Elie Wiesel gave to the German Bunderstag on Holocaust Remembrance Day 2000. Towards the end of his speech, (p.24) Wiesel says,
After the war, some of us expected a defeated and humiliated Germany to deliver a more powerful message of remorse and contrition. One that would be linked to morality; instead, in those years it was related to politics….He went on to ask the Bunderstag to ask - right then and there - the Jewish people to forgive Germany for what the Third Reich did in Germany’s name to so many of us…. He closed by saying – that, “whatever the new Century holds in store, Auschwitz will continue to force men to explore the deepest recesses of his and her being so as to confront their fragile truth….He concludes with a story of a little Jewish girl who died with her mother the night they arrive in Birkenau in May of1944. She was 8 years old and ….had done nothing to hurt or harm your people – why did she have to die such an atrocious death. If her brother lives to be as old as the world itself, he will never understand. And so, he will simply quote another great Hasidic master…known for his great compassion and he said: “My friends, do you wish to find the spark? Look for it in the ashes.” (p.24)
The aim of the editors is to establish a cornerstone of evidence to show that: “teaching the Shoah effectively, can contribute to making a better world, to protecting human rights and strengthening democracy, and even to preventing genocide.” This important work feeds into my own research. It helps point to the importance of leveraging existing knowhow and resources, to help develop the tools needed to provide a more complete picture of how the Holocaust informs what we might make of our collective futures.
