The Ethics Of Teaching At Sites Of Violence And Trauma: Student Encounters With The Holocaust
by Natalie Bormann /
2017 / English / PDF
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This book completes a period of just over four consecutive years during which I developed, and then lead, a Holocaust study abroad program. My experience and observations while leading this program provide the context for reflection on fundamental issues and challenges of Holocaust education at sites of trauma and violence.
Each summer, this program takes a group of twenty dedicated undergraduate students from across campus of a private, New England, University on a five-week long jour- ney through Germany and Polandtwo countries, five cities, four con- centration camps, all day visits to Auschwitz, workshops, seminars, memorials, museums, documentation centers, former ghettos, talks with survivors the list goes on. Two political science-based courses (four credit points each) pro- vide the backbone for this experiential program one of the courses is designed to introduce students to the political and historical context of the Holocaust through the lens of the concepts of totalitarianism, fas- cism, sovereign power, and the categories of perpetrators, victims, and bystanders. The other course aims at exploring the role of trauma, memory, and ethics in the practices of commemoration, remembrance, and forgetting prompting a critical understanding of the relevance of the Holocaust for the prevention of genocides today. Taken together, both elements zoom in on questions of why and how it was possible to commit these mass atrocities, before thinking about how and to what effect current and future societies are informed and educated about the Holocaust.
