Teaching Using Holocaust History
Secondary School Students Learn from Survivors of the Holocaust
It was a Wednesday afternoon and a group of students was due to arrive the Sydney Jewish Museum from Woollongong — an industrial city just south of Sydney. They were not average students. They were 15-16 year old disengaged kids who had bailed out of school early, unable to cope with a standard school environment.
Holocaust Education for Disengaged Students
They were visiting the museum as part of an extension program designed to help them re-engage with a learning process and hopefully re-enter school. When they arrived, they were clearly uncertain of what to expect, asked what the Holocaust was, and had no real idea what a Jew is, having not previously encountered Jewish people.
An hour and a half later, after they’d viewed the introductory film and been taken around the main exhibition by a German Jewish Survivor, they were very different kids. Eddie Jaku had reached them, as had the enormity of the history they’d been learning. Try as they might to continue with their tough attitude to the world around them, they were struggling to hold back tears.
Rational for Using Holocaust History as a Teaching Tool
Why visit a Holocaust museum with students like this? In this instance it was to offer insight to the suffering of people other than themselves; it was hoped that they could begin a process of putting their own lives into perspective. 13,500 students, from primary and secondary schools and universities, enrolled in programs in the academic year of 2007. In 2008, even with closure periods through a major renovation there were in excess of 12,000. The goal is to increase student traffic to 15,000 per annum. The majority are studying syllabus units of academic subjects. But there are increasing visits based on issues such as racism and bullying, either through curriculum units or because of an issue within their schools or local communities.
Founding of a Holocaust Museum - The Sydney Jewish Museum
The Museum was founded in 1993 by Holocaust survivors. Many of those people are still highly active within the Museum as volunteers. They are central to education programs as Survivor testimony remains one of the most valuable teaching tools. For the majority of Australian students at this time, with a school curriculum largely focused on local history, there is a threefold challenge: the Holocaust was an event that happened a long time ago, a long way away, to a people that most Australian students know little about.
All Museum Holocaust programs include single Survivor testimony. Hearing the story of one person who was there allows the students to situate the Survivor within the broader history and grasp it on a more individual level. The Survivor who spoke to the students mentioned earlier, Eddie, tells the students that he is now their friend. He tells them he wants them to share his story with their families, friends and others and say that they met a man called Eddie and heard his story. In doing so, Eddie makes a personal appeal to the students to hand it on, so that it and countless others will not be lost into the vastness of the six million whose stories are lost.
The Legacy of Holocaust Survivors
For the Survivors, teaching the Holocaust is about educating our next generation so that they become the ones who can be instrumental in making a difference to our societies, ensuring that such a thing can never happen again. In the face of continuing genocidal events around the world, this can sometimes appear to be a fruitless task. However, if the letters received from students who have experienced Museum programs are any indication, the impact is being felt — all the more as the students realise that with the increasing age of our survivors, they are the last generation who will hear first hand testimony.
Eddie Jaku and students
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