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‘Safely in, safely out’ philosophies of Holocaust Education

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How do we bring students and visitors safely in and out of this history? Listen to Education Officer Marie Bonardelli explain the Museum’s education philosophy.

Text:  Hi I’m Marie Bonardelli, one of the Education Officers at the Sydney Jewish Museum. My role in the redevelopment  is not only to assist with the selection of content and be mindful of how the educators and guides use the display, but also about how do we embed our educational philosophy in the exhibition so that we teach about this devastating and traumatic event in history, without traumatising our visitors.  We understand that visitors need to be brought safely into this history, and safely out of it.

Best practice Holocaust education reflects that rather than focus on 6 million Jewish victims, a number which often becomes little more than a statistic, the more meaningful way to understand genocide is to know what existed before and therefore, what was lost or nearly lost as a result of six million deaths – belief systems, ways of life, languages, culture, ideas, religion.

Unfortunately, when we deal with this history, we cannot avoid confronting material or atrocity imagery and testimony.  How we reveal this to visitors has been carefully thought out – particularly because we have young school students who also visit the display.

Subject matter like the open-air shootings from the invasion of the Soviet Union – an intrinsically linked aspects of the Holocaust, were separated in order to not lose the opportunity to speak about the Eastern invasion with younger students but without displaying the disturbing pit shooting photographs.

Beyond selection of content and being mindful of how we display graphic content, we want visitors to come and reflect on human action and inaction; to think about what moral dimensions and choices people were confronted with at the time.

Currently we have been training our guides about how to speak about some of the most confronting aspects of this history, specifically open-air shootings.  In one of the displays, we juxtapose a series of  killing orders with a schnapps flask, and photographs of shootings.  This choice and connection was to draw visitors attention to the mass participation of men in shootings, who at the war’s end said they were following orders to kill men, women, and children.  However, when you read the orders, they specifically say to not talk about the events, photograph the atrocities, or consume alcohol before, during or after.  In a display where we have photographs taken by soldiers, and a schnapps flask that was unearthed from a mass grave after the war, we are able to visually challenge visitors to realise that the defence of ‘following orders’ is untrue, and in fact, reveals that there still was choice even under the circumstances of genocide.

We have been very careful to not educate or create a display that lends itself to shock and awe tactics.  We understand that bad holocaust education is when we unreasonably expose visitors to confronting materials.  We think we have dealt sensitively but truthfully with the history.

Author: Marie Bonardelli, Education Officer

 

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