Holocaust
Studies: A Journal of Culture and History
Abstracts of
articles in Issue 13.1
- Michael R. Marrus, Holocaust Bystanders and
Humanitarian Intervention
- My point of departure is the oft-repeated assessment
about international bystanders to the Holocaust: ‘the world did nothing’.
I suggest that this abrupt dismissal evades explanation. To contribute
to
the latter, I propose a contextual theme for the assessment of
liberal bystanders to
the Holocaust that might deepen our understanding and perhaps
relate it as well to present-day concerns about the terrible fate
of some minorities
in our own world. My theme, humanitarian intervention, has been
much discussed in recent years by commentators on international
affairs, but their reach
has seldom, if at all, extended to the Holocaust. This discussion
of international bystanders to the Holocaust begins with some
comments on the history of
the concept, then focuses on the undermining of humanitarian intervention
in the wake of the First World War, and finally has a few things
to say about the relationship of these ideas and commitments to
the Holocaust of European Jewry.
- Judith Petersen, Belsen and a British Broadcasting Icon
- This article seeks to critically explore the longevity
of Richard Dimbleby’s
account of the liberation of Belsen as broadcast on the BBC’s Home
Service programme War Report on 19 April 1945. It will reveal
that the precise content of this broadcast has remained obscure despite
repeated
references to it as ‘famous’ or ‘historic’ over
the past six decades and will show the extent to which the war
correspondent’s
original despatch was sanitised and dejudaised. It will also reveal
that Richard Dimbleby made a second recording about his visit to Belsen,
none
of which featured in War Report. It will examine the way in which
post-war permutations of his accounts in various media sources have frequently
been
fashioned from both recordings yet have masqueraded as the 1945
broadcast. Richard Dimbleby’s television treatments of Belsen will
also come under scrutiny to reveal how British involvement in
the liberation and
Jewish suffering could not be reconciled within a single narrative
of the liberation of Belsen.
- Henry Greenspan, On Testimony, Legacy and the Problem of Helplessness
in History
- The imagery of Holocaust survivors’ ‘legacies’ and ‘stories’ being
passed down ‘from generation to generation’ is ubiquitous.
Nonetheless, that rhetoric may mask more than it reveals about
the ways survivors actually retell their experiences, about survivors’ motives
for doing so, and about the thick interpersonal context in which
retelling always goes on. At core, the ‘legacy’ imagery is
part of a ‘celebratory
discourse’ about survivors that is partly honorific and partly wishful
thinking, reflecting more our own hopes and fears than those of
survivors. This article examines ‘legacy’ discourse both from
our perspective, as listeners-to-survivors, and from the perspective
of survivors themselves.
- Brian Kahn, Holocaust Education in the Heartland: Middle-Level
Educators and the Holocaust
- This article provides a profile of Holocaust teaching practices in
Illinois public schools. Interviews with middle-level teachers
asked them to speak about state and local support for Holocaust curriculum,
educational
rationale, classroom practice and student reactions. Overall,
the data gathered from these interviews yielded both positive and troubling
results.
Many of the teachers who were interviewed put great effort into
designing their own curriculum and connecting it to related themes of social
justice.
Most teachers, however, developed their units in isolation, and
certain elements recommended by Holocaust educators were frequently missing.
This
article argues that the state and local districts need to work
together to provide systematic materials and training to ensure a consistent
and
sound curriculum. It also recommends that schools offer more professional
development opportunities for teachers as well as assessment tools
to determine whether current approaches to this crucial moment in history
are succeeding.
- K. Hannah Holtschneider, Victims, Perpetrators, Bystanders? Witnessing,
Remembering and the Ethics of Representation in Museums of the Holocaust
- Intersecting discourses situated in historiography, museum studies,
education, trauma theory and photography, this article explores
the possibilities and ethics of making sense of representations of the
Holocaust in the Imperial
War Museum London. The argument challenges assumptions about learning,
witnessing and memorialising in Holocaust museums and explores
ethical implications of the deployment of visual evidence of the Holocaust
for
educational purposes. Rather than providing answers to these challenges,
the article seeks to initiate further interrogation of learning
strategies in Holocaust exhibitions through the engagement of different
academic disciplines
in an interdisciplinary context.
• Michael R. Marrus, Holocaust Bystanders and Humanitarian
Intervention
• Judith Petersen, Belsen and a British
Broadcasting Icon
• Henry Greenspan, On Testimony, Legacy and the Problem of Helplessness
in History
• Brian Kahn, Holocaust Education in
the Heartland: Middle-Level Educators and the Holocaust
• K. Hannah Holtschneider, Victims, Perpetrators,
Bystanders? Witnessing, Remembering and the Ethics of Representation in
Museums of the Holocaust