History is often the least loved subject that students are required to study sometime before they complete a college education.  The common complaint heard in the classroom is that the subject is meaningless because they just want to get a job in engineering or computers or business and they do not need to know about the dusty past to get those jobs. In addition they learned it all in high school anyway. However, those of us committed to ensuring that future generations of doctors, engineers, biologists, chemists and computer scientists have the benefit of a well-rounded education and, that includes historical studies.  Understanding the origins and impact of ideas and events is as useful as knowing how to tie ones shoelaces, both activities prevent stumbles. When the historical topic has impacted large numbers of people, and remains relevant beyond its chronological period, then teaching it becomes more important and sometimes more difficult, as is the case with studying World War II’s Holocaust. Its importance has not diminished over time and this year as we commemorate the 75 anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration and death camps. We must remind succeeding generations that the modern world is still plagued by misguided bias and deadly prejudice against whole groups of people driven only by ignorance and fear of the “other”.

Several years ago, my friend and fellow history instructor, Karen Marcotte, and I were given the opportunity to be part of a study abroad experience for community college students from San Antonio, Texas with the academic theme of exploring The Holocaust of World War II.  The teaching team consisted of four instructors, each focusing on a different academic subject. The group would visit four European countries, five cities and several former “Concentration Camps.” Students would get credit for history, humanities, literature and/or education theory. Sounds pretty straight forward, except for the fact that these young, and mostly Hispanic community college students, had little or no background in the topic. Most of their parents were young enough that they had no connection to the topic either.  We would be taking these students outside of San Antonio and for some outside of Texas and the United States for the first time. While we tried to prepare them with lectures and activities before departure; we were only marginally successful. I would like to share the part of the course that directly connects using the discipline of the Humanities to teach about the horrors of the Holocaust in a manner that allowed students to understand the past, make connections to the present, and build a bridge to preventing such abuses in the future.

My portion of the class was focused on: The Humanities and the Holocaust. To help make assignments and resources accessible I created an online blog for the class. Most of the resources for this site came from an extraordinary site created by the Florida Center for Instructional Technology in the College of Education of the University of South Florida called “A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust.” [i] I  focused on the historical use of words and images to teach about and to develop a starting point for building an understanding of World War II’s Holocaust.

When we teach students to write we ask them to develop a “voice” and to consider the audience who will read their texts. The voices of Holocaust literature included those of the victims, the by-standers, the perpetrators, the resistors, the rescuers, and the survivors. The audience is us, those who read their texts to understand their world. To introduce the students to the events of the Holocaust and to prepare them for what they would encounter in Germany, Poland, The Czech Republic, and Austria, we introduced them to perpetrators in the form of Nazi propaganda, architecture, and music.

Then we considered the “By-standers” – those everyday Germans, Poles, Czechs, and others of the occupied countries who did nothing in the face of everyday atrocities. We invite the students to consider who did resist and what they fate was as they read “Memories of the White Rose.” And finally we introduced them to the victims and the survivors, starting with short selections from the victim’s voices. They read a letter from a resistance fighter in the Warsaw[ii] Ghetto, selection called “The Juggler” From Primo Levi’s autobiographical collection of essays entitled, Moments of Reprieve, and Pavel Friedmann, “The Butterfly,” a poem included in Hana Volavkova collection of drawings and poems from the children imprisoned in the Terezin concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, I Never Saw Another Butterfly. There was also a YouTube link to a short electronic version of the poem, which provided visual reinforcement of the poem’s impact.[iii]   

Only when they know who the players are do we begin to let them consider what they are about to see and experience. The teaching team tried to prepare the students intellectually for both the subject matter and the visual experience of being in the places were the history was made, but we found that could not prepare them emotionally. The emotional impact of the trip on our students was not immediate, nor was it obvious at first. Little by little we began to see a change in student behavior.

The biggest change occurred during and after our trip to Auschwitz. Even though it was not the first Concentration Camp they visited, it had the greatest impact. The first stop that day was to Auschwitz One. The camp with the iconic “Work makes Free” sign above the entrance.  This camp had originally been an army training camp. The buildings were rows of brick-faced dormitory like structures. In each of the building different aspects of how the camp was used were displayed. Most of the buildings held exhibits of the thousands of eye glass frames, shorn hair bundles, suitcases, books, gold teeth, clothing, and shoes taken from those imprisoned  there. One room contained toys and baby clothes and shoes. This room made an impact on one young lady in our group. When we got outside and were preparing to enter the small crematorium building, she became visibly upset. We had told them that if anything got too intense, they should  let us know. We thought she was upset about the ovens, but that was not the case.  “How could they do that!” she exclaimed. “What?” we asked her. Her reply stopped us momentarily. “How could that take those babies’ shoes and toys away from them?” she asked. She broke into tears when we reminded her that the children had not missed those items because they were dead. No matter how hard we stressed what the “Final Solution” really meant, to 21^st century community college  students from San Antonio, Texas, The Holocaust was a story not history. But after Auschwitz it became real.

The post above this is a brief visual example of the sources we used and some of photographs of sites we visited that spring of 2009.

[i] A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust. Florida Center for Instructional Technology in the College of Education of the University of South Florida, 1997-2013.

[ii] Philip Friedman, ed, Martyrs and Fighters; the Epic of the Warsaw Ghetto, New York: FA Praeger, 1954.

[iii] Levi, Primo, Moments of Reprieve, A Memoir of Auschwitz, Ruth Feldman, translator, New York, Penguin Books, 1995. I Never Saw Another Butterfly: Children’s Drawings and Poems from the Terezin Concentration Camp, 1942-1944, Hana Volavkova, editor, New York: Schocken Books, Inc., 1993.  YouTube URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UXHSlhaPk4.