Daniel Reynolds is the Seth Richards Professor in Modern Languages at Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. His works examines the ways representation of the Holocaust has shifted in museums and memorial sites across the United States, Poland and Germany. His most recent book, Postcards from Auschwitz, was published last year.

In November, the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies welcomed Dr. Reynolds for a lecture where he touched on the themes of his latest book and Holocaust tourism’s effect on how we remember.

Kathryn Huether: I wanted to start with Michael Rothberg’s text regarding migration and the Turkish immigrant in Germany, in your book you discuss the distinction between a Holocaust tourist and pilgrim, and it just reminded me of the “double paradox” that Michael Rothberg highlights. Could you speak more of your distinction between the pilgrim and tourist?

Daniel Reynolds: Yes, I guess I would be sure to say that it is a distinction but not an opposition, I would say that for me, when we think of pilgrimage, there are echoes of the sacred. There is also some echo of homage to one’s ancestors, one’s family background. I think that’s very much a part of many people’s purpose in going to Holocaust memory sites. In turn, it was also important to me to address the fact that not every visitor to sites of Holocaust remembrance can make a pilgrimage, and that I think many are there by accident. Maybe they happen to be on a city tour; many times it is school children who are often reluctant participants in a tour. But I also want to allow for the possibility that tourists—even if they don’t plan on it—can have experiences that are so deep and so meaningful that they can convert their experiences into a form of pilgrimage. Maybe it forces them to have a kind of reflective experience that we often associate with the Holocaust. I think we should use the word tourist without having to apologize for being a tourist at Holocaust sites.

Right. Yes. And do you think that perhaps certain sites are more conducive to that—because certainly, Auschwitz-Birkenau is where most people go…but sites such as Treblinka offers much more reflection, but it is harder to get to?

Yes, it is harder to get to. And I think that it is definitely a part of it. When I think of pilgrimage, it’s funny, when I think of sites of pilgrimage I think of Bethlehem and the Church of Nativity which gets packed with people. There are ways in which sites that we think of as typical destinations of pilgrimage actually highlight some of the more unpleasant attributes of tourism that we criticize, i.e. the crowds. But yea, I would agree that different sites lend themselves to more reflective experiences. I think Treblinka for me was very moving, and Belžec, of course is this massive installation, but it’s also very remote so you’re often alone there. And I would say at Auschwitz that Birkenau is by far the more reflective space.

That’s great. I wanted to bring it back to your book and much of your argument is based on this concept that you call phenomenology of tourism. Could you speak more of that?

So phenomenology of tourism, I’m not a trained ethnographer—I don’t have tons of interviews with tourists that I’ve conducted and I don’t have a method for quantifying anything experientially…I am not so interested in showing how some tourists feel one way versus how many think the other way. I am more interested in demonstrating the range of possibilities for responses. And I think phenomenology, which is how we come to know of the world, not just through logic and rational thought, but also through sensory perception and affect [, in relation] to tourism is always an embodied encountered in space. So you’re always experiencing the site sensorially, in ways that you are not necessarily consciously processing; affectively, responding to different behaviors in addition to the information you’re given—it’s never just about the information presented at the site. So I’m really interested in how all of those things kind of influence one another. I think it’s a way for me as a humanist, someone who is not trained as a social scientist who works with data, to ask questions about tourism and give as much knowledge as possible.

I agree—it’s very close to what I’m working on now. And I wanted to push this a bit further, you focus your phenomenological reading on the visual, and of course there are multiple senses that are impacted—last summer I was able to visit the preservationist department at Auschwitz-Birkenau with my fellowship group from the Auschwitz Jewish Center, and the preservationists dedicate a large part of their efforts to preserving objects such as shoes, suitcases, shoes, toothbrushes, etc.—but this act of preservation is strongly connected to the visual, and one of the preservationist said that within fifteen years “this toothbrush will be gone, this suitcase deteriorated.” And, I feel a bit dark saying this, but one of my colleagues asked, “what are you going to do with the human hair when that is gone as well?” Are you going to replace it with fake hair, for instance as the infamous gate that reads “Arbeit Macht Frei” is no longer the original, replaced after the original was stolen—so, is there something about the “authenticity” of the object that needs to be present, juxtaposed to sites such as Treblinka, when the materiality and object centered preservation is nonexistent? How is the visual of Treblinka, for instance, different from that of Auschwitz-Birkenau?

That’s great, yea, that touches on a lot of things…the ephemerality of these material traces is something problematic, but then also you can’t not talk about the hair as it’s human remains. I understand the impact of it…I wonder what they’ll do. I think, of course, the goal of these displays is to convey the enormity of the Holocaust, no one has ever seen that amount of human hair, or that many shoes before…

Yes, but even then, the presentation of the exhibits is very curated. The room with the shoes, the coloring is very specific, organized so that a pristine red heel sits on the top, you can see children’s shoes right up front…

Yes, yes that they are an assemblage—that is very important to acknowledge. And I know that the hair is treated with certain chemicals so that it is preserved longer…Yea, I think that probably, these sites are going to have to find another way to convey what they are trying to convey. The image that is largely associated with Holocaust sites is the thousands of shoes, and I sometimes think that maybe a single shoe, or a single pair of shoes, would be more powerful. I think we need to be aware that these displays are curated and assembled, that is very important, and that we need to think about a future when these objects are no longer there to display. That is a challenge that preservationists certainly need to take on […].Because John Urry, of course, is often faulted because of his preference for the visual dimension of tourism, and not all tourists are sighted, so what do you do when sight is not a category of perception? I remember when I was at Auschwitz and the sound of crunching of gravel beneath my feet, then trying to imagine how that sounded with thousands of prisoners on it…I don’t know if that answers your question.

No, no, that’s okay. Do you think that perhaps the emphasis placed on preserving these objects, I don’t want to say takes away from, I don’t want to say “better presentation,” but like at Auschwitz there are so many people there and everyone is walking around with headphones over their ears and it is so crowded.  It is the actual site itself, but perhaps there is a more effective way of presenting that without millions of people at the site?

Yea, I think maybe what this gets at, is that there are two impulses in this museum curation. First, what is an aesthetic choice, what makes the best arrangement of most impact on the audience—like the color to catch the eye? But the other, and what I think predates this, is that these sites were museum sites established to preserve the forensic evidence, originally to bring the Nazi perpetrators to trial. But we now live in an age where they still serve a forensic purpose to show Holocaust deniers the truth, so I think that is what’s keeping us grounded or rooted in this preservationist mode. But unfortunately, there will always be challenges despite all the material evidence.

Yes, so continuing off of that, with the graduate students we were talking about the Jewish Museum in Berlin and POLIN—Museum of Polish Jews in Warsaw, and you stated that you thought POLIN was more effective, but also I think it’s really interesting because Berlin has actual artifacts and POLIN does not, given the history of Polish Jewry and such, but could you speak more to that distinction and your preference for POLIN?

Okay, so it’s been a few years since I’d been to POLIN, and I was happy to hear your response to it, so I have a reason to go back. You know, I think that the building in Berlin is a really powerful space—the architecture is wonderful. Also the architecture in POLIN is really striking as well. I think, what for me, struck me about Berlin—and they are redoing the permanent exhibition, so I’m anxious to see—but there were always a lot of effects, and it just felt crowded to me. Just the way it was arranged, I found it hard to have the physical space to contemplate—whereas POLIN, it’s a more comfortable space in. So I don’t know if POLIN is more effective, but I found it a space that I could spend time and think in.

Did you use an audio guide by chance?

I did, and of course I didn’t follow it step by step, but I used it at both museums.

Yea, I don’t think most people follow it.

I wasn’t well versed in Polish Jewish history, so I think I learned something—but I was just really impressed by the space, and the reconstruction of the synagogue—that was is preserved beautiful, so I think appreciating the beauty of Polish Jewry is what POLIN offers. And, I talk about this in the book, I also think that the Jewish Museum in Berlin is kind of at the crossroads of its function, on the one hand it wants to celebrate Jewish life and Jewish culture, but it is also, built into its very bones, is that it is a Holocaust memorial, and the curators say, “we’re not a Holocaust museum, we’re a Jewish museum…”

Right, it was made to be one…in its mission, Daniel Libeskind designed it to reflect the Holocaust.

Right, it’s hard to be both. And some might say that perhaps that is how the museum is effective, because it is jarring.

That’s kind of what I argue, yes, that it is because you don’t really settle on either end…

Yes, I think I would just like the museum directors to be more direct about the fact that it is both.

Oh, I agree, they did actually change the audio guide, and I think this incorporates the narrative more. But back to POLIN, I also used the audio guide, and I did not have a contemplative experience, I thought the sound was overwhelming, but of course, that’s what I’m paying attention to specifically.

Yea, I need to go back. It’s not like the thumping heartbeat of Warsaw at the Warsaw Rising Museum.

Did you listen to it really closely? Because each strand is supposed to be a distinctive song from wartime Poland.

Fascinating, yet that museum is filled with points of inquiry.

But I wanted to bring it back once again to the sensorially aspect, and to Treblinka, which doesn’t have the materiality of Auschwitz-Birkenau. And presently, a visitor can download an audio guide from the app “AudioTrip,” which I think adds an acoustic architecture, a materiality of sorts.

[Listen to segments of the audio guide here]

Yea, I think that certainly takes away from the experience. I was not fond of the fake wind whistling through the barren landscape—that’s not what you experience, particularly if you go there in the summertime, which has lush trees and green grass. And the idea that you would have manufactured forest sounds, and block out the real forest sound, doesn’t make sense to me. I think that the space, even without its materiality, has a lot to offer. Under headphones you can’t listen to the reaction of other visitors, which can be really powerful, such as laughing when they shouldn’t be, or hearing someone say something really profound or insightful that you wouldn’t have thought of before necessarily. I think technology like that can certainly take away some of the agency of the tourist.

Kathryn Agnes Huether is a Ph.D. student in Historical Musicology with a Graduate Minor in Cultural Studies at the University of Minnesota. Her dissertation research is an extension of her work on Holocaust memory and sonic affect, assessing the usage of sound and music within Holocaust museums and memorials.

Situated adjacent the National Mall in Washington D.C., the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) dominates the landscape of American Holocaust consciousness, remembrance, and education. On an elevator ride to the sixth floor and the start of the permanent exhibit, visitors to the museum watch a 15-second-long video showing footage of American soldiers encountering one of the concentration camps in 1945. In a retrospective voiceover, one soldier reflects on his initial shock at seeing the horrors of the camp: “We had come across something and were not sure what it was – a big prison of some kind. There were people running all over: sick, dying, starved people. You can’t imagine it; things like that don’t happen.” This video foreshadows the incomprehensibility of the Holocaust that visitors are about to witness in the permanent exhibit. The video also serves to perpetuate an American Holocaust myth; the myth that Americans had little to no knowledge of the Holocaust until the reporting of the liberation of the camps in 1945. For, as the myth goes, had Americans known about the atrocities, surely, they would have done something to speak out, to collectively, publicly condemn the mass murder of European Jewry. Though it is entirely possible that this individual soldier may not have known about the Nazi camps, the opening of Dachau in 1933, the persecution and plight of Germany and Europe’s Jews, and the ultimate extermination of millions were widely reported in the New York Times and local papers across the country. A recently-opened exhibit at the USHMM, Americans and the Holocaust, seeks to examine what ordinary Americans knew about the Holocaust in the 1930s and 40s.

History Unfolded

In 2016, the USHMM launched its History Unfolded project, in an attempt to “uncover what ordinary people around the country could have known about the Holocaust from reading their local newspapers in the years 1933–1945.” The project engages high school and college students in identifying and cataloging articles from local and regional newspapers related to one of 37- events from the 1930s and 40s for a growing public archive maintained by the museum. While most events highlight Nazi persecution of Jews, others focus on America’s responses to the growing refugee crisis after 1938, as well as racial segregation, isolationism, and antisemitism within the United States. This archive currently consists of roughly 16,000 articles (including opinion pieces, editorials, letters to the editor, and political cartoons) from every U.S. state; though, few there are very few articles from African American-run newspapers. The pedagogical implications of the archive are twofold: First, the existing archive is fully searchable by city/state, topic, date, or name of the newspaper, allowing teachers and students to search and print individual articles to supplement lessons and projects. Second, the archiving project will enable students to conduct original research online, a local library or historical institution to submit additional articles. Thus, History Unfolded provides an opportunity for students to participate in research and the creation of an active, public archive, both engendering authentic disciplinary skills, as well as engaging in the recasting of a collective narrative around what ordinary American knew about the Holocaust.

Americans and the Holocaust

The USHMM’s Americans and the Holocaust exhibit opened in 2018. Visitors to the exhibit are asked to reflect upon two questions: (a) “What did Americans know?” and (b) “What more could have been done?” These questions are repeated throughout the exhibit as visitors examine various events (many mirroring the 37 events used in the History Unfolded archive) related to the persecution of European Jewry, the Holocaust, as well as issues of racism, and antisemitism in Europe and the United States. One of the first displays visitors encounter is a large touchscreen map of the United States, allowing users to search for newspaper articles from the History Unfolded archive. Newspapers from the archive are also used throughout the exhibit to illustrate what the American public could have known about the Holocaust.

In addition to newspaper and other media coverage of the Holocaust, the exhibit also uses public polling data, displayed on movable pedestals. Visitors first see the poll question, with the responses revealed by spinning the screen.

Reviews of the exhibit have been overwhelmingly positive; though, some scholars have voiced critiques over the omission of particular narratives, such as American corporations and universities’ collaboration with their German counterparts and the Nazi government. Further critiques have focused on the exhibit’s conclusion that the Roosevelt administration’s inaction around easing immigration restrictions or rescuing European Jews was largely the result of their inability to subvert public opinions, which were markedly isolationist. Such critiques trouble the supposed role of public opinion polling, a relatively new development in the 1930s, in influencing government policies and actions.

Teaching with the History Unfolded project and the Americans and the Holocaust exhibit helps to engage students in challenging an American Holocaust myth. Both seem intended to push students to consider their role, as well as that of the larger society, in addressing genocide. Indeed, each year, my students, despite having taken previous courses in American history, are shocked to learn that ordinary Americans had access to reliable, detailed information about the increasing persecution of Europe’s Jews. Inevitably they ask: If they knew about the Holocaust, why didn’t people do something to speak out about what was happening? For these students, History Unfolded and Americans and the Holocaust seem to make it clear that ordinary Americans shirked their moral responsibility to speak out against Nazism and aid Europe’s Jews. Rather than allow students to come away with a simplistic narrative of America’s moral failure during the 1930s and 40s and their assured commitment to “never again,” I push them to consider that the project and the exhibit only suggest what ordinary Americans could have known, not what they did know. Additionally, I ask, are we only able to draw such clear lessons from these events in hindsight, after they have been selectively culled from the millions of other pages of news articles that appeared in the 1930s and 1940s?

In recent years, my students and I have also discussed the ongoing genocide of Rohingya in Burma, of which students have little prior knowledge. We examine contemporary newspaper coverage of the atrocities, which though rarely appearing on the front-page and often absent from algorithm-controlled social media newsfeeds, are, nevertheless, easily accessible for these well-educated and highly-resourced students. Not lacking in opinions about the moral responsibility of the United States to influence the course of the genocide, these students often feel powerless to bridge the knowledge-to-action gap that, in this case, feels more like a chasm. It is at this point in our discussions that we use the History Unfolded project and the Americans and the Holocaust exhibit to examine the role of an unrestricted news media within the public sphere and discuss their roles and responsibilities in advancing civil discourse within democratic civil society.

George Dalbo is the Educational Outreach Coordinator for the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and a Ph.D. student in Social Studies Education at the University of Minnesota with research interests in Holocaust, genocide, and human rights education. Previously, he was a middle and high school social studies teacher, having taught every grade from 5th-12th in public, charter, and independent schools in Minnesota, as well as two years at an international school in Vienna, Austria.

In March 2019, the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad ran a four-part series examining antisemitism in the Netherlands and Europe. Published in the midst of global concerns regarding the rise of antisemitism and violent antisemitic attacks, the question of the resurgence of anti-Jewish sentiment is more pressing than ever. According to the Center for Information and Documentation Israel (CIDI), there was a 19% increase in cases of antisemitism in the Netherlands from 2017 to 2018. In a survey conducted by the NRC, 70% of Jewish respondents (163 out of 800 identified themselves as Jewish) stated that antisemitism is indeed on the rise and 80% stated that while they have not witnessed antisemitism themselves, they are worried about its growth. This survey is backed by a recent investigation of antisemitism in twelve EU-member states. 89% of European Jews stated they experienced an increase in antisemitism in their home country, with another 38% responding that they have considered emigrating because they feel unsafe.

The Netherlands has a long and complicated history with antisemitism. During the Nazi occupation, 107,000 Dutch Jews were deported East to concentration and extermination camps. Despite the high deportation numbers, most analyses of collaboration and wartime behavior forgo an examination of the Netherlands in favor of Eastern European countries. This is due in part to the development of a postwar resistance narrative and the association between Dutch identity and tolerance. The resistance narrative, which states that the entire country resisted the imposition of Nazi rule and fell victim to its cruelty, has prevented the country from facing international scrutiny for its role in the Holocaust. While the field of Holocaust studies has certainly expanded in the Netherlands since the 1980s, the public has yet to fully move away from the resistance narrative. In addition, once the Shoah became the focal point of the Dutch Second World War experience, critics began accusing Jews of exploiting their victim status. The late historian Evelien Gans explains this phenomenon as secondary antisemitism or, “the conviction that the legitimate desire to draw a line under the past and move on to normalization is heavily obstructed by the frantic attention to the Shoah.” In addition, Muslim immigrants are often blamed for antisemitism in order to sidestep uncomfortable truths about Dutch treatment of their Jewish neighbors.

In the first article published in the NRC-series, political scientist Nonna Mayer remarked, “antisemitism is not back, it was never gone.” While antisemitism never vanished from Dutch society, the rise of far-right and populist political parties has contributed to the increased visibility of antisemitism. Right-wing rhetoric has not only emboldened antisemites but popularized antisemitic sayings and actions. The growth of antisemitism poses a serious threat to Jewish communities and by extension Holocaust memory. While the Jewish community in the Netherlands is far from homogenous, many feel that Jewish wartime experience has been marginalized. For example, the Jewish community faced a backlash in 2012 for speaking out against the broadening of the National Commemoration to include Dutch SS-volunteers. More recently, the Netherlands Auschwitz Committee has encountered numerous roadblocks to the building of a new Holocaust monument. After years of fighting local residents over a location, the city is now postponing the construction because they refuse to cut down 24 trees. It is clear that preserving Holocaust memory and supporting the Jewish community has taken on new importance within our political atmosphere. The NRC’s investigation of Dutch and European antisemitism will hopefully increase awareness of new forms of anti-Jewish sentiment and encourage people to speak out when they see it. At the very least, these articles reveal that silence is no longer the default reaction to Jewish persecution.

Jazmine Contreras is a sixth-year PhD candidate in the History Department at the University of Minnesota. Her dissertation examines contemporary historical memory of the Second World War and Holocaust in the Netherlands. She is currently instructing History of the Holocaust.

Twenty-five years have now passed since the Rwandan genocide. On the evening of April 6^th, 1994, the assassination of President Juvénal Habyarimana served as a final trigger for violence after decades of propaganda, animosity, and killing. Within 100 days, 800,000 Tutsis were dead, as were numerous Hutu political opponents of the genocidal state.

Many Rwandans and foreigners have sought to capture this moment through media coverage, memoirs, film, and documentaries. Images of the killings and of refugee processions, of machetes and of bullet holes, are familiar across the world. But for those who grew up in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide, the pain of this violence is far more immediate than these decades-old snapshots have the capacity to show.

For many young Rwandans, the genocide continues to have a regular presence in daily life. As a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, I study this generational trauma, or the social effects of conflict that are experienced by the descendants of those who experience violence. I speak with Rwandans in their early twenties about the effects of past violence on their lives. The genocide separated families, destroyed communities, and left young children to make sense of this loss. As one interviewee poignantly put it, “Parenting when you are 28, 29 – you were never a kid. And you never knew how to do this, because you had no parents to teach you.”

For Rwandans born after 1994, this trauma manifests differently for each individual. I’ve met with young men and women who lost most, or all, of their family members during the genocide. As one such woman succinctly reflected, “You feel that gap that you have, always.” These young adults have had to navigate the past twenty-five years while carrying their loss, depending on peers or remaining family members as they find their way. Many young adults who lost loved ones seek to remember through annual commemorations or visits to memorial spaces – for others, the pain is too much to participate.

Some have sought out those responsible for the death of family members, seeking answers or closure. One young man who did so shared, “I [had] to go there and know what was in his mind.” Many children of perpetrators have too struggled in the aftermath of the genocide, with incarceration sometimes leaving responsibility for the household on the shoulders of young boys and girls. The genocide was communally-based and wide-reaching; most Rwandans are personally affected in some way, and they must seek to make sense of this past while they move forward with their lives.

While this trauma has marred the trajectory of so many young adults, our conversations don’t solely dwell in tragedy. Interspersed in our conversations about memory are their goals, joys, and desires for the future. Many hope to be involved with tourism, showcasing Rwanda’s beauty to visitors. Some seek to thrive in the nation’s bustling business sectors, while others seek to create art that captures their journey. And more than anything else, interviewees express a hope for happy families and for peace. As one woman expressed, “What you’re looking is a better country, a better life, a better future.” As we remember the 1994 Rwandan genocide on its 25^th anniversary, those depictions of the genocide, snapshots of the violence and suffering, again come to the fore. And the memory of those lost is essential. But we should also reflect on these next generations of Rwandans, those who live with these scars as they strive for their futures. And we must also reflect that no country is wholly defined by violence. In the Global North, many know Rwanda solely for the 1994 genocide. But these young adults are among Rwandans who are advocating for a future shaped, but not defined, by the country’s past.

Brooke Chambers is a PhD student in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Sociology. Her research interests include collective memory, cultural trauma, political sociology, genocide, and mass violence. Her current work examines generational trauma in contemporary Rwanda, with a focus on the commemorative process. She is the 2019-2020 Badzin Fellow in Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

The 2019 Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival kicks off Thursday with more than two weeks of films from around the world spread across theaters in the Twin Cities and Rochester. Included in this year’s festival are a number of movies that have piqued the interested of several of us at the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies.

Read on to get our picks for some of this year’s can’t miss films:

The Accountant of Auschwitz

Finally brought to trial more than seven decades after the Holocaust, this film follows the trial and sentencing of Oskar Gröning, a member of the SS responsible for sorting of personal possessions of those sent to Auschwitz. More than the following the trial of one individual, this documentary examines the extraordinary challenges of bringing those complicit in the Holocaust to justice decades after the fact.

Showtimes:

Friday, April 5, 2:20 PM – Saint Anthony Main Theater

Sunday, April 7, 9:15 AM – Saint Anthony Main Theater

Blood Memory

Filmmaker Drew Nicholas’ work focuses on the Stolen Generation, a generation of Native youth who were forcibly removed from their homes and put up for adoption in an effort to assimilate them. The film examines the generations’ attempts to overcome years of trauma and cultural genocide in order to reclaim their identities.

Showtimes:

Wednesday, April 10, 7:00 PM  – Saint Anthony Main Theater

Thursday, April 11, 4:15 Pm  – Saint Anthony Main Theater

Graves Without a Name

With his latest work, Rithy Panh’s film follows a young boy as his attempts to the find the graves of his relatives in the aftermath of the Cambodian genocide under the Khmer Rouge regime. The film is a graphic depiction the violence endured by the Cambodian people and its lasting legacy today.

Showtimes:

Friday, April 12, 1:40 PM – Saint Anthony Main Theater

Friday, April 19, 4:20 PM – Saint Anthony Main Theater

Afterward

Growing up in Jerusalem, Ofra Bloch was surrounded by memories of the Holocaust. Utilizing this experience, Bloch interviews survivors, activists, historians and others in Germany, Israel and Palestine to examine trauma in an effort to understand the fundamental questions of how do we overcome trauma, how do we heal and how do we forgive?

Showtimes:

Sunday, April 14, 7:10 PM – Saint Anthony Main Theater

Monday, April 15, 7:00 PM – Saint Anthony Main Theater

Joe Eggers in the Research & Outreach Coordinator for the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies.

We’re at crossroads today: learning lessons from the Holocaust is fundamentally important. Understanding the dire consequences of hate and intolerance is more important today than just about any point in history. Unfortunately, it comes at a time when our memory of the Holocaust is fast fading. It seems as we continue to lose survivors and their critical connection to the past, we lose our willingness to apply their lessons to our own time. A year ago, the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany brought this sobering reality to the forefront: Nearly half of millennials cannot name a single concentration camp. Nearly a third of Americans drastically underestimate the number of victims of the Holocaust. Most astounding, almost 70% of Americans say they don’t care about the Holocaust.

It’s a stunning revelation for an event only seventy years in our past. While it’s easy to be disheartened by the lack of awareness, there is hope. Teachers across the United States are willing and eager to bring lessons from the Holocaust into their classrooms (the success of the Center’s Genocide Education Outreach program and our annual teacher workshops are a testament to that), but teachers often face challenges in doing so. A lack of familiarity, access to resources and funding point to the barriers teachers face nationally.

To that end, CHGS is proud to be among more than seventy nationwide organizations calling on Congress for an expedited hearing for the Never Again Education Act.  The Act itself opens the door for public funds to be allocated for Holocaust education and pave the way for private organizational support for Holocaust education in the schools, ensuring educators and students have access to invaluable resources.

To view a copy of the letter, click here.

In the woods of northern Minnesota, tucked along the shores of Turtle River Lake, is a small German village called Waldsee. Waldsee, which translates to “forest lake,” is home to Concordia Language Villages’ (CLV) German-language isolation-immersion programs, one of fifteen such language villages sponsored by Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota. Each summer, hundreds of staff and students pass through the village’s main building, dubbed the “Bahnhof,” or “train station,” to spend two or four weeks fully immersed in German language and culture. Until recently, most were completely unaware that the Nazis once used the name Waldsee as a euphemism for Auschwitz.

Indeed, it wasn’t until 2017, when Alex Treitler stumbled upon references to the Nazi Waldsee while researching the CLV immersion program out of curiosity, that the issue was brought to the attention of the village’s leadership. In an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Dan Hamilton, dean of CLV Waldsee, was quoted: “Frankly, we were just not aware […] I’m a professor of international relations, so we were a bit embarrassed.” Despite this initial embarrassment, CLV quickly convened a twenty-member advisory committee made up of academic and community experts to examine the issue and make recommendations.

In a recent presentation at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, “A Tale of Two Cities: Concordia Language Village’s ‘Waldsee’ in the Crucible of History and Memory,”* Sonja Wentling, Professor of History and Global Studies at Concordia College and a member of the advisory committee, shared the story of the two Waldsees. Wentling presented alongside four of her undergraduate students, Allison Hennes, Samara Strootman, Jarret Mans, and Colleen Egan, who had taken part in Wentling’s fall 2018 “Introduction to Historical Thinking Class,” which specifically took up issues of historical memory around the name Waldsee. The class was part of Concordia College’s PEAK, or Pivotal Experience in Applied Learning, Program, in which students apply classroom learning to real-world issues. As a part of the class, students conducted historical and archival research, spoke with Treitler and advisory committee members, and interviewed staff and students at CLV Waldsee. During the presentation, these students shared their experiences of “doing history,” rather than merely learning about history.

During the presentation, Hennes shared how the iso-immersion camp program was the brainchild of Concordia College professors Gerald Haukebo and Erhard Friedrichsmeyer, who initially chose the name Lager Waldsee, or “Camp Forest Lake” (the term “Lager,” also evocative of Nazi Concentration Camps, which, in German, are termed Konzentrationslager, was later dropped from the name). The camp first opened to students in the summer of 1961, the same week that the construction of the Berlin Wall began and in the midst of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the architects of the Holocaust. Though seemingly secluded in the Northwoods of Minnesota, Wentling said that she and her students soon discovered that Waldsee “was not isolated from the events that took place thousands of miles away in Germany and Israel.” While the division and reunification of Germany have loomed large at CLV Waldsee, the Holocaust has not been a regular aspect of the village’s programming.

Strootman discussed how the term Waldsee, used as a euphemism for Auschwitz by the Germans during the deportations of Hungarian Jews, was mostly unknown in the West due to Cold War-era divisions. Though, its use was undoubtedly known to many academics and survivors and started to emerge in more popular works by the mid-1990. Indeed, Imre Kertesz, the Hungarian writer and Holocaust survivor who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2002, referenced Waldsee in the opening pages of his semi-autobiographical novel Fateless, which, though published in 1975, first appeared in English translation in 1992). Kertesz wrote: “I am completely ignorant how (but some adults did discover it) we learned that our journey’s end was a place named Waldsee. When I was thirsty or hot, the promise contained in that name immediately invigorated me.” An exhibit created in 2004, “Waldsee 1944,” put the Nazi deception on display, showing postcards that Hungarian Jews who were deported to Auschwitz sent back to relatives postmarked “Waldsee.”

The lecture concluded with a discussion of CLV’s ongoing and future efforts to address the Waldsee name. Egan discussed how the “Waldsee 1944” exhibit was prominently displayed at Waldsee’s Biohaus during the summer of 2018, may become a permeant feature of the camp. Mans spoke about the possibility of including an empty postcard rack in Waldsee’s Laden (village store) with a sign that might read “ask us why we don’t sell postcards here.” It would seem, however, that there is some trepidation around changing the name of the village. “We have begun pulling at a loose thread—and that’s been good—but we don’t want to unravel the whole cloth,” says CLV Executive Director Christine Schulze. Though CLV Waldsee will retain its name, efforts will be made to ensure students and staff are aware of the history. Wentling praised CLV’s “commitment to address history rather than run away from it.” Indeed, in a second statement to the community of current and former staff and students, CLV outlined several steps that will be taken in the coming year to address the Waldsee name and Holocaust education at the village and within the programming.

I worked as a credit instructor at Waldsee in the summer of 2008. At the time, I remember being surprised by this authentic-seeming microcosm of German culture in northern Minnesota, including listening to the German-language radio station, using Euros at the camp’s bank and store, and eating European-style bread made by German apprentice bakers at each meal. In retrospect, however, Waldsee seemed to lack the notion of an Erinnerungskultur (Culture of Memory), which is often used synonymously with Holocaust remembrance in Germany and Austria. At CLV Waldsee, where simulations are often used to help students understand a divided Germany during the Cold War or the current refugee crisis facing Europe, no one seems to want to undertake simulations of the Holocaust, nor should they! Though Waldsee presents students with a rich academic experience, it is also a summer camp, which makes discussions of the Holocaust seem somewhat out of place, albeit necessary. Hopefully, what began as a discussion over a name will lead to a meaningful look at how to best integrate Holocaust education into the Waldsee experience.

Wentling and her students’ presentations brought together an audience of students, professors, and community members, many with ties to CLV Waldsee, at a moment when the University of Minnesota community is debating changing the names of several buildings on its Minneapolis campus. One hopes that such debates, while necessary, similarly extend into conversations around learning about and from the seemingly absent episodes of the United States, Minnesota and the University’s difficult history.

* The lecture was sponsored by Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies with support from the University of Minnesota’s Institute for Global Studies, Center for Jewish Studies, Center for German and European Studies, Center for Austrian Studies, Department of History, and Department of German, Nordic, Slavic, and Dutch, as well as the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas. 

George D. Dalbo is a Ph.D. student in Social Studies Education at the University of Minnesota with research interests in Holocaust, comparative genocide, and human rights education in secondary schools. Previously, he was a middle and high school social studies teacher, having taught every grade from 5th-12th in public, charter, and independent schools in Minnesota, as well as two years at an international school in Vienna, Austria.

Teaching about Genocide (Volume I), the first of a two-volume series edited by well-known Holocaust and genocide education scholar Samuel Totten, provides cogent, practical advice for those wishing to bring this difficult topic into their classrooms. The book builds on Totten’s previous work but is unique in its specific focus on combining insights from both secondary and post-secondary educators in each volume. Roughly half of the chapters were written by secondary educators, with the remaining composed by post-secondary professors and instructors. This combination helps to bridge the persistent gap between academic genocide studies research and secondary classroom teaching about genocide. Indeed, as a high school teacher of a semester-long comparative genocide studies course, I have often struggled to find ways to approach various aspects of genocide with my students. This volume both reaffirms the importance of genocide education while providing practical support for classroom teachers.

The necessity for such a work at this moment is clear. While the Holocaust, especially since the mid-1990s, has become a mainstay of American K-12 school curriculum, teaching about so-called “other” genocides or “genocides other than the Holocaust,” has become increasingly common across the country. Though, despite this trend, few resources exist for educators, who, are often left to teach such difficult topics with little content or pedagogical support.

Henry Friedlander, quoted in the introduction, writes: “The problem with too much being taught by too many without focus is that this poses the danger of destroying the subject matter through dilettantism. It is not enough for well-meaning teachers to feel a commitment to teach about [genocide] they also must know the subject.” This is particularly true of secondary educators who must be masters of, and adept at teaching, a huge breadth of content. Teaching about Genocide gives voice to those educators who have struggled to develop ways to teach about genocide in their classrooms to inspire their fellow educators.

The 22 chapters in the work are divided into two sections: “Insights and Advice from Secondary Level Teachers” and “Insights and Advice from College and University Professors.” Both sections begin with chapters providing general overviews and rationale for teaching about genocide before progressing to more-specific case studies. Minnesota high school teacher, and long-time collaborator with the CHGS, Nancy Ziemer’s, “Advice on Teaching About Genocide,” provides an overview and suggestions pulled from her 25 years of experience teaching about genocide, while my contribution, “Why Don’t We Talk About Rape?” offers rationale drawn from my classroom experience for teaching about sexualized violence in genocide. While the chapters don’t provide specific, structured lesson plans, authors pair descriptions of classroom experiences with resources, such as Gregory Stanton’s 10 Stages of Genocide, providing inspiration for teachers to create their own lessons suitable for their students and contexts. In short, both beginning and experienced teachers alike will find this book useful in their classroom practice.

The latter half of the book, devoted to advice from professors and university instructors, provides chapters from well know genocide scholars, such as Israel Charney, Ernesto Verdeja, and Kjell Anderson. Drawn from a number of academic fields and research/teaching contexts, these chapters extend and supplement earlier chapters, providing advice and insights that are equally appropriate and useful for secondary contexts. Indeed, Kimberley Ducey’s “Survivors of Sexual Violence in Rwanda Speak: A Letter-Writing Assignment to Combat Psychic Numbing” provides a lesson idea and classroom anecdotes that pairs with my chapter on teaching about sexual violence. This and many other chapters have already informed my own planning and found their way into my teaching. The book closes with an annotated bibliography, pulling together additional genocide education resources.

While the book’s focus on curricular and pedagogical insights for secondary and post-secondary educators seems a logical choice, as, in many cases, there is little intellectual or emotional divide between upper-level high school and college-level students, this work fails to address the growing need for resources at the elementary and middle school levels. While Totten and other scholars have written persuasively against teaching about the Holocaust and genocide to students in the elementary, A growing number of middle school students encounter such content each year, with states like New Jersey requiring Holocaust and genocide education for students in grades 5-8. Many of my colleagues have voiced the need for similar work addressing the specific pedagogical demands of teaching younger students.

Teaching about Genocide (Volume II) was also published in late 2018. The decision to publish a second volume in the series, thereby reducing the cost of both volumes, makes this an affordable book for educators.

George D. Dalbo is a Ph.D. student in Social Studies Education at the University of Minnesota with research interests in Holocaust, comparative genocide, and human rights education in secondary schools. Previously, he was a middle and high school social studies teacher, having taught every grade from 5^th-12^th in public, charter, and independent schools in Minnesota, as well as two years at an international school in Vienna, Austria.

Last week, two students from Minnetonka High School in suburban Minneapolis posted a photo of themselves giving a Nazi hand salute accompanied by an antisemitic sign. This incident is just the latest of a number of similar instances, with photos surfacing from Indiana and Wisconsin showing students giving the Nazi salute. Understandably, each case has sparked calls for more and better Holocaust education in schools. This latest photo prompts the question: what do students in Minnesota’s public schools learn about the Holocaust?

Gauging the state of Holocaust education in the United States is no easy task. The decentralized nature of American public schooling means that state departments of education, local districts, and individual classroom teachers decide what to teach and how it is taught. No comprehensive survey of the state of American Holocaust education exists, and such an assessment would be nearly impossible to conduct. The New York Times recently reported on an unsettling survey, which found that while the majority of Americans believe Holocaust education is important, many people, especially millennials, lack even a basic awareness of the history of the Holocaust. In 2013, Rhonda Fink-Whitman’s viral YouTube video showing American college student’s lack of knowledge of the Holocaust renewed a push for Holocaust education legislation in Pennsylvania and across the country. Indeed, Pennsylvania joined a growing list of states that have passed Holocaust education legislative mandates.

While no such mandate exists in Minnesota, the Holocaust is included in state social studies standards for both middle and high school students. One might reasonably assume that most students in public schools encounter the Holocaust at least once in the course of their education. Indeed, Minnetonka High School leadership, as well as the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas has reported that Minnetonka students do receive instruction in the Holocaust, and many students had even heard local survivor Judith Meisel speak during the last year. Indeed, Judith (Judy) Meisel also spoke last year with high school students in my comparative genocide and human rights elective course about her experience during the Holocaust, as well as her later involvement in the civil rights movement in Philadelphia during the 1960s. Judy spoke very powerfully about the dangers of both antisemitism and racism. Though a powerful experience for my students, without the context of the history of the Holocaust and other the genocides we’d been studying all semester, I wonder what my students would have taken away from Judy’s talk if it had been their only exposure to the Holocaust. Perhaps, in light of the photos that have surfaced, we should not only be calling for more but better, more purposeful Holocaust education in Minnesota and across the country. Though in the midst of making such calls, we should bear in mind that what’s needed is more robust education on the history of the Holocaust, rather than lessons solely focused on tolerance.

Too often it seems that in classroom practice, the history of the Holocaust is eschewed in favor of lessons that aim to shock or moralize, to instill in students, according to Holocaust education researcher Simone Schweber, “the moral lessons most people want conveyed to students from rigorous study of that history – that racism is abhorrent, that interceding on behalf of the unjustly oppressed is necessary, and that every single person can make a difference in the world.” While, on the surface, these are admirable educational outcomes, Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer writes that “the Holocaust is too often turned into vague lessons of the danger of hatred or prejudice at the expense of really trying to understand the reasons and motivations for the genocide.” Though it seems an obvious statement, in order for Holocaust education to be effective, it must be done well; students must learn about the history of the Holocaust, its antecedents, the breakdown of the democratic state, the mechanisms of othering and persecution, and its aftermath. It is also important to remember that, even when it is done well, Holocaust education is not a panacea for all of the ills of contemporary society, but it can, in conjunction with learning about other topics, help create more knowledgeable, thoughtful, and tolerant students.

To be clear, the photo posted by two Minnetonka High School students is repugnant. It speaks to the need for more and better Holocaust education in Minnesota. Students need more exposure to the history of the Holocaust. Single-day lessons and isolated visits from Holocaust survivors, while powerful experiences, will likely do little to educate students about the roots of the Holocaust and help them recognize and challenge contemporary antisemitism. In our calls for more Holocaust education, we should also call for more teacher support. Teachers need increased professional development, especially social studies and English language arts teachers, who in Minnesota, are not required to learn about the Holocaust or Holocaust education as a part of licensure. Most states that pass Holocaust education mandates go on to fund the creation of a robust curriculum for students, increase funding and opportunities for teacher professional development, and develop partnerships with Holocaust museums and educational organizations. Perhaps it is time for Minnesota to consider a Holocaust education mandate.

Editor’s Note: For over 20 years, the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies has offered world class resources and workshops for educators looking to bring lessons about genocide and mass violence into their classrooms.

George Dalbo is a Ph.D. student in Social Studies Education at the University of Minnesota with research interests in Holocaust, comparative genocide, and human rights education in secondary schools. Previously, he was a middle and high school social studies teacher, having taught every grade from 5^th-12^th in public, charter, and independent schools in Minnesota, as well as two years at an international school in Vienna, Austria.

One hundred years ago this month, facing defeat and pressure from the Allied powers than won WW I, the Ottomans began attributing blame for the massacre of its Armenian and Greek citizens. Putting the Three Pashas (Talat, Enver & Djemal) on trial with other leaders of the Committee of Union and Progress, the Turkish Military Tribunals found the defendants guilty and sentenced to death. However, , the Pashas were able to flee Turkey and escape punishment (for some time, at least). The allies, frustrated by the perceived ineffectualness of the Turkish courts, in turn established the Malta Court to prosecute war criminals. By 1922, though, the Turkish defendants were repatriated to Turkey, largely due to the absence of a legal framework for prosecution. The lack of justice from the international community would spur a young Raphael Lemkin toward a lifelong goal of pursuing legal safeguards to prevent massacres like those of the Armenians from reoccurring.

In a 1949 broadcast interview, Lemkin said “As a lawyer, I thought that a crime should not be punished by the victims, but should be punished by a court, by international law,”  He first coined the term ‘genocide’ in 1944 in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. That framework would be used to help prosecute Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg Tribunal . In 1948, Lemkin had largely fulfilled his goal when the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the document enshrining much of the jurisprudence he had seen lacking more than two decades before. On December 9th last year, the Genocide Convention marked its 70th anniversary.

Although the Genocide Convention was passed in 1948, it would not be until 1998 when it was used in force by an international tribunal when Jean-Paul Akayesu was convicted for genocide and crimes against humanity for crimes committed in Taba, Rwanda where Akayesu was mayor.  Since then, the Genocide Convention has been used by courts around the world to prosecute perpetrators of mass violence, including international courts and tribunals established in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia and Cambodia. Courts elsewhere have convicted individuals, either using universal jurisdiction (as with the trial of Adolfo Scilingo, who was convicted in 2005 by Spanish Courts for crimes against humanity for his role in Argentina’s State terror against political dissidents in the 1970s. A charge of genocide was eventually dropped) or by a state addressing crimes (as with the 2001 conviction of Petras Raslanas by a Latvian court for his role in a 1941 massacre while a member of the NKVD).

While courts continue to prosecute genocide and test its legal boundaries, scholars have continually explored definitions beyond the one inscribed in the UNGC, for instance including terms such as politicide or feminicide . They have also studied ways to predict and thus prevent genocide. In 1996, Gregory Stanton published his landmark work “The Eight Stages of Genocide” which charted the gradual steps towards genocide. Since then, several agencies, including the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and Aegis Trust, have invested countless resources in predicting genocide around the globe. Today, scholars are looking towards Lemkin’s more expansive definition of genocide to better understand crimes of the past, and provide a better framework for understanding events unfolding today. The massive devastation of sites around Iraq and Syria at the hands of ISIS recently have provided a sobering reminder of Lemkin’s description of a crime that robs the affected communities, and humanity, as whole of cultural treasures, and adds an incentive for bridging the divide between academic study of genocide and its legal definition.

Seventy years since it’s adoption, the Genocide Convention remains a testament to the perseverance of one man’s vision for the protection of the physical and cultural integrity of the group under international law. Lemkin’s concept and the law that followed has been used by victims around the world to call attention to the crimes and trauma experienced by countless communities. Far from set in stone, our idea of genocide will likely continue to evolve to meet contemporary challenges.

Joe Eggers is the Research and Outreach Coordinator for the Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies. His master’s thesis explore differences between Lemkin’s original concept of genocide and the one found in the Genocide Convention.