Click here to read the rest of this exhibit review at caa.reviews.

Sheer Ganor is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Minnesota. A historian of German-speaking Jewry and modern Germany, her work focuses on the nexus of forced migration, memory, and cultural identities.

Originally a 2018 collaboration between the Yeshiva University Museum and Leo Baeck Institute (both located at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan), the exhibition created an outpouring of public interest around the Kindertransport’s 80th anniversary and led to the donation of numerous items that have since ended up on companion sites.

Following “Kristallnacht” on November 9th, 1938, the Kindertransport, as it came to be known, relocated approximately 10,000 Jewish children from Nazi Germany (which, by late 1938 included Austria and the Sudetenland), Czechoslovakia, Danzig, and Poland. Most of the children arrived in Great Britain, which had the most open policies regarding refugee children. Sweden and other countries, with stricter quotas, still accepted a few hundred children until the outbreak of the war in September 1939. The Kindertransport is credited with saving the lives of approximately 10,000 children from what would have been certain death during the Holocaust. An estimated 1-1.5 million Jewish children were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. 

Susie Greenberg, associate director of Holocaust education for the JCRC of Minnesota and the Dakotas said in an article for TC Jewfolk, “[The exhibit] was not meant to be a traveling show…We were researching ways to educate more about the Kindertransport. This was an amazing opportunity.”

Because the majority of the Kindertransport children never saw their parents again, it is clear from the letters and artifacts that many of the children were left traumatized — with accounts of painful family separations, harsh immigration policies, and abusive conditions once in countries like the UK — experiences that refugees are experiencing in similar ways all over the world today. It was thus not uncommon for survivors to remain silent about the trauma of child separation and the murder of their parents, and the exhibit points to survivors who rarely (if ever) spoke of this moment in their lives for decades. 

The exhibition consists of the main display located on the ground floor, with additional items located in the Turnblad Mansion that highlight Minnesota Kindertransport survivors. 

The array of items, the Minnesota connections made, and the exhibition design are its main strengths. A wall of blank tags spanning one entire wall of the exhibition space represents the identification documents the children wore around their necks. In addition, personal effects from the children, some of which have never been publicly exhibited before, include prayer books, school supplies, correspondence, and other items. This range of both conceptual art and artifacts speaks to the symbolic and interpretive role such objects play for the stories we impart — as fewer and fewer Kindertransport survivors remain alive.

The exhibition will remain open at ASI until October 31st, 2021.

Meyer Weinshel is a Ph.D. candidate in Germanic studies at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, where he is the educational outreach and special collections coordinator for the UMN Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. In addition to being an instructor of German studies, he has also taught Yiddish coursework with Minneapolis-based Jewish Community Action and at the Ohio State University.

It is a question that graduate students on the Politics of Numbers in Genocide Studies and Memory Debates panel grappled with earlier this month at the Mass Violence and Human Rights (MVHR) graduate student workshop. MVHR (formerly the Holocaust, Genocide, and Mass Violence) is an interdisciplinary working group of graduate students from across the university interested in sharing and collaborating on genocide and mass violence research. In the first panel of its kind, the MVHR students from Sociology, History, and French & Italian Studies from both the University of Minnesota and Michigan State University weighed in on the problems associated with numbers when examining the crime of genocide. 

The panel began with a discussion of the genocide of Native Americans in North America and the challenge of recognizing a genocide without numbers. Unlike other episodes of genocide, the genocide of Indigenous people does not have a definitive beginning and endpoint. The vague timeline of the genocide is coupled with the Federal government’s policies that targeted specific tribes while not being a blanket policy toward all tribes, meaning tribes experience genocide at a different time and in different ways at different periods. Can the genocide of Indigenous people be thought of as a single genocide toward a target people or a series of smaller genocides over a longer period of time? And without precise numbers, how do we commemorate the genocide or genocides?

Next was the debate through an analysis of Rwanda – where the dominant Tutsi population of Rwanda today has come to dominate how the state remembers and commemorates the genocide, at the expense of the Hutu victims who were killed during the fighting. This raises an important challenge in genocide studies – that the group with the largest number of victims gets to claim victimhood preeminence over other groups, inevitably altering how the genocide itself is framed. In the case of Rwanda, this has led to a strict narrative of genocide rather than the events in the context of a wider civil war. 

Similarly, they examined the wars in the former Yugoslavia, an area now broken up into seven different countries following the collapse of Yugoslavia. Within a confined region, there are seven different memories of the region’s mass violence, each conflicting with one another. In addition to these differing memories of past violence, there are competing actors vying for victimhood position, attempting to discredit the experience and memory of groups in the region. In the case of the Balkans, victims statistics are the currency for competing positions of victimhood, with each state continually revising its own number of victims. Beyond the impact this has on interstate relationships between former adversaries, this has the effect of impeding reconciliation efforts between neighbors, where perpetrators and victims still live in close proximity to one another. 

Finally, the panel was concluded by an exploration of Holodomor. The case of the Holodomor was explored through two lenses: in comparison with the Holocaust and its position as Soviet & post-Soviet propaganda. To the first point, the Holodomor, historically, has been overshadowed by the Holocaust, both in recognition and scope. It’s something that can be found in other episodes of genocide. It’s the idea that genocide is the crime of all crimes, and genocide, with its intent to destroy in whole or in part, is worse than other forms of mass violence — even if resulting in more deaths.

In addition, the Holodomor has been the victim of politicization for decades, both during the height of the USSR and finally in the 1990s when Ukraine gained its independence. Because of this, the victim numbers of the Holodomor have expanded and shrunk depending on the need at a particular moment and which body was doing the calculating. Because of this, the number of victims of the famine has expanded and shrunk significantly over the decades. Holodomor casualties, and victimhood itself, has been a pawn to meet particular narratives at given moments. 

With the highest attendance of any MVHR workshop this semester, the panel prompted a lively conversation regarding the politics of numbers and naming. Students and faculty grappled with the questions posed by the panelists, and some posed their own. For example, participants discussed the difficulty researchers face when recognizing other kinds of victims during mass violence, such as victims of the wars in Yugoslavia that were not genocide victims or Hutu victims of the Rwanda civil war — also not to be mistaken for genocide victims. These efforts to name and recognize other victims and victim groups can be misinterpreted as unsympathetic, or worse, genocide denial. 

We look forward to exploring these cases and questions in the weeks to come with authored posts from each of the panelists.

On its surface, Cambodia appears to be rapidly improving. I spent two days in Siem Reap, the gateway to the famed Angkor Wat complex, before heading to Phnom Penh for the conference. The city boasted a lively marketplace, plenty of Western-friendly shops and restaurants, and a seemingly booming construction business. Phnom Penh was largely the same. Neon lights illuminated the night skies, and KFC restaurants dotted the streets. Although fewer in number than in Siem Reap, college aged backpackers weren’t uncommon in the capital city. I had seen enough travel shows in preparation for my trip to expect this. Anthony Bourdain remarked that his first trip to Cambodia was a terrible experience, owing largely to the lack of basic infrastructure, but just ten years later, he found the country had improved dramatically. Given that the conference was ten years later still, I had come expecting to see even more economic growth.

To some extent, that investment has come. Cambodia is the recipient of significant international investment; millions of dollars have come pouring in from China, Vietnam, the U.S., and elsewhere, promising jobs and much-needed infrastructure improvements. In theory, it should be a great time to be in Cambodia: its economy is one of the fastest-growing in Southeast Asia, and its human development index score has nearly doubled since the fall of the Khmer Rouge. But scratch beneath the surface a little, and it’s not all that it appears to be. While life in Cambodia is comfortable if you’re an urban elite, the economic boom has mostly left the rural Cambodians behind. The foreign investment has come with serious strings attached. Rumors have spread that a Vietnamese company is now controlling Angkor Wat and sending profits out of Cambodia, an agreement that would give oversight of the country’s most precious cultural treasure to a foreign company. Many of the new hotels that promised foreign tourists to the country sit mostly empty, and the ones that are open limit the accessibility for Cambodian merchants to interact with tourists. The Cambodians I talked to see this boom as largely a bust for them.

To rural Cambodians, the blame can primarily be placed at the feet of the government. Although public dissent is met with swift retaliation from the government, privately, the Cambodians I encountered were more than willing to share their frustrations with the ruling Cambodian People’s Party. The political party has dominated the country’s political landscape for decades and has functionally ruled Cambodia as an authoritarian single-party state since elections in late 2017. Before the genocide, the Cambodian People’s Party had been a communist party, formed to combat French colonial authority. A split with Pol Pot in the 1970s led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge and ultimately, genocide. Today, many of the party’s leaders were formerly connected to the Khmer Rouge. Prime Minister Hun Sen was battalion commander under the Khmer Rouge who fled to Vietnam during one of the purges under the regime.

A standard critique of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (the tribunal system established to bring the leaders of the Khmer Rouge to justice) is its narrow scope. Only five trials were scheduled, and only four were held. It wasn’t until I traveled to Cambodia that I realized how valid this particular criticism is. Traveling through a country with the pains of genocide still so clear, led by an authoritarian Prime Minister with a direct connection to the perpetrators of genocide, I can help but wonder: is this what resiliency and progress are really meant to look like? 

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

The largest conference on memory studies to date, the program featured a keynote lecture from Aleida Assman (University of Konstanz) and Viet Thanh Nguyen (USC) and multiple roundtables and special sessions, like the one on “Memory Traditions around the World”, which included our colleague Iyekiyapiwin Darlene St. Clair (St. Cloud State University). Attendees also had the opportunity to hear from prominent scholars on topics such as publishing, careers in memory studies, institutional memory politics, and memory activism. These roundtables were especially helpful for graduate students and gave them the opportunity to interact with scholars like Jeffrey Olick, Barbie Zelizer, Astrid Erll, Daniel Levy, Marianne Hirsch, and Michael Rothberg. With over 200 panels, attendees were treated to a comprehensive look at the state of memory studies today.

In addition to scholars from around the globe, our very own graduate students and professors participated in this year’s conference. From second-year PhD students to established professors, the Minnesota contingent did a fantastic job showcasing their work and participating in discussions concerning the future of memory studies. The strong presence of UMN scholars from various departments across CLA demonstrates not only its interdisciplinary nature but the importance of the field. Through their own scholarly work and support of graduate students, professors such as Alejandro Baer (Director, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies), Joachim Savelsberg (Sociology), and Ofelia Ferrán (Spanish and Portuguese) have ensured that students are constantly thinking about the critical role of memory in historical, socio-political and literary scholarship. 

List of Presenters and Papers:

Alejandro Baer: “De-colonizing Columbus? Spain’s resistance to a “Politics of Regret.”

Ofelia Ferrán: “Francesc Torres: The Performance of Trauma.”

Joachim Savelsberg: Roundtable, “American Exceptionalism in Memory Politics.” 

Darlene St. Clair (St. Cloud State University): Roundtable, “Connecting Memory Traditions around the World.” 

Michal Kobialka: “Of Awkward Objects and Collateral Memories.”

Christopher Levesque: ‘Denkmäler der Scand’ in Charlottesville and Berlin: Comparing Far-Right Populism and Collective Memory in the American and German Context.”

Taylor Nelson: “American before Anything Else: Race and Responsibility in the U.S. Peace Corps.”

Erma Nezirevic: “Pedir un café puede costarte la vida”: Phobias of Democracy in (Post-) Crisis Spain

Jazmine Contreras: “‘We do not commemorate perpetrators’: The Politics of Memory at the May 4th Remembrance Day Commemoration in the Netherlands.”

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.

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.

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.

Speakers from each community emphasized a commonality between all three religions, whether a shared history of victimization or a shared theology. Each community has a tragic history, histories that Fr. Tadeos, the priest of the Armenian Church, wished would remain in the past. However, he emphasized that the Coptic Church continues to experience these tragedies today.

Fr. Youannes, the Coptic Orthodox priest, reminded attendees of the 2015 beheading of 20 Copts and a Ghanaian by ISIS on a Libyan beach, the Botrossiya bombing of 2016, and the 2017 massacre of Christians on their way to the monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor. To Fr. Youannes and the Coptic Church, these events are understood as merely a continuation of the persecution faced by Christians over the course of many centuries. “This will continue,” he said.

While the identity of the Armenian, Jewish, and Coptic communities are influenced by the memory of persecution, Coptic identity is additionally informed by unrelenting victimization. The Jewish and Armenian communities talked about their genocides in “never again” terms, demanding justice, recognition, and an end to continued discrimination, but the Coptic Church perceives ongoing violence and martyrdom to be a core part of their identity, and one that is predicted to never ease.

Alejandro Baer, director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota, and Daniel Wildeson, director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education at St. Cloud State University both spoke about the various different ways humans can respond to past genocides and a contemporary global crisis of hate. Wildeson shared some recommendations he had received about making individual personal choices: Turn inward (separate yourself from the internet; build an underground bunker) or turn outward (build bridges, be friendly). Though difficult, he believes in the power of community, courage and hope to deepen understanding. Baer spoke of the necessity for academics to study the causes and conditions of mass violence, with the goal of using such information to prevent future atrocities. He also emphasized the importance of remembrance: “remembering victims will be more meaningful and effective if we do this together, across group and communal boundaries; if we move beyond this happened to us to this happened to so many, and continues to happen today.”

Steve Hunegs, from the Jewish Community Relations Council, also urged the three communities to recognize that although the Holocaust, genocide, and terrorism are central to each of their experiences, they should not let these events define them. Instead, he urged each community to focus on moving forward in strength and in solidarity. This sentiment was echoed by all the speakers as they considered the importance of community in the wake of violence, while pointing to this event as a symbol of continued hope and solidarity.

Miray Philips is a Ph.D. student in Sociology where she studies narratives of violence and suffering, collective memory, and knowledge production on conflict in the Middle East and North Africa. Miray was the 2016-17 Badzin Fellow.

Here are a few selections that may pique your interest:

Dodging Bullets

Dodging Bullets examines the contemporary issues affecting the lives of Native people through the lense of intergenerational trauma. Going beyond the history of Native peoples’ first encounters with Europeans, the films highlights the continued racism and disenfranchisement communities continue to face to this day.

Hitler’s Hollywood

Hitler’s Hollywood examines the Third Reich’s infatuation with Hollywood cinema and its deliberate attempts to emulate it. Rüdiger Suchsland’s film looks at the Nazi era’s lasting influence on German film and its impact on today’s work.

Indian Horse

Indian Horse’s titular character is an eight year old Ojibwe-Anishinabe boy who is sent to one of Canada’s Catholic residential schools. Barred from using his language and expressing his culture, Indian Horse finds solace through playing hockey. The film is based on the novel by one of Canada’s most famous indigenous authors, Richard Wagamese.

Ohiyesa: The Soul of an Indian

Ohiyesa is the the story of George Eastman, a renowned lecturer, physician and Native American rights activist. In this film, Eastman’s descendents, including MN alum Kate Beane, document his life and the impressive legacy he leaves today.

Risking Light

Risking Light is filmmaker Dawn Mikkelson’s in-depth exploration of forgiveness. From Cambodia to Australia, the film examines how people can forgive the seeming unforgivable, including two survivors of Australia’s lost generation.

With hundreds of films to choose from, the next two weeks are sure to be a cinephile’s dream. Happy watching!

“A Holocaust video game!” exclaimed the man sitting to my left with an alarmed look on his face. Professor Wulf Kansteiner, in a keynote address, had just suggested both the inevitability and the necessity of such a video game in his argument for expanded tolerance towards the shifting nature of Holocaust narratives in societal consciousness and education. Indeed, half the audience gathered at the three-day Holocaust education conference, “Near but Far: Holocaust Education Revisited,” in Munich, Germany seemed incensed by the idea of a video game about the Holocaust. The other half – a mix of professors, teachers, and site educators – nodded their heads, if not in approval, perhaps knowing that the future of Holocaust education, as outlined by Kansteiner, is already emerging. Indeed, such games are making a tentative foray into an industry whose revenues have surpassed those of the movie industry for more than a decade.

The conference, part of a larger project exploring contemporary trends in Holocaust education in Germany and beyond, hosted researchers and practitioners from all over the world at Ludwig-Maximilians University. Throughout the conference, familiar tensions emerged between the particularity and sanctity versus the universality and normalization of the Holocaust in public consciousness and education. By and large, the German academics and teachers seemed more conservative in their approaches to Holocaust education, resisting trends towards de-contextualization and dehistoricization, while American colleagues seemed more willing to embrace shifting Holocaust narratives, which, on more than one occasion, were described as part of the “Americanization” of the Holocaust.

Perhaps most provocative were the sessions exploring how technology is changing how students learn about the Nazi atrocities. With a note of caution, treading a middle ground between his German and U.S. colleagues, Canadian Professor Scott Murray reviewed current practices in Holocaust testimony. Murray challenged participants to think about the ethical and moral questions raised by the Shoah Foundation’s New Dimensions in Testimony Project. The program creates interactive avatars of Holocaust survivors, which are capable of responding to students’ questions. Many attendees wondered if the Shoah Foundation’s interactive avatars would soon replace practices of bringing survivors to visit classrooms or taking students to sites like the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site and the  Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism.

Highlighting the power of survivor testimony, Abba Naor, a Holocaust survivor living between Israel and Germany, spoke to a rapt audience, including many students from the university’s pedagogy department. Following his moving talk, German students in the audience pressed Naor about his relationship with Germany and the Germans. Noar spoke neither of animosity nor goodwill, but rather of a complicated relationship and an overwhelming compulsion to share his personal story with students. After attending many sessions over the three days of the conference that effectively explored the nuances of Germany and Germans’ complicated relationships with the Holocaust, Naor’s story and comments on his own relationship to Germany seemed to ground such research. Naor, who will soon turn 90 years old, further highlighted the nearing moment when survivors will have all passed away.

As a new Ph.D. student just beginning my studies, Near but Far: Holocaust Education Revisited, helped highlight the tensions and directions within the growing field of Holocaust education. Colleagues from Spain, Israel, Brazil, and India demonstrated the differences in national approaches to Holocaust education, but also the increasing number of similarities as the effects of globalization assert themselves on the field. Despite much talk of the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the developments within Holocaust studies in the ensuing almost 30 years since the end of the Cold War, interestingly, yet perhaps unsurprisingly, few sessions made any mention of the Holocaust in the East, the so-called “Holocaust by bullets.” Poland’s recent Holocaust legislation, criminalizing any speech that implicates Poles in the murder of Jews, further highlights the need for research into the Holocaust and Holocaust education in Eastern Europe.

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 5th-12th in public, charter, and independent schools in Minnesota, as well as two years at an international school in Vienna, Austria.