Abstract
Shachar’s chapter explores the educational philosophy of Yad LaYeled, the only children’s Holocaust memorial museum in the world, which is located in Israel. The chapter describes in detail how Yad LaYeled incorporates various media as pedagogical tools in order to construct young visitors’ personal and collective memory of the Holocaust. The main focus of the chapter is the educational programs developed at Yad LaYeled that incorporate child survivor testimony. Shachar presents a case study of a creative writing workshop based on the story of a child survivor, followed by a discussion on how art workshops in Yad LaYeled provide a communicative language that encourage critical thinking and empathy, as well as facilitate learning the complex events of the Holocaust.
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Notes
- 1.
Susan Sontag, Regarding the pain of others (London, 2004), 77.
- 2.
See Dominik LaCapra, Writing trauma, writing history (Baltimore, 2001), and Hayden White, The modernist event in V.C. Sobchack (ed.), The persistence of history: Cinema, television and the modern event (New York and London, 1996), pp. 17–38.
- 3.
Jennifer Hansen-Glucklich, Holocaust memory reframed: Museums and the challenges of representation (Rutgers University, 2014), (pp. 19–20).
- 4.
Silke Arnold-de Simine, Mediating memory in the museum: Trauma, empathy, nostalgia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), p. 11.
- 5.
Kit Messham-Muir, ‘Dark visitations: The possibilities and problems of experience and memory in Holocaust museums’. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, 5(1) (2004), 97–112.
- 6.
For more on-line information about ‘Remember the Children: Daniel’s Story’: https://www.ushmm.org/information/exhibitions/museum-exhibitions/remember-the-children-daniels-story
- 7.
For more online information about ‘The Journey’ exhibition: https://www.nationalholocaustcentre.net/journey-exhibition
- 8.
This chapter deals specifically with Yad LaYeled’s exhibition ‘The Jewish child during the Holocaust’. For more online information about the museum and the exhibition: http://www.gfh.org.il/eng/?CategoryID=362
- 9.
Paul Salmons, ‘Moral dilemmas: History, teaching and the Holocaust’. Teaching History 104 (2001), pp. 34–41.
- 10.
Dan Porat, ‘From scandal to the Holocaust in Israel education’. Journal of Contemporary History 39 (2004), pp. 619–636.
- 11.
The Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day in Israel was established by law in Israel 1953 and is recognized on the Hebrew date 27 of Nissan (April/May). The first commemoration day was on April 19, 1949, on the founding day of the Ghetto Fighters’ Kibbutz and Museum in recognition of the sixth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during the Holocaust. Because the uprising started on the first day of Passover, the date of the memorial day was moved forward 8 days.
- 12.
The Ministry of Education in Israel created a new Holocaust curriculum in Hebrew for K-12 called ‘In the Paths of Memory’ (‘B’shvilai Hazikaron’) in conjunction with Holocaust institutions in Israel, including the Ghetto Fighters’ House: (http://cms.education.gov.il/EducationCMS/UNITS/Moe/Shoa/hpnew.htm).
- 13.
Batya Brutin, ‘Hora’at HaShoah B’beit sefer yisodi b’Israel: Sugiot v’Etgarim’ in Nitza Davidowitz & Dan Suan (eds.), Zikron HaShoah: Questions and challenges (Ariel, 2011), p. 298.
- 14.
Julia Resnik, ‘‘Sites of memory’ of the Holocaust: Sha** national memory in the education system in Israel’. Nations and Nationalism 9(2) (2003), 297–317. There are two major Holocaust museums in Israel, Yad Vashem, which is the national museum, and the Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum on Kibbutz Lohamei Haghetaot. There are also two smaller institutions with exhibitions, Massuah Institute for Holocaust Studies, located on Kibbutz Tel Yitzhak, and Yad Mordechai Museum, on Kibbutz Yad Mordechai.
- 15.
To read more about the development of Yad LaYeled, see Nadav Heidecker, ‘Yad LaYeled at the Ghetto Fighters’ House: A museum about children in the Holocaust or a museum for children about the Holocaust?’ Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust, https://doi.org/10.1080/23256249.2016.1240845 or go to the museum’s website: http://www.gfh.org.il/eng/?CategoryID=362
- 16.
Susan Rubin Suleiman, ‘The 1.5 generation: Thinking about child survivors and the Holocaust’. American Imago 59(3) (2002), p. 291.
- 17.
All of the booklets that Lienke received from her father were on loan at the Yad LaYeled museum, at which time they were translated into Hebrew and professional facsimiles were created for the purpose of the workshop created on the basis of Nili Goren’s story of hiding during the Holocaust. The translation of the Hebrew into English is by the author [M.S].
- 18.
Catherine Hughes, Museum theatre: Communicating with visitors through drama (Portsmouth, 1998).
- 19.
Anthony Jackson and Helen Rees Leahy, ‘“Seeing it for real?…?”—Authenticity, theatre and learning in museums’. Research in Drama Education, 10(3) (2005), 303–325.
- 20.
Sandra H. Dudley (ed.), Museum objects: Experiencing the properties of things (London and New York, 2012).
- 21.
All documentation of letters from students and from Nili Goren is located in the Yad LaYeled museum.
- 22.
John H. Falk and Lynn D. Dierking, The museum experience revisited (Left Coast Press, 2013), p. 24.
- 23.
This is a nonpublished survey by Tali Chipalsky from 2015. The questionnaires (in Hebrew) and all the survey results are available at Yad LaYeled.
- 24.
More information on theater programs at Yad LaYeled can be found on the museum’s website: http://gfh.org.il/eng/?CategoryID=96&ArticleID=701
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Shachar, M. (2018). Holocaust Education in the Museum Space: An Israeli Perspective. In: Szejnmann, CC., Cowan, P., Griffiths, J. (eds) Holocaust Education in Primary Schools in the Twenty-First Century. The Holocaust and its Contexts. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73099-8_10
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