Student I-witness--2012 Holocaust Field School

Participants in UVic's 2nd annual I-witness Holocaust Field School (Berlin, Warsaw, Cracow, Prague) returned from Central Europe in June 2012 with a collection of photographs hinting at the life-changing experience overseas.

Click here to view the photo essay.

Several participants also provided "notes from the field." The group of UVic students, led by program director and UVic professor Dr. Charlotte Schalli&e#180;, arrived in Berlin on May 14. These three despatches were sent from Europe on May 27 exclusively for The Ring, in addition to the blog posts while the group was overseas. They returned home on June 3.

The field school was launched last year by UVic's Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies as the only course of its kind offered to undergraduate students at a Canadian university. More info

Click here for last year's coverage, which also included a photo essay and blog excerpts.

Observations on Holocaust Memorials, by Myriam Gerber

Over the past 10 days we have visited a number of different sites as part of our field school: we started in Berlin and visited various memorial sites, among them the former concentration camp Sachsenhausen. From Berlin, we travelled by plane to Krakow and visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial site.

For the first part of our journey much of our discussion focused on the various problematic aspects of memorialization: the different national narratives around the memorialization of the Holocaust, the 'effectiveness' of memorials we had visited, the subtleties of absences or the overt presence of information in other sites. Naturally, before and during our journey we were and are engaging in discussions about our responses and perceptions of different approaches to Holocaust memorialization.

When our group visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau site we all fell silent. There was nothing anybody could have said in face of the sheer physicality of both information and absence in this place. And yet, surrounding the dust roads, the few remaining buildings and the ruins of the crematoria were lush summer meadows sprinkled with wild flowers, and birds singing in the rustling birch trees, which inspired the Nazis to give this place its name: Birkenau. The warm air smelled of the freshly-cut grass and the wind, which seems to constantly gust over the rolling hills, carried the laughter of groups of young people across the grounds. We stood at the remains of the gas chamber and crematoria in which 75 per cent of the new arrivals were murdered without ever being registered; their names, lives and dreams resolved to ashes and smoke. As we stood at the site the fine dust which the wind continually whips over the site covered our feet.

And yet, on this hot beautiful day in May, the birds were singing in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Did they also sing during the early summer of 1944 when approximately 440,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered at this site? The contrast between this darkest place and the beauty of the surroundings could hardly have been more overt.

Observations on Holocaust Memorials, by Amy Cot&e#180;

Last week in Krak&o#180;w, twelve of us had the privilege to attend a lecture by Dr. Jonathan Webber at the Jagiellonian University alongside 50 other international students. The purpose of our I-witness field school is to study the Holocaust and its memorialization across central and eastern Europe, but I did not anticipate encountering the value of international education on such a microcosmic scale. It is one thing to visit Berlin's countless monuments or stumble through the museum at the former Schindler factory-it is another entirely to sit around a small table with students from France, the US, Spain, Germany, Poland, Singapore, Poland, and Canada, addressing complex questions: Do Holocaust sites help or hinder education about historical realities? What kinds of personal relationships do visitors establish with these sites? What are monuments trying to achieve?

Our field school participants are undeniably diverse, but the conversation I had with two students from Poland opened my eyes to how homogenous our opinions really can be at times. Upon arrival in Krak&o#180;w, I was shocked by the beauty and variety of the sounds, smells, and colours: one of my peers expressed a similar feeling, and attributed it to the fact that our Canadian exposure to Poland is usually limited to black and white photography from the 1940s. Three days-or three minutes-in Krak&o#180;w is more than enough to expose this as a complete miscomprehension. I mentioned our experiences to our Polish peers, and they affirmed that this was a common response. They expressed frustration with the fact that so many see Poland only as the site of the Second World War and the Holocaust, totally neglecting its rich history and its contemporary culture. Seeing that life really does go on in and around the physical reality of genocide and speaking with two local students who encounter material history every single day severely complicates my own reaction to Holocaust education and memorials. I became acutely aware of my own position as a visitor to this country and of how little I really understand what it would be to live in a place that so many view as a giant graveyard. Hearing the frustration in my classmates' voices made me reflect on my own egocentric condemnation of how different countries are struggling to come to terms with the past.

I came to Krak&o#180;w expecting to attend a lecture on Holocaust education and pedagogy in Poland: I didn't expect to experience an education of my own. When I arrived in Krak&o#180;w, I was appalled to see people walking their dogs on the former site of Plaz&o#180;w concentration camp. Now, the apprehension remains, but I am forced to ask tough questions about why people perceive these sorts of actions as acceptable or unacceptable, and what influences inform my own reactions. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that the main lesson of (international) education is the realization of how limited my perspective is and how much there is to learn from other people.

Observations on Holocaust Memorials, by Ray Illsley

A visit to the Oskar Schindler Museum elicited cries of scorn and disbelief from many of our group over the Disneyesque interpretation of life for the Jews of Krakow before, during and after the war. Curious as to what previous visitors had thought of the museum, I scoured the reviews. It appears that most people are disappointed there is not more information about Oskar Schindler, the man deified in Spielberg's 1993 movie Schindler's List, rather than why and how the Jews of Krakow were reduced from 60,000 to a mere 2,000 over the course of the war.

An example of this came from an online review which stated "The Schindler Museum was one of the most moving, poignant experiences on our trip. We later visited Auschwitz-Birkenau, a similar experience, but the Schindler Museum was the peak of our trip."

We visited Auschwitz-Birkenau the next day. I can certainly say that it was one of the most moving experiences of my own life, and I am horrified that anybody could make such a statement (above). It gave me cause to wonder why people visit Holocaust memorial sites and museums. I have a strong suspicion that there are many that do so out of prurient interest, to observe, as Dr. Jonathan Webber put it, "The pornography of violence."

Among the many very different Holocaust memorials we were able to visit on our journey through Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic, I personally connected most with the Stumbling Stones I saw in Berlin. (More on Stolpersteine) These stones are placed as a remembrance outside of the houses where Jews who were deported, and in many cases murdered, had spent their lives. They are a part of the cobblestoned streets and pedestrians are very likely to notice them, especially if they step on them.

By contrast the Schindler museum in Krakow has a huge exhibit of everything that Nazism stands for, complete with floor tiles embossed with swastikas. Ironically, by walking over them visitors are supposed to feel that they are stamping out Nazism. Unfortunately the floor only enhances the massive images of Nazis at war, complete with huge flags, uniforms and other memorabilia. Far from presenting a historical view of the Third Reich it felt to me more like an homage to Nazism.

Much of the museum resembles a movie set. Representations of deportations are set in a corridor featuring a copy of the ghetto wall, with the sounds of trudging footsteps and snarling dogs. The section of the museum which is supposed to represent Auschwitz-Birkenau, which consists of a short section of a mock barb-wired fence and writing on the wall behind, fails on a spectacular level, bearing no resemblance to the camp at all. As previously stated, most visitors, according to the reviews I researched, come to the museum to see aspects of Oscar Schindler's life, having become familiar with the man and his deeds through Spielberg's movie. In this they will be disappointed, but if they want to experience a movie set then this is the place to come.

Professor Webber, quoting Martin Luther King, asked us to "Never look down on anyone unless you are helping them up." We were being asked not to judge those whose knowledge and understanding was less than ours, but to help them understand. While this is an admirable sentiment, and one we should strive to achieve, it will continue to be a long hard road as museum exhibitions such as Schindler's factory continue to distort the historical reality of Krakow's Nazi occupation, rather than help to clarify.