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| You are here: 2000 / Workshops, Panels and Seminars / Workshops on Education / Workshop 6 on Education, "Testimony in Education" / Presentation by Dr. Barbara Engelking-Boni | |||||||||
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Report from Workshop 6 on Education: "Testimony in Education" Presentation by Dr. Barbara Engelking-Boni Presentation by Mrs. Renée Firestone Presentation by Mrs. Trudy Gold Presentation by Dr. Kitty Hart-Moxon Presentation by Mr. Ben Helfgott Presentation by Dr. Barbara Engelking-Boni Engelking-Boni, Barbara Presentation by Dr. Barbara Engelking-Boni Before I have started to educate students from high schools and from the University in Warsaw about the Holocaust, I have interviewed some dozens of survivors from the Holocaust living in Poland. The experience of the Holocaust - personal, private and intimate - is exceptionally difficult to tell others about, if it is possible at all. I'd like to stress three aspects of using testimonies in education. First, the very important is the language of the testimony. In what language should war experiences be told? The literature on the subject was written on the basis of information in various languages. The survivors often had to tell about their experiences in languages which they had learnt only after the war (for example, English). Could they find in these languages words which reflected the realities that they thought about in other languages? I am convinced - on the basis on my own experience as an interviewer - that it is easier to talk about camp experiences in the language which one was using at the time and which had names for the things of that world. For this reason, I believe that accounts by Polish survivors in Polish are more reliable, closer to the inner truth, than accounts given in other languages. 2. The second thing which I'd like to stress here is that testimonies are given mostly by „volounteers". It has to be stated that this was totally unrepresentative. Our picture of survivor is concentrated mainly on the pathology of camp experiences, on their negative, dysfunctional effects. Those who did not wish to talk about their experiences, or who did not complain about anything, entirely escaped the attention of the researchers. Did they experience something different, something more profound and dramatic, did they suffer more? 3. The third thing is that in Poland we have a special reason to use testimonies in the process of teaching. But every Pole have heard many war testimonies from their own family members. In our country almost every family lost somebody, everyone had suffer during the time of war and occupation. So, our students are used to listen to the testimonies and to understand them. The other aspect of this common knowledge about the war experience is probably a lack of good enough understanding for the suffer of others, especially Jews. The last but not least thing I'd like to stress is that using testimonies in education is the only possible way to save Holocaust victims from anonymity. Using testimonies is the way to personalize the experience of the Holocaust, decharm the great numbers used when writing of the Shoah. >> Back to top |
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| For information about this production and the Stockholm International Forum Conference Series please go to www.humanrights.gov.se or contact Information Rosenbad, SE-103 33 Stockholm, Sweden | |||||||||