By Frieda Miller, former VHEC Education Coordinator
The current exhibit, Faces of Loss, has elicited a strong emotional response from visitors, especially from those whose photos are on display, among them survivors and the second generation.
As Inge Manes, who survived the Holocaust as a child hidden in a Belgium convent, observed, “It is very emotional for me to see my father’s picture in this exhibit. I think that all the survivors must cry when they see these photos. When I look at my father’s picture, I remember how handsome he was and how gentle he was as a father. I was only 6 years old when I saw him for the last time. I keep thinking what a wonderful life I could have had with him.” Even staff members, in the process of conducting intake interviews or installing photographs, have been moved by the poignant images and the tales of the tragically abbreviated lives.
As powerful as the exhibit is for many of those in our community, its interest for student visitors and its value for teaching is less obvious. In fact, of the many exhibits showcased by the vhec in its ten-year history, none has presented as unique a challenge for school programming. When survivors approach the exhibit, they are inevitably drawn to the images of their own family, often inviting others to “come see”, “come visit” their family members. This touching scene of survivors introducing their friends to the images of those who perished, plays out repeatedly. But, what can students or teachers, who do not have the same personal connections to the images, make of the exhibit?
Public visitors to the exhibit are met by a sea of anonymous photographs, each of which are treated with equal emphasis.
The exhibit offers students and teachers no obvious guideposts. There is no narrative, no story like that of the rescuer Chiune Sugihara, no chronology and no overarching themes such as; the treatment of the disabled or orphans in the Warsaw ghetto. The faces of the people portrayed do not have the same recognition factor as that of Anne Frank, nor are they the powerful iconographic images, commonly associated with Holocaust exhibits. The all too familiar, black and white documentary photographs of rail cars or concentration camps are markedly absent.
What can be learned about the Holocaust from these photographs? What stories do they reveal and what meaning do they have for those who brought them in and for student visitors? The challenge for the school program was to find ways for students to investigate the photographs, to uncover what information they reveal about the Holocaust, while at the same time, responding to the photographs’ emotional impact. To meet this challenge, a teaching strategy was developed that has two distinct threads, cognitive learning about the history of the Holocaust and a more personal, affective engagement with the photographs, their histories and their meanings.
During the first part, students are asked to look at the photographs and read the captions to discover what they can about who the victims were and how they perished. By sharing this information with others in the class, students begin to appreciate the range of victims, the differing circumstances of death, the scope and enormity of the Holocaust. Learning about the victim’s nationalities helps students understand how wide was the net cast by the Nazi occupation of Europe. The differing deportation dates speak to the fact that the Holocaust took place over an extended period of time. Genocide, unlike a natural disaster or a massacre, takes time whether it is months as in the case of Rwanda or years as during the Holocaust. Similarly, the different ways in which these victims died becomes an entry point into a class discussion of mobile killing squads, the ghettos, slave labour and the death camps.
The second part of the school programs focuses more on affective learning. Students are encouraged to appreciate the history of the photographs and their meanings while forming personal connections to some of the photographs. As part of this process, docents ask students to read survivor interviews about the journeys taken by the photographs. Although, many of the photographs were saved by families in Israel or North America, others took more dramatic journeys back into the hands of their owners. Students reflect upon some of these journeys, like that of Oscar Jason’s photograph of his young son, Monia. Oscar buried Monia’s picture outside the gates of Dachau and against all odds was able to retrieve it after the war. It remains the only evidence of his child, gassed in Stutthof in 1944.
Students learn to appreciate these kinds of emotional connections that exist between the photographs and their owners. As Lola Apfelbaum, a survivor of Skarszysko concentration camp, explains in her interview, “I keep the pictures in a frame on my television set so that I can always look at them, even though it makes me so sad to see them. I can’t help but imagine them going to their deaths in the gas chambers.” Child survivor, Marion Cassirer says of her family’s photographs They died alone, but when I saw their photos in the exhibit, surrounded by hundreds of other victims, I thought to myself, Here you are no longer alone. In turn, students are given an opportunity to formulate their own responses to the images. Docents invite students to find a photograph that interests them or moves them, reflect on its impact and write their responses on small comment cards.
The responses have been remarkable. Students have demonstrated empathy and a strong personal identification with the victims, particularly children and young people. They have articulated a keen awareness of the tragic loss of life and a commitment to human rights. For the last 60 years, Jewish lives have been overshadowed by a single, almost sacred number – 6 million. This school program tries to put faces to that number. Students are invited to engage with the photos in an interactive way to help them humanise an incomprehensible statistic.