ORIENTATION SEMINAR: GROUP ACTIVITY GUIDANCE NOTES TOTAL TIME: 75 Minutes AIMS To enable the participants in each group to get to know each other before the visit. To consider the issues surrounding a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau. To enable participants to discuss their expectations of the visit and consider its purpose. To give participants a chance to ask questions about the visit. MATERIALS NEEDED My Expectations cards; A4 My Expectations card; Flipchart paper; Tourism & the Holocaust handout; Definition of the Holocaust handout, Your Step-by-Step Guide handout NOTES FOR EDUCATORS Encourage all participants to speak, but don t worry if not everyone contributes. Some of your group will probably want to listen rather than contribute to the discussions. There are no wrong or right responses to the stimulus activities; the purpose is to raise issues related to visiting a site of genocide and to give ideas for future reflection, particularly in regard to Next Steps. Be aware that your group will come from a diverse range of backgrounds and have varying degrees of knowledge about the Holocaust and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Consider, then, the use of terminology and explanations thereof. One purpose of this session is to increase the level of knowledge about the Holocaust. This will therefore include discussion about definitions and varied experiences. Obviously some of the issues raised will be complex, challenging and highly charged. Ensure that you are aware of the relevant key historical facts and arguments. Educators should actively correct mistaken assumptions and misconceptions related to both Auschwitz and the Holocaust. The questions and issues for discussion contained within these guidance notes are divided into Core and Subsidiary. The Core questions form the scaffolding of the discussion linked to each activity. Some Core questions have related questions (indented) which allow for further exploration of the issues. The timings given in these notes are for guidance only; the discussion should flow from one section to another and educators should use their judgement as to when to move on to the next topic. Core questions are revisited throughout the course and must be asked. The Subsidiary questions should be posited as is relevant and may be asked rhetorically at the end of the discussion. Some Subsidiary questions are repeated, thus giving educators wider opportunity to tailor the discussion as appropriate. It is possible that comments and questions on the current situation in the Middle East will arise. Educators should where possible answer such with a view to making connections with the contemporary relevance of the Holocaust. This may, for example, be by discussing misappropriation of the Holocaust, a rise in antisemitism in Britain/Europe/worldwide or the need to tackle prejudice and so promote tolerance and understanding between different communities. This last should be explicitly linked to Next Steps.
5 MIN INTRODUCTIONS Take a register and introduce yourself to your group. Ask if anyone has visited Auschwitz previously. Also ascertain which subjects participants are studying/teaching. Briefly indicate what will be covered in the session: why we are going to Auschwitz-Birkenau; discussing the implications and meanings behind a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau; learning about what the Holocaust means historically and contemporarily et cetera. Core Issues Point out the diversity of subjects. This isn t just a History topic; thus demonstrating the continuing relevance of the Holocaust, which may have implications for their Next Steps. The range of subject areas represented should act as an encouragement to adopt a cross-curricular approach to participants Next Steps. 15 MIN MY EXPECTATIONS Prior to the Group Activity session you looked through the My Expectations cards for your group, and noted down points of interest. Randomly distribute the My Expectations cards to the group. Participants pair up with someone they don t know and discuss the comments on their cards. Remind them to compare these comments with those they wrote themselves. Encourage pairs to join with other pairs. Facilitate a discussion using the questions on the My Expectations card, points of interest you may have noticed and the Questions/Issues below. The flipchart paper can be used if you want to keep a record of some of the points raised regarding expectations. What are their personal (i.e. non-educational) expectations of the site? (What do participants think they will/will not see, hear or smell? Size? Why do they have these expectations? Do participants have any preoccupations about how they will react or deal emotionally with the visit? Advise that during and after the visit participants should talk to each other, teachers, family and friends about how they are feeling. Can lessons be learned from Auschwitz/the Holocaust? (If so, what types of lessons can be learned? Answers may include never again ; importance of remembering/memorialisation; rehumanisation; citizenship lessons etc.) In their light of their discussion, and after hearing the survivor testimony, how have participants developed/added to the original comments they wrote on the cards? COLLECT THE MY EXPECTATIONS CARDS IN.
25 MIN TOURISM & THE HOLOCAUST Point out that a day visit to Auschwitz may seem an unusual thing to do. Discuss why this may be unusual and then the issues of tourism as they relate to visitors and to the State Museum. What is unusual about it? (Auschwitz was never meant to be visited, certainly not in an educational sense.) Why do we visit historical sites? (Preface this question by asking whether anyone has been on a school visit to Ypres or other WW1 battlefields. Why are such visits organised? Answers may touch on memory and memorials or learning. Visits to Auschwitz-Birkenau can be termed as dark tourism, that is, the tourism of sites of tragedy. Dark tourism is not new; for over 1000 years pilgrimages have been made to sites of martyrdom and burials. Ground Zero (9/11) is now a tourist stop. Motivations vary but may include a mixture of reverence, education, voyeurism and even the fact of coming into close proximity with death.) Subsidiary Questions/Issues Auschwitz is now iconic: what issues and problems may be associated with this? (This relates to the Holocaust being identified as Auschwitz, or at best occurring only in Eastern Europe. People know the Holocaust because they have been to Auschwitz.) Distribute the Tourism & the Holocaust handout and ask participants to read it and spend a few minutes discussing the questions on the handout. This can be done in pairs or small groups. Stag/hen weekend This is not the only company offering package tours which include a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Auschwitz Experience Weekend is also available to hens as well as stags. Facilitate a discussion using the Core questions on the handout. Is it appropriate to visit as part of a stag/hen weekend? Is there such a thing as a right and a wrong way to visit? Discuss briefly the issues around taking photographs. (Points to raise might include the idea of the camera being a barrier, inappropriate photographs such as selfies, and what the purpose is of such photographs.) Is it appropriate for sites of genocide to become tourist attractions? (This goes directly to questions about the purpose of a visit.)
Subsidiary Questions/Issues Which particular words/phrases caught your attention? How do you react to seeing such advertising? What, if any, are the differences between tourism and educational visits? Draw attention to the recommendation at the bottom of the advert. Why has the company included this? If people become more informed about the Holocaust does it matter that they do so as a tourist on a stag/hen weekend? Visitors 2000 2013 The bar chart (from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial & Museum Report 2013) shows the huge increase in visitors; 1.33 million in 2013. Participants may have heard about the appeal made by the Museum requesting funds to help with the upkeep of the site. The number of visitors has major implications for the Museum, particularly regarding maintenance. The largest numbers of visitors in 2013 came from Poland (336,700). The UK had the second highest number of visitors (178,800). Facilitate a discussion using the Core questions on the handout. What reasons might there be for the increase in visitor numbers? (Possible answers include education in UK schools, a growing awareness of the Holocaust in post-communist Eastern Europe and increased tourism from the Far East.) What difficulties might this create for the museum and how may they solve them? (Wear and tear on a fragile site that was not built to last for more than a few years (Birkenau). Volume of people in the barracks, with implications for guides and the fabric of the site.) Does the increase in visitor numbers suggest that the site is becoming little more than a tourist attraction? Should tourists be prepared for visiting Auschwitz in some way? (This question should be used to lead into the following discussion about hearing a Holocaust survivor. Hence educators should, if participants do not, raise the necessity or otherwise of listening to testimony as a means of preparation.) Subsidiary Questions/Issues Do all visitors have similar motivations for visiting as we do? Does this matter? Does knowledge of a country s relationship to the Holocaust and/or Auschwitz help us to better understand possible motivations for visiting? Is it necessary for participants to be aware of these motives? Should visitors see other death camps? (Majdanek still has some original structures; other sites only have a memorial. This has implications for how a site is experienced. This question touches on the iconography of Auschwitz-Birkenau.)
25 MIN HEARING A SURVIVOR Survivor testimony helps to rehumanise and individualise the statistics. Building on the previous discussion, raise with your group the value of hearing a survivor of Auschwitz prior to a visit. What participants have heard is an individual experience and this should be set against the wider story of the Holocaust. Part of the discussion should, therefore, involve discussion about what we mean when we use the term Holocaust and what participants can learn about the Holocaust from this. In what ways will the testimony they have heard add to their experience of the visit? In time there will no longer be any survivors to give their testimony. Does this mean that educating about the Holocaust (for example via the LFA project) will necessarily be the poorer? (Answers may involve comments about the use of recorded testimony versus live testimony.) Distribute the laminated Definition of the Holocaust handout and ask participants, in small groups, to critically discuss it. They should talk about how far they agree or disagree with the definition, what they would change, omit or add, and why. Perhaps they may want to create their own definition. At the end of the activity distribute the Definitions handout. Were the experiences of the survivor consistent with what participants knew and understood about the Holocaust? (Discussion should include what was consistent as well as what was not. The aim here is to generate a discussion about what we mean when we refer to the Holocaust. Points to raise include the range of camps, different survivor and non-survivor experiences, methods of killing (i.e. not everyone was gassed and this questions the industrialised, factory killing of popular knowledge), differential experiences due to geography, age, religious belief, gender, years under occupation and so on.) How far do participants agree or disagree with the IWM definition of the Holocaust? What would they change or include? (They should offer justifications for agreement/disagreement and for any changes they would make. Points raised in the previous Core Issue may be revisited here, or introduced for the first time. It is essential that at the end of the discussion any definition of the Holocaust acknowledges that it was a specifically Jewish event. There may be differences of opinion on dates, wording overuse of murder, extermination and other destruction of people terms, at the expense of destruction of culture or community terms and other aspects. The bottom line is that conflating a definition of the Holocaust to include other victim groups denies the identity of those groups, each of whom were persecuted for specific reasons, which were sometimes different, and sometimes similar to (depending on the victim group) reasons for the persecution of Jews. To give just two examples, many Roma and Sinti prefer not to use the term Holocaust (nor do many like the term Porajmos as it is linguistically problematic; Jehovah s Witnesses were not targeted for extermination but many were imprisoned in concentration camps and many were murdered because they refused to deny their faith. To conflate this later example in a definition that is about the killing of a group of people simply because of who their parents were does both groups an injustice.)
Subsidiary Questions/Issues This is an opportunity to raise with participants that they can request a Holocaust survivor as part of their Next Steps. What are the issues which will face Holocaust educators (including Student Ambassadors) when there are no more survivors left as eyewitnesses? (Responses may include the rise of Holocaust denial and misappropriate comparisons such as animal cruelty or a current political conflict.) 5 MIN CONCLUSION Hand out One-day Visit to Poland Your Step-by-Step Guide. Ask your group if they have any questions about the visit that they would like to raise these may well be of a very practical nature. If you can answer them, please do. Otherwise, they will have the opportunity to ask a member of HET staff after the group session is finished. We do not want anybody to leave the seminar feeling uncertain about any aspects of the visit. THERE IS NO NEED TO GO THROUGH THE SHEET.