Teaching, Learning, and the Holocaust: An Integrative Approach (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning) - Hardcover

Tinberg, Howard; Weisberger, Ronald

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0253011329 ISBN 13: 9780253011329

Verlag: Indiana University Press, 2013

Inhaltsangabe

Lessons learned from teaching about the Holocaust

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Howard Tinberg is Professor of English at Bristol Community College. He is author of Writing with Consequence: What Writing Does in the Disciplines and (with Jean-Paul Nadeau) The Community College Writer: Exceeding Expectations.

Ronald Weisberger is Coordinator of Tutoring and Adjunct Professor of History at Bristol Community College.

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Teaching, Learning, and the Holocaust

An Integrative Approach

By Howard Tinberg, Ronald Weisberger

Indiana University Press

Copyright © 2014 Howard Tinberg and Ronald Weisberger
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-253-01132-9

Contents

Preface, 
Acknowledgments, 
Introduction, 
1 Contexts, 
2 Discipline, 
3 What We Knew and When We Knew It, 
4 Bystanders and Agents, 
5 Witnesses, 
6 Trauma, 
7 Reclaiming Faith, 
Appendix A: Course Syllabus, 
Appendix B: Reading Journal Template, 
Appendix C: Critical Research Project, 
Appendix D: Midterm and Final Exams, 
Works Cited, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Contexts

It shows me that Nazis were men, just as we are now. Michael, reading journal, February 2011

Like the historian Paul Bartrop, we came to study and teach the Shoah "from somewhere else" (1). In some sense the phrase "from somewhere else" serves as an apt metaphor or trope for the journeys that each of us took to get to the Shoah classroom. Like the paths of so many of our students, whose experiences are often marked by aspirations checked by stark reality and the subsequent recalibration and adjustments, our journey to the present was hardly linear or predictable. Neither of us, for example, had intended from the start to teach at a community college, nor did either of us expect to teach a course on the Shoah, given our prior academic training as a historian and as a scholar in British Romanticism. Far from anticipating an opportunity to teach the Shoah, we regarded the Shoah, for our own personal reasons, as a subject to avoid. Indeed, the subject presented genuine risks for one of us, a child of Shoah survivors.

"From somewhere else": as we continue to think through the implications of that phrase, we note another aspect that strikes home. Even before undertaking the challenges of teaching a subject in which we had received no explicit training in graduate school, each of us had undertaken retraining of a different sort. In one case, it was the shift from teaching literature (British Romanticism, precisely) exclusively to teaching composition and rhetoric as well as directing a writing center. In the other case, it was the shift from serving as history faculty exclusively to studying developmental theory as applied to adult learners and becoming director of academic tutoring. Yes, we have come from somewhere else.

Howard Tinberg's Narrative

"Sha, shtil [be quiet]": I heard these Yiddish words often as a young child. I assumed then that my parents were simply reminding my siblings and me to mind our manners. In later years, I would see these two words as emblematic of my parents' predicament: quietly suffering Jewish refugees who lost just about all their relatives—both sets of parents, siblings, cousins, uncles, and aunts—during the Shoah. I had not fully realized the import of those words until as an adult I read this passage from Alan Dershowitz's memoir, Chutzpah:

I am a proud and assertive Jew, and a proud and assertive American. Many in my generation no longer feel like guests in anyone else's land. It is not enough for us, as it was for our grandparents and parents, that we be tolerated as a minority in a country where only the majority are first-class citizens. We insist on being treated as equals. We have no qualms about seeing a Goldberg, a Shapiro, or a Cohen run for governor or even president. We need not sha shtil (be quiet) as my grandmother constantly warned. We don't have to worry about shande far di goyim or being "lightening rods" for anti-Semitism if we are too visible or successful. Maybe we are overconfident. Maybe we are no more secure than the Jews of Germany thought they were in 1929. Maybe we are tempting fate—and history—by our assertiveness. Again, as my grandmother would say, Keyn ayn hore, I hope not. And I don't think so. (19–20)

Reading this passage conveyed to me this unmistakable message: my parents, as a result of being singled out for destruction during the Shoah because they were Jews, wanted us all to remain under the radar. Calling attention to ourselves might bring terrible consequences. My family, as a result, did not exhibit the kind of chutzpah—brazenness—that Dershowitz claims proudly. We had lost too much.

My parents, both deceased, had not burdened us as we were growing up with stories from the war. Late in life, as is typical of Shoah survivors, my mother wanted to share as much as she could of what she knew from her past life during the war. This much my siblings and I have been able to construct, from my mother's account—our chief source of facts, although, as the citations indicate, I have begun to flesh out details of my mother's narrative and will continue to do so throughout this book: My mother grew up on a small, rural village—a shtetl, or collection of farms—in eastern Poland (now Ukraine), in a place called Jablonka, forty-three miles southwest of Krakow. Nestled in a small valley, Jablonka consisted of three streets, which, according to a former resident, "resembles an eagle, and since nearby was the river Raczka Jablon (and from this derived the name of town Jablonka), the shtetl had the image of an eagle landing from the heights to drink fresh and pure waters" (Wajsbord). According to a census taken in 1911, over 80 percent of the residents were Jewish; ten years later the number would decline to a little over 60 percent ("Jablonka Koscielna"). During the first two decades of the century residents numbered only in the hundreds ("Jablonka Koscielna"). Zionist ideals (supportive of the establishment of a Jewish state) were strong in the village, as was religious observance (Wajsbord). In contrast, my father was raised in Tarnow, forty-five miles east of Krakow. Before World War II Tarnow had some twenty-five thousand residents, half of whom were Jews ("Tarnow"). Rather than relying on farming, Jewish residents worked in clothing manufacturing and were quite diverse—even secular—in regards to religious identification ("Tarnow"). At various points, this part of the country—Galicia—became annexed into Russia, Germany, and Poland.

I suppose that my parents' war experience may also be characterized by the phrase "somewhere else," since they managed to avoid being deported and moved to a concentration or death camp. They were able to elude the Nazis, who were out to kill them for being Jews, as well as the Russians, who sought to impress my father into the army. Facing these pressures, my parents decided to leave their respective families and homes to live life on the run. Moving eastward, they survived mostly by their wits and, according to my mother's telling, her ability to pass as a non-Jew and her talents as a seamstress. But she also worked to dig trenches and in coal mines. One particularly harrowing episode occurred on the Russian side after my father had been ordered to go back home in order to fight the war for the Poles. To join my father, my mother would have to cross a bridge over a river without being detected by the soldiers, who were standing guard. A fellow Jew offered to help her cross over in his hay wagon. Here's how my mother told the story:

A Jewish guy, a communist, said, "Why don't you climb into that wagon in the hay. I'll cover you all up. Nobody will see you and [I'll] bring you over the bridge." ... I did and we start going over the bridge. The soldiers came in with their bayonets and stick...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Indiana University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2013
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0253011329
• ISBN 13: 9780253011329
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 154
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Mare Nostrum Group B.V.; gpsr@mare-nostrum.co.uk; ; Doelen 72; Breda; 4831 GR; Niederlande