The International School for Holocaust Studies
e-Newsletter for Holocaust Educators
Welcome to the first issue of Teaching the Legacy, the e-newsletter of the International School for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem. This newsletter is produced for anyone involved in formal and informal Holocaust education. Teaching the Legacy will provide you with regular access to the vast array of Holocaust educational resources that the ninety staff members of Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies are constantly developing. In addition, our e-newsletter will feature our latest pedagogical publications and multimedia materials, information regarding our online courses and teaching units, and articles about issues in Holocaust education. Teaching the Legacy will also include regular updates about the many conferences, courses, and other educational opportunities offered by the School at Yad Vashem and around the world. We wish you fruitful and interesting reading, and we look forward to your feedback.
Children in the Holocaust
This lesson plan focuses on the Jewish child during the Holocaust. As a consequence of the Nazi racial doctrine, the Nazis considered Jewish children and infants to be their enemies as well, and related to them as such even before murdering them. A million and a half Jewish children were murdered by the Nazis. How did Jewish children grow up under Nazi rule? How could a child grow up when people related to him as a dangerous enemy? Did these children have a “childhood”? We will examine these questions in the light of the definitions of the terms “child” and “childhood” that are known and accepted by our society. Furthermore, we will examine what the adult world is expected to provide to children: Did any of those things materialize among the Jewish children during the Holocaust? Read more
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The e-Newsletter
Editorial Board: Richelle Budd-Caplan, Dr. Haim Gertner, Shulamit Imber, David Metzler, Prof. Dan Michman, Dana Porath, Dr. Motti Shalem, Naama Shik
Production and Design: Stephanie Amara, Yael Saraby, Mayana Sebbah, Jeremy Zauder
Contact Us: internet.education@yadvashem.org.il
International Conference: Teaching the Holocaust to Future Generations
This year, Yad Vashem is organizing its fourth International Conference for Educators under the title: “Teaching the Holocaust to Future Generations”. The conference will be held on August 8-11, 2004, in Jerusalem. The main themes that will be discussed during the conference are: The Role of the Shoah in Jewish Education – The Challenge in the 21st Century; The Moral and Ethical Implications in Interdisciplinary Holocaust Education; and The Shoah, Israel and the Jewish People. During the conference there will be plenary sessions with prominent scholars from different countries. Discussion groups will be conducted by educators from the USA, the UK, Sweden, Israel, Russia, and Austria. Participants in the conference will present a variety of workshops about new themes and methodologies in Holocaust education.
New Publications
“You must realize that we are still only children like children everywhere else. We may be more mature, because of Terezin, but we are children just the same.” –Jiří Zappner (age 14), Terezin
Drawing on diary entries and survivor testimony, Through Our Eyes presents the Holocaust as experienced by adolescents. The collection explores the terrible dilemmas faced by some of the one and a half million Jewish children who perished in the Holocaust, as well as those of some who survived. Through the candor of their words, the reader becomes familiar with their personalities and innermost feelings, as well as the appalling hardships they faced daily. This new and revised edition of Through Our Eyes was researched and written by Itzhak Tatelbaum in collaboration with Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies, and published through the generosity of the Koschitzky family of Toronto, Canada.Read more
