Train Cars

• In Event: 31.085 - Trains, Tents, and Board Games: Collaborative Teacher Research Into Historical Trauma Through Arts-Based Inquiry

Abstract

Students and teacher candidates constructed a series of train cars that represented significant scenes in Spiegelman’s memoir, their own understanding of the historical events of the Holocaust, and moments of emotional significance to them during the course of their research. For example, one of the train cars features clay figures of mothers and babies (Fig 1.). These were made in response to a presentation from a guest lecturer who had worked for the Shoah Foundation interviewing survivors and documenting their stories. She told a story shared by a woman she interviewed who had miraculously managed to survive Auschwitz along with 6 other women and their infant babies. American soldiers wept when they discovered them while liberating the camps, as they were the first infants they had seen. For many student researchers, the revelation that there were almost no babies found in the camps during liberation was particularly impactful.

Author

• Sarah Evis, Toronto District School Board