Teaching the Holocaust Digitally: a source study approach

• In Event: Jewish Studies and Digital Humanities Workshop

Abstract

We are submitting a proposal for the AJS Digital Humanities Workshop, for interested conference participants, on the pilot project under review at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. From June 16-19, 2014, we are going to lead a closed workshop on “Teaching the Holocaust Digitally” at the Museum in Washington. On that occasion, we will unveil two pilot web modules, on “Holocaust Diaries” and “Postwar Testimonies,” currently under construction. The modules will be geared toward undergraduate class instruction, and will give users access to portions of digitized documents, videos, photographs, and other materials, contextualized and annotated for classroom use. Each module will contain 20-35 sources with full context, provenance, and metadata from which an instructor may shape classroom lectures, assignments, and student projects.

At the AJS Digital Humanities Workshop, we will present the two module prototypes to a wider audience of interested course instructors, academics, and other stakeholders in our field. As this project is envisioned as shaping, over the longer term, teaching the Holocaust via digitally available primary sources, it is important to present it to, and solicit feedback from, the key focus group in the field: the participants of the AJS conference. The two project leaders showcase the two digital modules and the sources that they highlight, thus exposing AJS participants to a new resource for teaching and research. The sources included in this online resource include: diaries original to the USHMM collection; historical testimonies from the immediate postwar period; reports and official documents from various wartime and postwar Jewish communities, and others. Together with contextualization and item level document explanations, this resource aims to provide maximum flexibility and malleability for teaching professors and researchers alike.

authors

• Leah Wolfson, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

• Emil Kerenji, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum