Transcripts For CSPAN3 Holocaust Scholarship Evolution 20240713

Collaboration between the college of science and department of history and our mission is to bring history on conpeople to rather issues and we do that through a variety of means. We host a variety of programs. We have a blog about contemporary issue from a historical perspective. Were in the midst of a collaboration with the philadelphia enquirer to infuse more journalism and do a number of Different Things here on campus and out in the Community Sponsorship if youre joining us for the first time welcome. Were delighted that youre here. We hope you stay connected with us. You have a newsletter list you can sign up for outside. We have other events you can attend. We hope its the beginning of a long relationship with villanova university. For those of you who are new as well and those tuning in on cspan or on our live stream i should let you know this program is the fourth in a seer that we have done this year on the subject of revisionist history. Now you may be thinking to your self is revisionist history a contemporary issue that we need le page center to address . Its interesting. If you look in Popular Culture youll find reference to revisionist history in many place. How many of you have been following the Senate Impeachment trial . Show of hands. You may have actually heard the president s team invoked revisionist history two days ago during the trial and cited the New York Times 1619 project as a revisionist history project which was something that we talked about in our first event on revising early america. So, our purpose this year with this series of events has been to explore and challenge these questions about revision, and actually to illuminate that scholarship and historical scholarship depends on revision as an inherent part of the historical process. Of course with tonights subject the holocaust the word revision and revisionism can often have more nefarious affiliations. So for that reason i actually want to start tonights event with a joint prepared statement as has been created by the le page center and i would like to read it in its entirety. This series, this years series of round Table Discussions on revisionist history seeks to explore challenging historical topics and to introduce a public audit dwroens the way that revision necessarily informs all historical scholarship. Nonetheless we are aware that in connection to this evenings topic the term revisionism has often suggested a willingness to downplay or even deny nazi germanys mid20th century efforts to exeter my nature europes jewish population. We vigorously reject any effort deny the well documented history of that campaign of systematic mass murder. So in order to start off tonights discussion on a clear foundation, we believe that its important to reiterate any honest, intellectual discussion of the evolving scholarship on the holocaust must start by acknowledging the basic historical fact of the holocaust. That said, i want to put up this slide for a moment. Because we have been exploring through this series of conversations why revision is important. And what the revision that we envision relies upon. So historical scholarship necessitates looking at new sources, it necessitates new examinations. It necessitates expanding the interpretations bringing in a diversity of perspectives, and its an evolving process. Understandings of these complex historical events is continuing to evolve, being enriched by new scholars and scholarship. This is a premise upon which our conversation rests tonight because holocaust scholarship is being continually revised, new ideas, new sources, new interpretations and new scholars and throughout these series of events and tonight youll meet colors who have offered fresh perspectives, have done interesting things and new research and have helped us figure out what happened and why it matters for today. So let me now introduce you to the scholars on our panel who will be here for tonights conversation. And ill manipulate back to this slide. You may have seen in the promotion that growsman was scheduled to join us. Unfortunately shes not able to be here. She sends her regards and regrets. So let me first introduce jennifer rich seated next to me. She was the executive director of the rowan center. Assistant professor of sociology. We have a tradition and custom not to create paper handouts that go into trash or recycle bin so we do put our information about the scholars on the slides and then if your phones are still on, on silent, we encourage you to look up more Information Online about our speakers. Seated next to her is devon pendas. His focus is on war crime trials. And seated next to him is our faculty director at the le page center and assistant professor of european history here at villanova paul steege. Paul is focused on history of every day life and done scloip on germany in the 20th century and berlin and well begin the evening by learning a little bit more about our scholars and sort of where they come from on this question and. Topic and from there well dive into the conversation. So, were now, ill go back to jennifer. Jennifer, allow me to welcome you to the le page center. Thank you. The easiest way to get in this conversation tell us a little bit about the center that you direct, and a little bit about your research and your area of study. Sure. Hi, everybody. Im jennifer rich. Im the executive director at the rowan center. Were relatively new center at Rowan University in glass bobor new jersey. We look at certainly the holocaust, also other genocides, expanding into human rights. One of the questions we are asked most often is so what. Were learning about other genocides, what can we do about it now. Were switching our emphasis a little bit and push into human rights to answer that so what question that so many of our students have. My own research focuses on holocaust memories both in terms of transgenerational memories. What do the descending generations of those that survive the holocaust know, understand and remember. I came to sociology by way of education. So what we do at the le page center is focus on the discipline of history as well as the product. We like to say history is both a what and a how. You come from a sociology program. Whats the how . The how there is looking at how people and communities acted, what choice people had, what choices they made, what sort of Agency People took even when they felt they didnt have any choice. The perspective of sociology is on the people and choices and communities that were formed throughout the holocaust and any other issue. If i may put you onthespot a little bit more, is there an example you might be able to share off the top of your head from the research youve done or from other work youve done at the center how that question of choices and agency, whats an example that people might be able to put their minds around. One of the questions i get are things like why didnt people leave . If we knew everything if this is what was going to happen why didnt people leave when they had the chance. Often share stories of people, families and the holocaust who started to leave their home towns and made the choice to go back with things like the devil you know is always better than the devil you dont. Or this is as bad as it can get. That would be one example of agency that people had and their understanding at the time and reinforcement between community members. So one family talking to another family who heard a rumor from somebody who lives somewhere else. Thats how decisions were made when people didnt know what was ahead of them. So, you know, another example of community, thinking about my own research and children and grandchildren of survivors are communities formed within the second and third generation, how people think about the shared community, the shared history that they have. So that would be another example. Wonderful. Thank you. Well get into much more of that as the conversation unfolds. Devon, ill put you onthespot next. Maybe you can tell the audience here a little bit about your research and how you approach this topic. Sure. Thanks. First of all thank you so much for inviting me here. My first time at villanova. Im excited to be joining all of you. I guess the easiest way to explain my Research Agenda is to say that i am i started life as a historian the aftermath of the holocaust. Sort of the question of this horrible thing happened. Now what do we do . How do we respond to this, this awful event . And, you know, much of that focus has been on legal attempts at redress for this criminal trial in particular. I also have done a little bit of work on reparations as well, trying to this question of how do societies as a perpetrator but also to some lesser extent places like israel or the United States where theyre not perpetrator nations. How theyve tried to use the law and criminal justice to respond to this. From there less relevant for our conversation tonight, ive expanded into questions around general strategies for responding to mitigating mass violence. I do a lot of human rights. I do a lot of international law, as well. Right. Also, directly relevant for tonights conversation, ive done a lot of work on the his or itography of the holocaust. What historians have said about the holocaust. How our interpretations and understandings of the holocaust have evolved since not just 1945, because jewish individuals were already writing right. So how have our interpretations changed . And i wonder when it comes to the legal aspect of it. Is it something theres been interdisciplinary with attorneys and what are some of the interdisciplinary intersections there . Yeah. I teach a course for judges. Its interesting to hear the question that judges bring to the table and the ways in which those are different than what historians would ask. Right. You know, what choices did people make . Why did they make the choices . The judges want to know what the rules are. And whether the people were following the rules. Right. One of the exercises we do that is both fascinating and slightly disturbing is i distribute sort of briefcase studies of criminal cases for socalled mixed race, sexual relations during the 30s in germany. How would you respond to this . I would show how it was handled in a real court of law. We discuss it with the judges a lot. Would you want to which judges just willie nilly said thats an unjust law. Im not going to follow it. How far down that rabbit hole can you go . Right. So it gets to it creates serious kind of ethical quandaries of, you know, do you enforce unjust law and how unjust do you think they have before you have to force them. What are your options . Do you resign from the bench . Stay on and try to make lesses, you know, all those kinds of questions. Fascinating. And our colleague here paul steege. How do you enter this conversation . So, excuse me, so i would describe myself as a historian and in everyday life. And thing, in fact, looking especially at violence and the ways in which people make sense of and tell stories about and participate in acts of violence one thing that is important underscore is that violence, horrific violence and tremendous crimes dont depend on monsters or dont depend on people who are in extraordinary situations. But the real question of nazi germany and the holocaust is how so many people found it so possible to integrate this kind of violence and this kind of killing into their ordinary lives. Thats where my perspective comes into the story. So this is my starting point for the class is very much in terms of thinking about exploring the humanity of the people who are whose history were exploring and taking serious of their humanity that is both victims and perpetrators. Germans, jewish germans, poles, people from all over europe. Americans. To think about the ways in which they, umm, were, in some ways, very familiar to us. Their stories, their experiences, their choices, their desires. Are not going to be exotic other than to look and say how could we imagine any sort of connection to that. In fact, what is so unsettling is the ways in which their stories, their experiences make a lot of sense. I think the best history is not the history that draws a line under the past and tells us what we should know, but rather the history that unsettles the ground beneath our feet. Img thats the way we answer those questions and unsettle our complacency, even if were fairly comfortably in villanova in the first part of the 21st century. Thank you. Ill put our slide with the live tweet information back up as we dive into the conversation. How many of you are actively aware there is continual new scholarship on the holocaust . Show of hands. And how many of you think, well, i thought we knew everything we needed to know about this. So i want to start maybe with you, dev vonn and bring it back to the question of the revisions. So, if you could, everyone here seems to know already that the citizenship zsh scholarship continues to be revived and reexpanded. Can you give us a little bit of a history of the brief summary. Yeah. Ill try to keep it brief. I can go on for a very long time about this. One was a history of jews how did they respond to the holocaust. How did they resist . What kind of strategies for survival did they pursue . How did they die . How did they make sense of the deaths of their loved ones. Right. And its treated as an aspect of the history of the jewish sometimes it can be zionist. It was written and often written by jewish historians but very much in the history of modern germany. Where the origin points for naziism and all the way back to martin luther. Does it begin with 1918 and the defeat of world war i . What are the Decision Making processes that we germans to decide to exterminate jews. These kind of quos. These were relatively distinct and unconnected history if is. And there were times, at least some degree of hostility between the groups. And in some cases they were relatively agenda driven. An it later turned out had spent time in the s. S. , for example. So there was a lot of mutual distrust across. I would say only in the 2000s, beginning with the work of important historian what he termed integrated history of the holocaust that tried to bring together the history of the jewish experience of murder and survival and jewish responses and the perpetrators side of the story, the story of the german Decision Making process, and the german initiatives that lead to this. Because, of course, these were not separate events. And the jews were not merely reacting to german initiatives. There was an interaction that went on there and trying to bring the histories. Not just in a dialogue but aspects of the same story. Right. And to say this is an example of a broader more general phenomena in the way that, you know, world war ii is a history of war. And, yes, there are distinctive elements of specific element from world war i. But it is recognizable as a war. Highlight the difference the ways in which it is distinct from other stance instances of again side and recognize the some historians have the ongoing genocidal process of multinational european empires. Starting in the late 19th century with the low motion class of the out man empire and stretching through into the early 50s. Thats kind of a process of what historian called the unweaving of europe. That has gotten some push back people might argue the holocaust is not radically unique certainly distinct from other processes. You have again side in the name of your center. You seem to be at the later stages of this development where other questions of again side and human rights are integrated into what you do. Talk a little bit about how it came about and how you see the holocaust within these other dynamics. Sure. So just between us in the room and anyone watching at home, we have had a huge debate, actually, about the name of our center. Whether theyre repetitive of one another. And fundamentally weve landed on a perspective of saying at least for now. I suspect the conversations will go on for months, years, decades. And because there are so some Holocaust Education scholars talk about learning from the holocaust and learning about the holocaust. So learning about the holocaust has to do with learning facts. What happened. Its the lessons we want to attach to Holocaust Education. We want students to learn the lesson to be an upstander. We want students to stick up for the underdog. To question laws whether theyre just or unjust. So there is some, perhaps, some generality to what we can learn from the holocaust as opposed to what we can learn about the holocaust. Human rights encompasses all of it in so many ways. We think about Human Rights Violations. We see Human Rights Violations and the holocaust, in every other genocide and mass atrocities and everyday life when we think about the clean water or voting suppression. So human rights is meant to give us a broader umbrella in which to think about these things. And, paul, we talked about on the Previous Panel is how much of the debates between scholars and the historians reach out to the general public and should they . I think we have so many people in the audience speaks to the ways in which scholars talking about this is of interest. But maybe, i guess, the answer i would suggest is that the questions drive a lot of these conversations. And rather than thinking about citizenship scholarship as a way of formulating answers to think about scholarship as a way of posing new kinds of questions. But i suspect not all of you or maybe many of you heard about the controversy of the 1990s. Sure. This is about two historians who use 2 . And come to different conclusions about what it means. There was a big debate that was also covered on cspan at the Holocaust Museum and overflow crowd and part of the question was about what how you look at these people, the perpetrators and what you call them. Do you call them ordinary men . Do you call them ordinary germans . Something particularly about their germanness that lead them so willing to participate in acts of mass murder. Or rather there is something more generally ordinary about them about peer pressure and ideology and the sense they need to live up to the standards of the other men in their unit. There is something historians got exercised about and there was a lot of angst about it. But i think it has shaped the field in terms of thinking about this question of paying more attention not just to external nation camps but also police units who are engaged in killing in the country side of eastern poland. So to think about the ways in which the story of the holocaust is happening in different places involving different people that gets pushed along by the conversations that initially seem to be about who is calling somebody names in their footnotes. How do we bring the scholarship inside debates at museum to a broader public. For the students here, by show of hands, how many of you a good show of hands. How many of you continued to do in college here . Another question for the audience. How many of you feel like the most information about the holocaust, that you know has come from films . Ic films play a role about what people know about the holocaust. So you, jennifer, have done work on this. You looked at a particular film. I wont spoil the name. Maybe you want to tell about that area of research and how film is used as a medium to teach about the holocaust and what the pitfalls and shortcomings might be. Sure. The film that hasnt yet been named that ive written about is a film called a boy in the striped pajamas. I see lots of heads shaking here. I also heard that sigh of frustration. For those that dont know the film or havent heard some of the broad criticisms surrounding it, it is based on a book of the same title. The book has a label on it saying the boy in the striped pajamas a table. The film does not. You dont need parental permission. You can show it in two class periods, if you want to. Because the film is shown so regularly, i have students who all the time when i asked, when im teaching holocaust courses and say what interested you. Theyll say things like i saw the movie in high school and the movie changed my life. Its almost completely ahistorical. It is set during the holocaust. The main character is a young german boy named bruno whose father is the kommendant of a camp, which bru camp. As a viewer of the film, you sort of follow the story of bruno who has no idea that jews are subhuman. Even though its a son of a nazi. He would have known this at 8 years old. And he befriends a young jewish boy who is imprisoned in a. And bruno passes chocolate to the little boy and they develop a friendship. In the end, both are murdered. Viewers feel theyre killed in a gas chamber full of jews and bruno who has snuck underneath the fence. Bruno is sort of moved to tears by the fact that the young german boy has died. Thats where your sympathy lies. How they learn so much about the holocaust and everything they need to know because theyve seen it. At the end of the semester, well watch the movie in the class with the project of writing down everything that couldnt possibly have happened. And they sort of see it. To me, its one reasonable way to use the film as a teaching tool. Is there something redeeming in the learning category for films like this or others . Is that a useful way to think about the holocaust . So i hesitate to say theres a real upside for using the boy in the striped pajamas in a classroom. I dont know there is. If i had to pick a Silver Lining and i think its sometimes important to do. It would be that. That students that become interested and they want to learn more and it gives them the opportunity to sort of correct of of the incorrect narratives they have sort of grown up believing about the holocaust and the story. Is there a redeeming narrative . I dont know. Im sort of a little bit worried about the idea we can learn about the holocaust or teach about the holocaust and have Students Walk out of our classes sort of feeling cleansed. Like theyve done something really good by learning about this and theyre done. So im not sure exactly how i feel about it. Theres a real risk, i think, in teaching or, you know, writing about or learning about the holocaust, which is that what you learn from it is empty moral platitude. Right. And you learn that i am not a nazi, therefore, i am not going to murder jews in the 1940s. In eastern europe. Therefore im good and dont have to worry about anything. And i think these kinds of sort of universalizing labels around the holocaust, were talking about life is beautiful, which is another film that moves in that direction. Right. I mean, its all part of it. To say be nice. You dont e necessarily need to have the holocaust as a backdrop for saying dont be mean to people. It teaches kindergarten level morality. We learn it in other kinds of context. Go ahead. Oh, so just very briefly to build off that, i think i would maybe say one or perhaps two things. So often in the context of teaching about the holocaust, we teach students particularly younger students stories of rescuers. And the question that teachers so often want to ask is how many people think you would be a recauser . Theres only one right answer. Right. Every kid will raise their hand. No one is going to say not me. You know, im going to leave my neighbor to their own devices. Theres only one right answer there. And you really are sort of teaching kids youre not helping them think through the gray areas. Why certain people made choices to rescue. Why certain people made choices to turn their neighbors in. There was lots of context around this. And the second point, the themes talking about lessons from the holocaust or learning from the holocaust i would argue its nationalism, racism, zone phobia, antisemitism. Not be nice to your neighbor. I say in terms of thinking about this the most important thing is just the realization of the fact this is possible. Who would be a rescuer . This presumption, a sense of distancing ourselves from the holocaust is that, of course, we would be on the right side of this story. That we identify with the victims and we are that by learning about this, we are presuming our place in the moral high ground. Even some places like the Holocaust Museum in washington, d. C. , where you go through and you receive your Identity Card it makes a lot of sense in the effort of breaking down the idea of millions of people being killed and putting a human face on it and you get this question but at the end does the person that i over of the course of the museum identifying with, do they live or die . In some ways its a more provocative exercise saying you get your Identity Card. Its unclear whether you are a perpetrator or victim. You go through and humanize the experience. Which carve did you serve in . And that probably would be a difficult museum experience. But i think on some level, it would underscore the ways in which the lines between complicity and resistance are also blurred and that the real challenge, and i think the real benefit is to delve into the gray areas as opposed to act if theyre moral certainties. Who are the people, what do they life . What are their stories . What are the artifacts with their stories and theres another section of the museum, which is the education section. Integrate it in a meaningful experience or the visitor which is is a tough challenge. I think its also a tough challenge for the sites themselves. Talk about the sites themselves. I think those places have to wrestle with the questions of how much do our visitors learn about how much it happens here and try to impart lessons when people walk out the door of what they should be doing. But people walk into the camps they bring their own sense of knowledges and experiences and times they bring provocative questions that maybe the people working at the site where the historians dont necessarily have great answers to. To some extent they were locating these within the shifting political terrain of germany, in one case, that they were reflected in the fact that one of the teachers was a member of the alternative for germany. The right wing extremist party. And theyre saying this is an political experience. But it is a question of on the one hand, the obligation, the responsibility of going to the camp to learn but then the question about whether people are willing to do that or not or is it just a sense of obligation of showing up and checking the box. And in terms of how does one get to the camps and goes and experience of that. I will never forget that the first my First Experience is getting off the train at the station and, you know, with my backpack and so, obviously, looking fairly touristic and running into people. Taxi, taxi. Even in terms of the expectations that youre going to any of these camps that, well, its just another one of your destinations that you need to go is either part of your high school education, whether youre a kid in germany or part of your european tour. You know, you check it off and have done that. By i think thats precisely the challenge. Simply the camps themselves and going to the camps that the lessons dont go without saying. And i think that is precisely where historians and educators come in. Yeah. Going off that, i mean, one of the things, i think, you asked awhile ago of the relationship between scholarly work and scholarly conversations among scholars and general people. I think this is a useful reminder. You know, historians, in particular, scholars with, more generally, when youre doing modern stuff, the question is not what happened. The question is usually why did it happen. When you get to the 20th century, the documentation is so thick on the ground that its usually the thing scholars are most interested in or obsessed with. Its the why. I mean, you cant take the what for granted. I mean, in a panel of history and the holocaust, we have to remember its a term that has been poached by holocaust deniers to lend, you know, completely unwarranted legitimacy to their pernicious lies. There is ignorance about the facts. We have to be clear that the facts are not in dispute then we can have the conversations about why. I think to push back a little bit. I think theres a lot of things we tonight know dont know. Lets do a little show of hands here. How many people are aware of shanghai, chinas connection . So fewer than half the people in the room. How many people are aware of Dominican Republic . Fewer than half the people in the room. There is still a lot of light and facts to get at. I think one of the ways we get into the holocaust is through the stories. Right. Individual stories of people who were murdered. Individual stories of people who escaped. Stories of people who were perpetrators. That seems to be a place where theres an infinite amount of what and facts. I think the boy in the striped pajamas is so effective for so many people because it distills a complex thing to a story. As an educator and teacher and working with teachers who teach on the holocaust, do you hear anything about that . I think for all of us sitting here imagining six million yous or 11 million victims or 9 million survivors. It feels almost impossible to take in the numbers. 6 million, 11 million, how do we sort of sink through who these people were, what they meant. The Human Experience in ways that numerical facts dont. And students, particularly younger students, really connect to stories to hang on to as they try to make sense of the holocaust or try to move closer to making sense of the holocaust. Because im not sure its possible to totally make sense of the holocaust. But its those individual stories that are the things that do it and i would just maybe argue that there are other sources. Primary sources that can be used to get at individual stories as opposed to certain films or certain books. Yeah. You wrote an interesting article about new jersey which was the first state to mandate Holocaust Education and a follow up that the teachers had a very limited knowledge about the holocaust. Some of the things were doing are not working. Do we have a sense of what could work or what is possible for Holocaust Education moving forward . Its like, you know, a Million Dollar question. It seems to point in the same direction. Young people and americans more broadly are really lacking in their content knowledge about the holocaust. So the question of what to do is sort of its a question of the day just yesterday the never again education act passed in the house of representatives. I think theres a couple of quick answers to that. One is taking nscholarships and emerging in effective Teaching Strategies and marying them marrying them together. Right. How do we help the young people think about these issues. And how do teachers stay on top of emerging scholarship. In this jason argues we still are learning the what. How do we help teachers learn that so theyre able to teach their own students. I would argue that universities, colleges of education, in particular, museum settings have huge potential roles to play. And i would also argue for meeting students where they are. When im learning to become a teacher, i had a supervisor who said that kids can concentrate 15 minute chunks of time because thats what commercials are. Now i would argue they have social media bits of time. Its even smaller than that. So we might have whatever feelings we have about emerging technologies and kids attention spans, but nevertheless, as teachers, i think we have an obligation to think about where students are and how we want to move them to a place that feels more comfortable for us. I think you touched on one which is opening up the conversation and in more platforms and media where people are consuming information. I think it points to increasing the diversity of where people go for information. I think, paul, maybe you can talk about the standing interpretations that lead up to this. You talked about 1933 versus 1941, for example. I think this question of every historian whether they write an article or book they decide where to begin and end. You cant tell everybody so you have to make some choices. How did they come to power or launch the Second World War or now i think increasingly in terms of trying to understand how nazi germany matters is to think about, well, how did they come to perpetrate this genocide assault on the jewish population. This is is a moving target. We were talking earlier today i was reading a new article that came out that was discussing the sources of hitlers antisemitism and revisiting an interview that was conducted in 1994 with the woman who had been the daughter of a family that rented a room to hitler in munich. Right before the first world war. So this becomes a new source. Suggesting that, well, in terms of trying to figure out how do they move from the failed painter in austria to then becoming a political leader in germany. And its messy and complicated. How shoumtd that matter for this. There is no question that as [ inaudible ] the questions that historians bring to the table change over time and they change the kind of sources that people, you know, that interview was from 1994. This is a more interesting source than we thought it was. In that perspective, i mean, youre right that certain aspects historical events, including the holocaust, will become known in a way they werent previously would be rediscovered. People will go back to thin in this case used to be interested in that werent interested in and are certainly interested in again. One topic that got a lot of attention recently. The question of sexual violence. Being asked students in the past because theyre important to us in the present. Right. All of those things are a source. How we make the transition between scholarship and public understanding. I had the privilege to work at the museum which is the museum that documents refugees from europe its a whole new range of sources and artifacts that it can be derived from and new informations about the community that cant be formed. Its a whole universe of documents we have not fully explored. What were going to do now is bring the house lights up a little bit so we can see you. You can see us. The cameras can also identify you. Please do. Remember you are on camera on cspan. We ask you keep your question or comment brief. You can direct it to an individual member of the panel or to all of us. If you are willing, you can also identify yourself. We have two microphones on either end. Lets bring you into the conversation now and feel free to raise your hands. The 6 million. How and when did historians settle on the number. Maybe theres a who in the question, as well. It was first used in the neuroem burg trials. Derived from german sources, so some kinds of things. Some were based on prewar estimates. Populations and post war accounts of refugees. One of the big problems is that for a lot of jews killed in external nati external external nation camps. The germans didnt bother keeping records of how many people they were killing. So we have a good count of the number of jews who were enslaved by the germans. Many of whom died of poor conditions in slaved labor camps. From the jews sent directly to the gas chambers, the germans did not keep me tech louticulouf those. Theres a lot of squishiness, i guess you could say, in some of these precise numbers. So 6 million is a ballpark. 6 million is a give or take number with a very large error estimate. But nothing lower than 5 million would be the lowest credible count ive seen. Its an interesting question. How does that number function . Does that number of the power and the magnitude of it, does that have some sort of role in how teachers approach the subject or deem the subject to be serious enough that it has to be taught in every classroom . Its an interesting question. Certainly theres a power to the number. I think because it is so unimaginable in so many ways, they were teaching of the holocaust to be enormously complicated. Theres an urgency because its so high. Theres an urgency because when you add other victim groups, aside from the jews to the number of victims in the holocaust, the number gets higher. And i think it both makes it urgent and enormously complicated because it feels incomprehensible, particularly the younger you go, the harter it harder. 100 via 40 feels big to you when youre a kid. So to think about 6 million is feels impossible. Well work across. So this gentleman on the end. First of all, im a catholic priest. I was stationed in poland for 18 years. I was pastor of the parish. That was about 5 clokilometers, kilometers away from a. I would have a question for the audience. How many have relatives or related to someone who perished . Thank you. Thank you for raising that. I appreciate it. Home low. Im a first year grad students and i have a general question but mainly has to do with teaching and i guess combatting Holocaust Denial in your classroom. This came up last year in a class i had where a professor was approached by a colleague who said they had students bring up facts they learned, like, online or reading, like, their response was they werent sure how to deflect these accusations from their own students about Holocaust Denials. What are some ways you can combat these kind of questions in class . So ill start with this one. Both because kyle was a student of ours. So i feel obligated to answer. Also, because it is teaching. I also had the experience i sort of know the situation kyle is talking about but also a situation in new jersey recently a teacher was fired for teaching Holocaust Denial. He sued the School District and i was a witness in the case on behalf of the School District who was fighting against him and has given enormous amount of thought what happens when not only students bring up Holocaust Denial but what happens when teachers sort of trade in Conspiracy Theory and denial. And one thing i have theres sort of two schools of thought. One is i will not debate a denier. The idea you disengage. If you cant accept basic facts. Our conversation is done. And particularly with students. Who perhaps have been taken down weird google algorithm rabbit holes and taken to sites like the National Historical review. Sites that have really solid sounding names and they dont necessarily know how to tell the good from the bad. So you students relying on faulty facts theres a little bit more wiggle room to say i see where you have gotten this. Let me give you a stack this big of documents that refute it and talk about it after wards and see what makes sense. I dont know how you counter adults who are sort of trading in denialism and conspiracy theories, but i think with students, in particular, you can, in fact, fight facts with facts. Yeah. If its a case where facts will make a difference, thats a good resource for that. If its a case of kind of motivated reasoning and facts of the matter, then, yeah. This is is a footnote. Right, to some extent its a way to think about providing, you know, even if not actual footnotes, but essentially providing sources to support the work that we do and so this becomes a way of modelling but also of providing evidence. Its also about putting together the architecture of why ideas come from. We can also provide a much denser and more fully fleshed out sense of the foundation. Credentials matter. Right. I think were unfortunately in a moment where theres a lot of ambiguity around credentials and maybe some pushback against credentials and expertise but i think we at Villanova History Department and more broadly feel strongly that credentials mean something and expertise is important. Certainly everyone can have opinions about things. I think we started off going to prudentials. My question is based on the fact that one of the most well known holocaust deniers is arthur butts who was not as a historian but an Electrical Engineering professor. My question is how do we balance insisting on the fact of the holocaust happened with, umm, and then sort of point that our history with making history assessable, maybe not to people like arthur butts but keeping holocaust history assessable while insisting it happened and keeping that argument at the forefront. Did you want to talk about instagram . Yeah, sure. So before this, we had a twopronged conversation. I alluded to this a little bit when i talked about meeting young people where they are. Meeting students where they are now and i used two examples. One, an Instagram Stories. I believe it was a film maker in israel who did this. And Instagram Stories maybe someone here can fact check me, if i get the definition of Instagram Stories a little bit wrong, but they are essentially sort sort of video clips that can be posted on a fairly regular basis on an Instagram Page account. Sorry. There was an instagram story, however it was posted, called evas stories and it chronicled the true story of a young woman who was murdered in the holocaust and sort of portrayed her in the current day. So you saw eva taking selfies and eva out with her friends, as if the holocaust were happening now, in lots of ways, while also staying true to much of her story. There was lots of debate about this. If it was appropriate. It was horrifying. It should be taken down and condemned forever. Fundamentally lots of young people connected it to this. It had millions of views and or followers. And yeah, students who were in my classes would also come and say i saw this on this instagram story, how real is this . And it opened up the avenue for lots of conversation about whats acceuracte and whats no. Because they were able to connect with themselves to the young women in the video. At the same time theres attention bringing serious scholarship and serious subject in playful, modern platforms. Theres controversies about holocaust video games and theres significant push back against them. There was even a video game that was shut down because it was deemed to be not the right tone and not the right message, too much fable not much fact. It is relevant about balancing new platforms and opportunities with the seriousness that the subject demands. Goes to the question about going about learning from, right, because its a question historians wrestle with in general, which is, what is a the place of fiction in a history classroom because by definition fiction has madeup elements. So all of the light you cannot see, would you teach it right, any of these things, some of them are better, some are worse, some are great literature. Some are not. But all of them have fictional elements. You know. What are the ethics of bringing any amount of fictional, you know, dimension into a story, the reality of which, which i think youre getting on with your question is so profoundly important to acknowledge. Right. And so, how do you say, we are acknowledging the reality of this but in order to make it accessible were going to bring in selfies or were going to bring in, you know, whatever it might be. What about Something Like masks. Right. Yeah. So, i mean, how does that function be about how creative and how math knat imagination you can get still with true essence to the story. We spoke about this before, thinking about technology, something were working on at rowen which is a challenge to think about teaching and learning about the holocaust by using Virtual Reality an the first reaction everyone gives is a gasp. I will complicate it by after extensive conversations in the university and with other scholars is to recreate certain parts of the warsaw ghetto by using the documents from the ringo bloom archive, which was, as devin mentioned before, jews took dairy entries, lifetime reports, how much food was in the kitchen, how many people were there that day. So were trying to do this only using and then they were preserved so generations to come could learn of these prisoners in the warsaw ghetto. So were using Virtual Reality to bring to life documents intended to be read by future generation. Thats the hope. Our biggest question continues to be where are the ethical lines. What is ethical, what is not . How do we do this without it feeling cool or like a video game, but really using it as a teaching tool. So i think its those ethical lines that, not keep shifting but become more complicated as Technology Advances and as we move further away from the event. So i think theres a balance of technology, scholarship, ethics, teaching, none of which i have really good answers for but all of which were really thinking about. Lets move to this side of the move to get more people involved in the conversation. Youve been very patient, well start here and work to the middle where you have also been very patient. Hi. This was wonderful. Im wondering, do you know the movie, the reader, and your thoughts on that. I found it very powerful. I have okay you go first. I am not a fan. For what its worth. So the reader, if you dont know either the film or the book, it was a cultural sensation late 90s i want to say. The story is a young boy young man has an affair with an older woman who turns out to have been a female guard in a concentration camp who ends up then having done some bad things, right. But its also about the core message is, like, he helps her learn to read and introduces her to the classics of german literature. And this is kind of a story of redemption and salvation for her. And you know, what i find troubling about that is the kind of the thesis of the story, if it has one, is that german culture can save you from german culture. And, you know, i say that as a joke but its also kind of the problem that emerges clearly in and of itself. The question is not, you know, if only the germans had red more gerrita the holocaust would not have happened. The problem is the holocaust happened while they were reading gerta. Thats really the question. Why didnt reading gerta prevent the holocaust, right, and thats not how the question was framed in that book. So thats why i found that to be not entirely successful. And the one, yes, i agree with everything that you said, and also think that it shows shades of gray that can be complicated for people to think about students in particular to think about, right. So in what ways is the perpetrator in this film humanized. Right. Shes not onedimensional. Shes not evil. She did evil things. She did horrible things. She also is this person who loves and is loved in return and so while agreeing that certainly parts of it are really problematic, theres something about the humanization of perpetrators and this, it makes it really hard to say, and id never be that person, this is impossible. So thats sort of one little comment. And the other thing i would say, this gets to the point to the messiness when you get down to the granular level of every day life and the ways in which the lines between actions that you try to assess and evaluate their goodness or badness. So i i my work focused early on on postworld war ii berlin and in one of the debates in the berlin Municipal Assembly there was discussion and accusation of a socialist deputy and accusation of essentially that he collaborated with the nazis because he had purchased the shop of a jewish acquaintance so that person could emigrate. So is this a act of humanity to facilitate the escape of somebody from nazi germany . Or is this a act of collaboration thats contributing to the quote unquotarianization of the german economy. The answer is probably both. The level of detail i could access in the record didnt get down to the relationship between these two people and how that played out and whether we know what was in fact informing this decision, that thats something that the record doesnt quite give us access it to. But i think that that is precisely the case that, just because somebody was not a nazi doesnt mean that ones actions were not contributing it to the smooth operation of the nazi regime. Or just because one was a nazi doesnt necessarily mean one couldnt do things that individual moments also created opportunities for humanity or possibility. I think too this is evidence of how a good historian could ruin any movie that you watch. [ laughter ] i say that a bit tongueincheek but gets to the questions from our students, right. I mean, there are ways we want to engage with these topics but its not always in the classr m classroom, not always in a panel conversation, sometimes it is through a film or book or through an instagram post. And so, you know, sure, it may not be the exact right tone or message but is there something that we can learn from all this . And in some ways, do these things as a collective still serve Public Interest purpose by being out there and raising awareness. Right. It would be worse if there were no films at all. Thats my personal opinion. Lets get a few more questions. We have a lot of men raising their hand, we want some gender balance. Yes. You have been very patient. If you can, lets get to you and then well get my mother and few others. [ laughter ] nepittism. Its called moderators prerogative. Hi i have a question, i spent time with a german colleague and she had questions for me about how we progressed from slavery and going through jim crowe and reconstruction and Civil Rights Movement and how shes been seeing a lot of the statues not removed and she asked about how were educated about slavery and about the holocaust and german history in the u. S. I explained the difference i experienced is slavery was matter of fact thing that happened. Thats how it was explained in the south. The holocaust is a sad thing that happened i dont know a lot about, it is just sad and sobering. The question for the panelist, how, if you know, in german studies, how is the holocaust taught there and what can we glean from how they teach it there to also teach the holocaust here but also other sad events like slavery here in america. So so i think whats really similar about these issues is even regardless of the difference in the distance and the past that i think these are two histories that both, sort of in the United States and germany remain very close to the surface, right. So that they are they are present in lots of ways. And that continue to have to remain significant parts of contemporary life. I think that germany west germany in particular was often held up and reunified germany was held up as a Success Story in terms of an effort to deal honestly and factually and conscientiously with a very problematic past. And i think on some level thats very true in terms of the ways in which it is part of the curriculum. It is part of this recognition that naziism was wrong, nazi germany perpetrated horrific crimes and that this is something that contemporary germans need to continue to wrestle with. I think recent conversations have begun to wrestle with the ways in which the successful Civic Education was also detached from personal experience. So theres a book a number of years ago that came out called grandpa wasnt a nazi. So this idea that, yes, nazi, it was horrible, the crimes, nobodys doubting that. My my grandfather, he was just an ordinary soldier, so he had nothing to do with the nazis were really bad, its good we werent one of them rs kind of thing. I think that would be the challenge here. Is the ways in which you can recognize whether personal family but also institutionally we have many more connections guys these dangerous pasts. One good example is the question of universities, georgetown, princeton, harvard or yale who are confronting their connections to the legacy of slavery, not just in the south, right. But are beginning to. I think that those are some of the ways in which we can think about it. Its not just something in the past but our institutions in the present, their wealth, traditions, names, they bear lots of connections. And i think that that may be is one of the Cautionary Tales about the success of germany is the ways in which it also becomes depersonalized. And quickly id add to the question of generations, right. I mean, sort of the story of german success dealing with its past is really a story of the second postwar generation. Right. The immediate postwar era, the dominant story in german public life is we are the victims. Right. Were the victims of the nazis who, you know, all four of them who started this horrible war, right. And were the victims of the alla allies who bombed our cities into rubble. We were really unlucky. We were victims of communists. Its only in the 60s with the next generation you get people with a much more critical eng e engagement with that past saying yeah there were more than four nazis in the country. Right. Maybe not my grandpa. Although there was my dad and there they probably were critical of dad, it was the 60s after all, right. Whats interesting now though is again youre starting to see a generational shift. Right. You already mentioned that, you know, Holocaust Denial is making its face known in germany in a way it wasnt previously. Neonazis are you know, you dont want to over state this, right, but they are more prominent publicly then they would have been 10 or 15 years ago even. Right. And so, you know, progress on these kinds of confrontations with difficult past is not a oneway street. You can learn lessons and then forget them and fail to train, you know, to teach them to the next generation. Right. And thats, i think, again, part of whats important about this kind of work is making sure that lessons once learned are not forgotten. And i would just add or argue that as many questions or concerns we might have about loss of education in the United States, id argue it is probably a lot better than the education around slavery. I think this is an over statement but i think its easier for american children, americans in general to think about horrors that were committed by other people far aw away. Where americans were on the side of right. And when we confront our own history of slavery, we dont have the safety of space, and so, i think that there is an argument to be made that, you know, we do better when it comes to Holocaust Education than we do when it comes to slavery education. We are running short on time. I promised wed end the event on time. So well get in one last question, from my mom. [ laughter ] and i know that there will be other questions you will want to ask so we are going to have a Dessert Reception in the lobby. After the event concludes i invite you to join us with the speakers and you can add additional questions. One thing id like to respond to the question just asked, your question points to something we talk about a lot, how different education history looks, depending on what state youre in. I grew up in new york and learned more about the holocaust than slavery. The inverse could be true for people in other states. So a lot of the work we have do in the Public Interest is very localized. Id say the other quick thing is, we know a lot more about the victories of holocaust than of slavery. A lot more to uncover about the victims of american slavery and generation of scholars are working on just that. So with that, the final question, where did the microphone go. Ah, yes. Right here in the front. Hi. So im the daughter of two holocaust survivors. I was born in a dp camp in germany after world war ii and id like to thank the entire panel for really a fabulous discussion. So i knew of paramount because i went to the day school and we have family in israel as well but i never really appreciated how awful this was until we went, my husband dan and i went to burke now, not auschwitz because i think its totally intelligent tied. But auschwitz dirt on the roads. Nazis. Dogs. Complete oblivion for people who came off the trains. I think for someone like myself, an experience like that is really important. And then the other thing that happened while we were there, is there was a survivor who was telling Israeli Soldiers about his experiences in the camp. So these were young men and women from israel, from the siba, who didnt really know anything about it. What i would suggest is in Europe Hitler decided to completely exterminate the jewish communities. Some of them had been in europe for over 1,000 years. And one way to teach kids or to make it more immediate, i think, and you guys know this better, is to appoint people in the room and say to them, okay, you guys are going to disappear. The entire third or fourth or fifth of the class is going to disappear. How do you feel about this neighbor or that neighbor . How do you feel about not having this person in your class . I think thats the only way you can bring stuff home to these kids. Because they live in a privileged world. And its really hard to make them understand this. So, i want to be really careful with how i frame this, but to say theres lots and lots of debates within education generally about the use of simulations like that, and my biggest caution or concern while i hear what youre saying and sort of wrestle around with this myself very often and im asked this question on a really regular basis is are we giving kids then some sort of false equivalency. I was part of the class and part of it when my neighbor disappeared. Now i understand what it was like to be a jew in 1939 germany. So this thing young people tend to do is to say they understand everything so my push back or my caution with Something Like that, which i agree in many ways would be effective and would really bring the message home, is there is then this over identification with something that thankfully our children right now in america cant understand. Its both a blessing and a curse that they cant. So thats my only sort of bit of push back to jasons mom. Im sorry. [ laughter ] one other thing even in terms of thinking about the different ways in which there could be different experience in places like auschwitz or dak how, it could depend on the time of day there, what the weather was like. And that there is not a single way that this can be experienced. If i just point to one holocaust memoir i encourage people to read is the ruth talking about the holocaust in the camps rendering them museumlike and said she could never go back to auschwitz because it could not be like what it was when she was there. I think that part of this is a challenge for all history. That all history is a kind of n approximation. The challenge is to navigate the balance between making connections, fleshing out stories we have only in a fragranceme mment fashion. I think the heart of this needs to be recognizing the humanity of the people were talking about, whose stories were trying to tell, and to acknowledge that and to recognize how complicated that is. Just very quickly to add to that, so part of the point of History Education history, right, is it to imagine yourself in this past. It to try to understand what it would have been like to be in this past. But when youre talking about mass murder events it creates certain ethical challenges for that active imagination. Right. Whether youre trying to get students to understand the nazis, right. You want them to understand how nazis think. But you dont want them to think like nazis. Right. So how do you, you know, make them understand that there was a kind of logic to what the nazis were doing, albeit a perverse and evil logic. Right. Similarly, you want them to understand, you know, what the jewish experience was like, but you cant you cannot walk a mile in their shoes. Right. You just cant. As somebody in a peaceful, prosperous, wellshod, wellclothed, wellfed, kind of world, right, i can try to approximate an understanding what that experience must have been like but it is not my experience. I will not have that experience. And so we have to kind of respect the kind of ethical distance, right, between the world that youre living in and this world of pain and terror and death. Yeah. And places have power. Conversations have power. And i think all of it works together. Thats how this process unfolds. Thats how we educate, how we teach, how we revise, thats what we hope to do here at the center create power place to have power conversations and i think we had one tonight. So i thank you very much. Join me in thanking the panel. [ applause ] one final instruction, if i may. I know you are all eager to talk to the panelists some more, however that prevents them from getting a treat in the lobby. I will ask you to make your way to the lobby, panelists will be there in a minute. Well continue the conversation there. Thank you. Youre watching a special edition of American History tv. During the week while members of congress are in their districts due to the coronavirus pandemic. Tonight we focus on Sandra Day Oconnor the first woman justice to service on the supreme court. And Ruth Bader Ginsburg will reflect on the legacy of Sandra Day Oconnor. Enjoy American History tv, now and over the weekend, on cspan3. Every saturday night American History tv takes you to College Classrooms around the country for lectures in history. Next the u. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum host a Panel Discussion looking at the continuing quest to bring former nazis to justice and raise questions such as if perpetrators are too old to prosecute and whether its too late for accountability. Speakers include a holocaust survivor and i pull pulitzer journalist and documentary filmmaker. Good evening, everyone. My name is Jessica Abrahams and im very pleased to welcome everyone in the audience in the theater as well as those watching online to tonights program entitled, limits of justice i want to thank the embassy of canada you will hear