Teaching the Holocaust through Literature, Poetry and Art - January 2016

“The historical, by its nature, tends to accent the unfolding of events while indicating social and political trends. Art, on the other hand, has always sought out the individual, his inner [world], and from that, it tries to understand the [outside] world. Art, perhaps only art, is the last defense against the banal, the commonplace and the irrelevant, and, to take it even further, the last defense against simplicity.”
Aharon Appelfeld, Speech on the eve of Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day, 1997, Yad VashemIn the field of Holocaust education, teachers...

IntroductionThis article will explore how poetry can be used by educators to teach and commemorate the Holocaust. The famous German sociologist, Theodor Adorno, who fled the Nazi regime for England in 1934, proclaimed shortly after the war that writing poetry after Auschwitz seemed barbaric. In his view, words in any artistic configuration were doomed to distort the harsh experiences of victims and survivors, constituting some kind of disfigurement of truth. He later modified his initial position with the passing of time. Adorno’s vision expressed his fear for the trivialization of the Holocaust....

During WWII, European Jewry was faced with a constant fight for its very survival. At a time when murder became the norm, and power endorsed unprecedented atrocities, many were swept away, unable to endure the perpetual struggle or adhere to the moral code of human society. Yet even under such dire conditions there were those who risked their lives — deliberately and intentionally — for higher values, including educating children, maintaining religious values and traditions, and sustaining centuries-old cultural activities. An examination of the humane responses in the face of the Holocaust,...

Holocaust literature remains one of the most powerful pedagogical resources. It includes postwar fiction, drama and poetry, as well as personal diaries kept during the Holocaust. Many writers chose to construct their works as historical fictions, closely adhering to the historical facts of the Holocaust, adding imaginary dialogue to enhance the storyline. Other writers and poets chose to use allegories, metaphors, and other literary devices in order to depict the horrors of the Holocaust.

The Holocaust occurred over 70 years ago and reams have been written about it. Various disciplines have applied their approaches to try and understand the transgressive nature of this period in human history. We have written a lesson-plan focusing on a poem written by W.H. Auden, one of England’s leading poets at the time of World War II. The poem was written about half a year before the outbreak of the war and as such, it deals more with the problems of refugees than with ghettos and concentration camps. With great prescience, Auden raises the specter of the German-Jewish refugees that had...