"Today people know / have known for several years / that this dot on the map / is Auschwitz / This much they know / as for the rest / they think they know."
“Auschwitz and After,” Charlotte Delbo, Yale University Press 1995
Since the launch of its very first Massive Online Open Course, "The Holocaust: An Introduction" in 2016, Yad Vashem has become internationally recognized as a world leader in creating and implementing online courses on different elements of Holocaust studies. Its high-quality content and presentation techniques have already attracted hundreds of thousands of virtual learners, and the ongoing pandemic has seen many seeking new avenues of study. In creating new ways to engage with the history and events and the Holocaust, in a format where the learners can both set their own pace and study from their own homes, Yad Vashem’s original online courses have become a central feature of its internet-based programming.
The latest to join the canon, one of several released this past year, is "Poetry and the Holocaust," available for free on the "FutureLearn" platform. Launched in late 2020, the course takes a deep dive into Holocaust history through a literary prism, using poems written during and after the Shoah to learn about and reflect on the experiences of the authors and those around them. Poets and authors featured throughout the course include Dan Pagis, Primo Levi, Wisława Szymborska, Avremek Koplowicz and Peter Kest. "We knew that there would be a great interest in this topic," says Dr. Naama Shik, Director of the e-Learning Department at the International School for Holocaust Studies. "The presentations of our veteran educator Jackie Metzger on the Holocaust and poetry have always proven very popular with educators training with Yad Vashem." Metzger and Yossi Kugler of the e-Learning department who has helmed several of Yad Vashem’s MOOCs, are the main presenters on the course.
“Poetry and the Holocaust” has so far attracted over a thousand participants, and is particularly popular with enthusiasts of both literature and Holocaust history. Feedback received from inspired participants are testament to the increasing success of the program. "I found this course to be quite awe-inspiring, and feel privileged to have been able to participate,” wrote one participant. "This was a fantastic course," stated another.
"I have never studied an historical event through the eyes of poetry before, and the course really improved my understanding of what the survivors went through."
This article originally appeared in the "Yad Vashem Jerusalem Magazine," volume 94.
![From the new online course "Poetry and the Holocaust"](https://www.yadvashem.org/sites/default/files/styles/main_image/public/Poetry and the Holocaust.jpg?itok=o5hGoBk_ "From the new online course "Poetry and the Holocaust"")
![From the new online course "Poetry and the Holocaust"](https://www.yadvashem.org/sites/default/files/Poetry and the Holocaust.jpg "From the new online course "Poetry and the Holocaust"")
