A PLAYGROUND AT BIRKENAU

“How did you get into Holocaust education?” is a common question and I tend to answer differently depending on who’s asking and what’s on my mind.

Why I Do What I Do: Reason #2

As our group walked through Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau, one thing we saw disturbed us over and over again: Tourists with children.

When I was eight years old, I saw something I shouldn’t have seen. We were at the home of my parents’ friends. With the adults in the kitchen, I was in the TV room upstairs with the older kids. Flicking through the channels, our eyes became fixed on the screen: A teenage boy watched naked women and children walk toward the gas chambers of a Nazi camp. He couldn’t look away. In another scene, men who had tried to escape the camp were about to be executed when the Nazi officer in charge explained the full punishment: each condemned man was ordered to choose an additional prisoner to be shot. The hundreds of other prisoners—women and men—were forced to watch the mass execution. If any were to turn their heads or close their eyes, they would also be killed.

This was the made-for-TV film “Escape From Sobibor,” based on real events. I imagined myself in the shoes of the Nazis’ victims and, for years, those violent and confusing scenes gave me nightmares. I can still remember myself sitting on the carpet, looking up at the screen, finding it impossible to look away and stunned into silence. I was too young.

When it comes to Holocaust education, how young is too young? Should Holocaust museums and Holocaust sites set minimum age requirements for visitors? The Imperial War Museum in London sets age requirements for entry to its Holocaust history and crimes against humanity exhibitions. Holocaust museums in the U.S. leave the decision to parents. There was a time, our guide told us, when children under 14 year olds were not allowed on the site of Auschwitz. But that ban was lifted.

Over our three days at Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau last week, we watched toddlers playing—and sometimes throwing tantrums—inside the preserved barracks and prison building of Auschwitz. Seven and eight year olds walked by the ruins of the gas chambers of Birkenau. And they stared at the exhibits of human hair and piles of shoes and explicit photographs of emaciated prisoners and listened through their headphones to the Auschwitz State Museum tour guides who described the gruesome details of mass-murder and Nazi experiments.

As we watched these children and their parents tour Auschwitz, I became more and more troubled. What were the parents’ justifications for bringing their children to these sites of atrocity? Weren’t they concerned about traumatizing them?

Or do the lessons about prejudice and extremism outweigh the emotional risks? How should parents explain this history to their children? At what age are children able—cognitively and emotionally—to comprehend the Nazis’ intentions and actions?

In 1943, the Nazis built a playground in Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was placed in the “Gypsy camp” and it included a sandbox, swings, and a carousel. Unlike most Jewish children who arrived at Auschwitz, children of Roma or Sinti descent were not gassed on arrival. Instead, they were allowed to remain with their families and many were used in Nazi experiments before the “Gypsy camp” was liquidated in August 1944.

Throughout the Nazi era, children witnessed extreme violence. Jewish children smuggled food into the Nazi ghettos. They kept diaries and created art. Jewish parents saved the lives of their children by sending them on the Kindertransports to Great Britain. Meanwhile, German “Aryan” children were indoctrinated into Nazi ideology. The Germans kidnapped Polish children who looked “Aryan” and raised them as Germans. Jewish children, along with the elderly, were often the first to be murdered in the Nazi camps. The experiences of children are woven into the fabric of Holocaust history. But that does not make Holocaust history a child-friendly topic.

One of the reasons I do what I do is out of concern for young learners who, despite the good intentions of teachers and parents, are often exposed to violent Holocaust content too early or in problematic ways.

There’s no perfect solution. Because of the nature of Holocaust and genocide education, we can’t avoid the possibility of traumatizing young learners. But we can minimize the risks. Before choosing to expose learners to violent images—in photographs and on film—teachers, youth educators, museum designers, and parents need to tread carefully:

1. INTRODUCTIONS: When we first introduce children to Holocaust history, we do not need to show them images of starved Jewish children in Nazi ghettos or open mass graves. Violent images can overwhelm and stifle critical thinking. We can teach about Holocaust history through words—spoken or on the page. That way, each learner has a chance to move through content at her or his own emotional pace.

2. PREPARATION: When learners are ready to view violent images, we have to prepare them properly. Although Holocaust history is shocking, we don’t want to shock young people into silence. Before sharing violent images—or before a trip to a museum or historical site—we need to ask learners: What do you expect to see? Then, if their expectations are off, we need to tell them what they will see. That way, we minimize the shock and set the stage for conversation and reflection, later on. (To be clear, we should not tell them how they will feel, because everyone responds differently.)

3. VIEWING: When showing violent images to young people we must provide context. We have to go beyond the image. We can ask learners: Who took the photograph or film, and why? What might have been happening beyond the frame? What might have happened before the photograph or film was taken? What might have happened afterwards? How did the photograph or film survive the war? What evidence does each photograph and film provide?

4. REFLECTING: After viewing violent images, we have to help learners reflect on what they saw. We can ask learners: Did anything surprise you? Did you find it easy or difficult to look at the image, and why? How do the images add to—or even contradict—what you already knew about Holocaust history? What new questions about the Holocaust and genocide do you now have?

My hunch is that the children we saw walking through the Auschwitz sites weren’t prepared or supported in these ways. I’m worried that, when those young and older children look away from the piles of hair and photographs of mass graves, they’ll keep their thoughts and questions to themselves, unable to process and learn from what they saw.


Why I Do What I Do: Reason #1

WHAT THE FAKE?!

(HOW TO TRIVIALIZE TRAUMATIC HISTORY AND TRAUMATIZE YOUR AUDIENCE AT THE SAME TIME.)

In coming to Poland to visit sites of Nazi atrocity, I’ve tried to keep an open mind around my expectations. But there was something I never expected to see.

“Where are we?” A train station, attempting to flee the impending attack. But it’s too late. Three steps forward and we’re surrounded by falling, crashing bombs, darkness, smashing glass, screaming. As we turn the corner, Nazi flags block our path. We weave between them and find ourselves on a street. Uneven cobblestones, a tram. We walk into what looks like a courtroom. A Nazi officer’s hat rests on a podium; behind us, a stranger puts it on. Suddenly there are Swastikas covering the floor. As we step on them, triumphant German music blasts on loudspeakers above—a celebration. After boarding the tram, we arrive at St. Michael’s Prison. At this point, we’re frightened to move on. The bottom of the dark stairwell is out of sight but, compelled to climb down, we discover a dark doorway. Behind the locked door, we hear terrifying sounds—coughing, shouting, screaming. It’s not real, we tell ourselves. Running back up the stairs, we find ourselves in the ghetto, weaving through shadows of dark and narrow alleyways, Jewish faces staring out at us. We look through windows of crowded apartments at white figures, ghosts, paused in sadness, illness. Each step is more frightening. Then sunlight, blinding us—this is a quarry, white stones cover the ground, we look at frozen prisoners in the distance through the barbed wire fence. We are standing in Płaszów Concentration Camp, a site of Nazi brutality and mass-murder...

This is the fairly new exhibition “Kraków under Nazi Occupation 1939-1945” at the actual site of the Schindler Factory (where Oskar Schindler employed Polish Jews and succeeded in saving the lives of over 1,000 people).

We had expected an exhibition focusing on Schindler’s story. Instead, we experienced a twisted theme-park ride. A Holocaust House of Horrors. Genocide at Disneyland. We cringed and gasped and recoiled; not at the often vague historical content, but at the designers’ irresponsible decisions.

When I teach about the design of Holocaust museums, I usually share with students a working theory I have: Holocaust museums in the U.S. are more likely to sensationalize history through immersive environments and simulations than museums in the U.K., Germany, Israel, and elsewhere. The elevators at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. resemble the interior of the Nazi gas chambers. The floor and walls of a room at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center mimic the killing fields and mass-graves of the Einsatzgruppen (the Nazis’ mobile shooting squads). The Virginia Holocaust Museum warns on its website, “Guests should wear appropriate attire to crawl through an exhibit.”

Through my work, I warn against such designs because...

1. Trying to recreate the experiences of Holocaust victims and survivors trivializes the actual events and real stories of the Nazi era. We’ll never know what it felt like to suffocate inside a gas chamber. We’ll never know what it felt like to starve in a ghetto before being deported in an over-crowded rail car to an unknown destination. We can never understand, so why try?

2. These kinds of simulated environments can be traumatizing for adults, let alone 12-year-olds. I’ve witnessed engaged groups of teenagers walk through these kinds of spaces only to become shocked and silenced and unable to discuss essential questions about history and human behavior. The intellectual purpose of Holocaust education is stifled by careless emotional manipulation.

3. Many young people already understand suffering. Many live in poverty. Some are refugees or children of refugees from war torn countries. Many are bullied at school, or abused at home. Some are survivors of rape. Many are depressed, many self-harm, some are thinking about suicide. When we teach about genocide and human suffering, we need to remember that a teenager may already be trying to cope with her or his own trauma.

4. These experiential, literal designs are filled with fake artifacts, fake streets, fake ghetto walls, fake sounds, fake barbed fences, even fake documents. Next to these fake objects, designers display real artifacts. But, because so much of these environments are make-believe, the authenticity of the real artifacts is called into question. In the face of Holocaust and genocide denial, this is a serious problem.

But still these immersive exhibitions are created. And it looks like this phenomenon isn’t limited to the U.S.; Fake artifacts and fake experiences have found their way onto the actual sites of Holocaust history.

After walking through the Kraków museum’s exhibition, we met with a member of its design team. We asked her about the immersive design. They visited museums in the U.S. and copied their approaches, she explained. “We had to use some simplifications,” she told us. “The museum world is changing. To get young people involved, you can’t use traditional methods.” Those were her exact words.

Have museum designers lost faith in young people? Do museum professionals perceive teenagers as incapable of having respectful, complex conversations about prejudice and hate and social responsibility?

Immersive design within Holocaust education seems to be spreading—and getting worse. Museums are spending millions to manipulate and patronize and traumatize their visitors, and to simplify and sensationalize and trivialize history. We have to challenge and change this.