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found near the gas chambers, we felt that people had tried to hide them and smuggle them.” They are the
ones . . . that send you into an emotional tailspin” (n.p.).
Even when the survivors are gone, we will always have the fragments they leave us: objects we can pick
up, touch and feel, reflect on, examine, and discuss—artefacts from which we can often learn a great deal
about the people who owned them and the history embedded in them.
History
Becomes Personal
I recently lost both my mother and my mother-in-law. They were not Holocaust survivors but, in the aftermath
of each loss, I was struck by how important the things they had left behind became—to my siblings and me,
to my husband and his family. We didn’t have holograms of our mothers. We didn’t have videotapes. But
we did have their possessions—the things they had cherished for their entire lives—the things that mattered
most to them—objects they kept, and kept again, even as they downsized their homes as they aged, as
their worlds became smaller and smaller. As we carefully decided which sibling would best appreciate each
possession, we realized that each artefact we touched had a story behind it that helped us to remember
moments shared but long forgotten. We came to cherish the unbreakable connection that these random
objects had with our mothers, which would now help us remain connected to these women and to their life
experiences in a concrete and tangible way.
It was then that I understood personally the potential to reach the next generation, to teach them about
the Shoah and the people who endured it, through artefacts—items the survivors, and those who did not
survive, were somehow able to use and to keep.
19 HOLOCAUST EDUCATION IN PEDAGOGY, HISTORY, AND PRACTICE
These items, along with the vivid memories that survivors have shared and the historical facts the objects
illustrate, can help us relate to the Jews of that time, bringing us a bit closer to the reality of a world we can
hardly imagine. As we learn about these tangible possessions, we may empathize and perhaps reflect, as I
did, on artefacts from our lives, objects that we hold dear, that represent a time in our lives that can be better
understood by knowing their context. Empathy is a path to understanding, to wanting to learn more—and
that is, after all, a most important goal of Holocaust education: to have our students want to learn more.