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The need to ‘remember’ the events and victims
of the Holocaust is not a new theme. Before the
Second World War ended, numerous Jewish
individuals and groups sought to record and
remember the genocidal events they were enduring
(Young 1993, Zwieg 1987). In the post-war era those
who survived set about creating Yizkor Books 1 , an
attempt to remember life and experience before,
during and after the war (Soo et al 2008). In the
1
Yizkor is the the Hebrew word for remember. These books
varied in format but generally tried to record the names and
stories of communities across Europe murdered during the
Holocaust.
immediate years after the war, ‘remembering’ was
usually the domain of those who had survived and
suffered. There was little interest from historians
or others in delving into the personal memories of
those who survived; instead, the focus was on Nazi
records and Allied documentation. It is also fair to
say that during the 1950’s and early 1960’s, social
history and oral history was not mainstream, and
survivor memories were deemed unreliable. It was
perceived that history was constructed through
documentary sources (Kushner 2006). Since then,
changes in the perception and use of oral history
have led to an increased interest in personal
29 HOLOCAUST EDUCATION IN PEDAGOGY, HISTORY, AND PRACTICE