Groundbreaking Holocaust Education Resource Launched For Schools

Talia Cohen
taliacoh@usc.edu
USC Shoah Foundation Institute
University of Southern California
213-740-6036
Nikki Ginsberg
020.7383.3623
nginsberg@theproffice.com


Institute partners with Holocaust Educational Trust in UK to launch Recollections, an educational resource for schools in the UK

The Holocaust Educational Trust (HET), together with the Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, at the University of Southern California, is launching a groundbreaking interactive DVD-ROM - Recollections: Eyewitnesses Remember the Holocaust – on Monday 16th October at Pimlico School, London.

Four years in development, Recollections is the first schools-specific resource in the UK produced by the USC Shoah Foundation Institute. The product integrates testimony from survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust contained within the Institute’s Visual History Archive. The archive contains nearly 52,000 videotaped interviews recorded over the past decade.

The launch is timely, as HET prepares to begin to roll-out its successful Lessons from Auschwitz programme to all secondary schools across the UK from next year. Recollections will play a vital role in extending the work of HET, to ensure the two students from each school attending the visit, and all young people learning about the Holocaust, can hear and learn from the visual testimony of survivors.

Eighteen visual history testimonies are incorporated in the resource including interviews from Jewish survivors, Roma and Sinti survivors, Jehovah’s Witness survivors, and survivors of the Nazi eugenics programme. Accompanying the testimonies are interactive student activities and training materials for teachers which promote knowledge and understanding about the Holocaust and its lessons as well as examine the nature of humanity and the individual’s role within society.

Recollections is specifically tailored to the Citizenship curriculum but can also be used within the History and Religious Education curricula. It is the first resource of its kind in the UK to enable students to learn about the Holocaust by engaging with survivor testimony through interactive technology.

Karen Pollock, Chief Executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, commented: “Recollections is a groundbreaking resource that will ensure that Holocaust education can continue to engage the next generation of students in the UK, even when survivors are no longer with us. For almost a decade, HET has facilitated the visit of survivors to schools. But as survivors grow frailer, it will become increasingly difficult to meet the demand from schools for survivors to speak directly to students. This exciting product will revolutionise classroom teaching in the future and we are delighted to be working with USC Shoah Foundation Institute on this very special resource.”

Douglas Greenberg, Executive Director of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute commented: “We cannot underestimate the importance of visual history testimony and oral testimony in the years to come. Books can teach us history, but visual and oral history allow learning to come directly from the source, from someone who lived through a particular moment of history. Visual history is the media by which students in the future will learn about the past. Recollections is a resource that begins with testimony, and builds lessons around it; we hope it will engage and challenge students in the UK.”

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Notes for Editors

Holocaust Educational Trust
The Holocaust Educational Trust was established in 1988. Their aim is to educate young people from every ethnic background about the Holocaust and the important lessons to be learned for today. HET works in schools, universities and in the community to raise awareness and understanding of the Holocaust, providing teacher training, an outreach programme for schools, teaching aids and resource material. HET regard one of their earliest achievements as ensuring the Holocaust formed part of the National Curriculum for History. HET continues to play a leading role in training teachers on how best to teach the Holocaust. HET runs the flagship Lessons from Auschwitz courses for teachers and post-16 students incorporating a visit to the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. In the last seven years, HET has taken over 4000 students and teachers including participants from Pimlico School who will host the launch of Recollections. In November 2005, Rt. Hon Gordon Brown MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer announced a Treasury grant of £1.5 million to support the HET’s Lessons from Auschwitz Course. This funding will enable HET to facilitate visits to Auschwitz for 2 students from every school in the UK, increasing the number of students participating in the programme from 400 a year to over 6000 a year.

USC Shoah Foundation Institute
With a collection of nearly 52,000 video testimonies in 32 languages and from 56 countries, the USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s archive is the largest visual history archive in the world. The Institute interviewed Jewish survivors, homosexual survivors, Jehovah’s Witness survivors, liberators and liberation witnesses, political prisoners, rescuers and aid providers, Roma and Sinti survivors (Gypsy), survivors of Eugenics policies, and war crimes trials participants.

The mission of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute is to overcome prejudice, intolerance, and bigotry–and the suffering they cause–through the educational use of the Institute's visual history testimonies. The Institute relies upon partnerships in the United States and around the world to provide public access to the archive and advance scholarship in many fields of inquiry. The Institute and its partners also utilize the archive to develop educational products and programs for use in many countries and languages.

October 16th 2006
October 16th 2006 marks the 60th anniversary of two key events in Holocaust history - the Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Goering’s suicide and the execution of the first group of major Nazi war criminals.

Hermann Göering, who was also President of the Reichstag and designated successor to Hitler, was responsible for ordering preparations for a "general solution of the Jewish question" in 1941. He was tried, together with several other Nazi leaders, at an international military tribunal in Nuremberg. Found guilty on all counts and sentenced to death by hanging, he poisoned himself on October 16, 1946, hours before his scheduled execution. Eleven others were found guilty and executed on this day including Joachim von Ribbentrop. Germany’s Foreign Minister from 1938 to 1945.