Dr. Keren Goldfrad, Bar Ilan University (Israel) was interviewed during the Israeli-German expert meeting "Video Testimonies – Using Interviews with Survivors of National Socialist Persecution in Historical Education Theoretical Approaches, Methods and Concepts for a Didactics of Oral Remembrance in Israel and Germany", organized by the foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future”(23rd - 25th November 2010).

From Ingolf Seidel and Birgit Marzinka

Voices of Child Survivors

The interview focus on a multidisciplinary teaching module which contains children’s Holocaust testimonies collected in 1946 from the Aschau DP youth center. The module contains materials and pedagogic strategies to help the students and the instructor explore together the historical, literary and linguistic aspects of the testimonies, and through them, the experience of children in the Holocaust. The interview illustrates a step by step analysis of a child’s testimony, which provides instructors and students with a model when conducting analyses of other children’s Holocaust testimonies. This unique multidisciplinary approach in analyzing testimonies broadens and deepens our understanding when learning about the Holocaust.

The interview shows a step by step analysis of AG's testimony. The analysis contains a set of instructions to be used in class. This format can be used by the instructor when he leads his class in conducting analyses of other testimonies.

Historical Analysis

A. Recording the Data Concerning the testimony:

• Current testimony location
• Where and when was the testimony recorded
• Who or which organization collected the testimony
• Characteristics of the testimony
• The Witness

B. Determining the historical parameters of the testimony

• Determining the nationality of the witness
• Determining the type of Holocaust experience that is related in the testimony
• Determining the timeframe and story-frame
• Determining the stages of the witness’ experience
• Identifying the historical meanings of special terms and concepts
• Source Criticism: Verifying the dates, place names and events in the testimony
• Differentiating informative statements and evaluative or explanatory statements (also containing later knowledge)

Literary and Linguistic Analysis

The literary and linguistic close analysis that we will be illustrated proceeds from bottom-up: from text-based features to more macro, interpretive analysis. We begin with specific language features and proceeded towards the overall patterns informing the testimony.

The most important feature of the literary analysis aided by the linguistic one is the working out of the human significance of the historical trauma of the Holocaust. This is done by identifying the emotional foci of the testimonies. Through the close reading of the testimony, we demonstrate that even though the testimony is short, it is extremely emotional and informative. By adding the linguistic and literary tools of analysis to the historical ones, students learn how to uncover the emotional hotspots pointing to the most traumatic experiences embedded within these seemingly simple testimonies.

Pedagogical Perspectives

In addition to transmitting knowledge to its readers, this teaching module seeks to engage students in an active process of examination by providing pedagogical activities that elicit students' predictions, opinions, comparisons, and conclusions. The pedagogical tools provided in this module will assist the instructor in maximizing the students' learning experience, so that the students will absorb the multifaceted meaning within children's Holocaust testimonies.

Audio interview with Dr. Keren Goldfrad

1. Aims of the project

2. Curricula of the modules

3. Learning process  of the students during the modules

4. Multiperspectivity of the modules

5. Why using children testimonies

6. Learning styles of the modules

7. Target groups of the modules

8. Selfconstruction process of identity during the learning process and in the interviews

9. Way of using the modules in learning situations

10. Historical incorrectness in movies in teaching history and the Holocaust

11. Teaching Holocaust in Israel

12. Opinion about the German-Israeli expert exchange of the foundation "Remambrance, Responsibility and Future"

13. General composition of german-israeli exchange groups (youth and expert exchanges)