United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Personal Narrative Virtual Field Trip

The historian Marvin Perry asks students to answer the question of the meaning of the Holocaust for Western Civilization, for Jews, for Germans, and for Christians. This strikes at the very heart of the “kaleidoscope” (a/k/a "shifting perspective") method at the root of this class.  Please take a Virtual Field Trip to the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. to find personal narratives of the survivors of the Holocaust to enrich and expand your understanding of the horrors of the Holocaust for the 6 million whose lives were extinguished, often having suffered fates worse than death, as well as the aftermath as survivors took on new identities as displaced peoples, orphans, refugees, and survivors. Both primary source written and video accounts of survivors are exhibited on these pages.

Step 1: Please go to exhibit entitled Personal Histories https://www.ushmm.org/exhibition/personal-history/

Step 2: Notice the navigation bar on the left that sub-divides the personal histories as follows:

·      Aftermath

·      Camps

·      Children

·      Deportations

·      Ghettos

·      Hiding

·      Individuals

·      Liberation

·      Refugees

·      Rescue

·      Resistance

·      Survival

Step 3: Begin to explore the personal histories exhibited. Find personal histories that enrich and expand your pre-existing knowledge of the meaning of the Holocaust. Think in particular about living in the aftermath as a survivor.  It is a difficult task to exactly pinpoint how many Jews perished in the Holocaust, though estimates suggest upwards of 6 million. (USHMM) Please find at least 6 survivors to focus on and read their accounts and listen to their stories.

Step 4: Get ready for Harkness discussion. In our next reading, Perry will argue "The Holocaust was heightened irrationality and organized evil on an unprecedented scale. . . . Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, and the other death factories represent the triumph of human irrationality over reason—the surrender of the mind to a bizarre racial mythology that provided a meta- physical and pseudoscientific justification for mass murder. They also represent the ultimate perversion of reason. A calculating reason manufactured and organized lies and demented beliefs into a structured system with its own inner logic and em- ployed sophisticated technology and administrative techniques to destroy human beings spiritually and physically. Science and technology, venerated as the great achievement of the Western mind, had made mass extermination possible. The philosophes had not foreseen the destructive power inherent in reason."  Based on the sources provided from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, what is the meaning and legacy of the Holocaust for Western civilization? For Jews? For Christians? For Germans?