Ep. 15: Holocaust Education with Irene Ann Resenly

We talk a lot about learning from the Holocaust and lessons from the Holocaust, but we don’t talk nearly enough about HOW to TEACH the Holocaust.  Understanding how to present this complex and often difficult material to students at a variety of different grade levels (as well as to the public at heritage sites) is a critical task.

In this episode, Dr. Irene Ann Resenly talks about the pedagogy of teaching about the Holocaust, challenges of working with this material in the classroom, and the ways in which heritage sites engage with visitors.

Irene Ann Resenly has worked as a Holocaust educator and scholar for nearly two decades in diverse settings and is currently a middle school social studies teacher in suburban Wisconsin.

Resenly, I. A. (2022). Site Educators in Germany’s Perceptions of Practice: The Sense-Maker and the Storyteller. In Tour Guides at Memorial Sites and Holocaust Museums: Empirical Studies in Europe, Israel, North America and South Africa. Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. pp. 33-45.

Schweber, S., & Resenly, I. A. (2018). Curricular Imprints or the Presence of Curricular Pasts: A Study of One Third Grader’s Holocaust Education 12 Years Later. Holocaust Education in Primary Schools in the Twenty-First Century: Current Practices, Potentials and Ways Forward. pp. 3-18.

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You can find a complete reading list with books by our guests and also their suggestions here.

Transcript

Waitman (00:00.809)
Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Holocaust History Podcast. I'm your host, Waitman Born. And today we're talking about something that I think is really important and it's Holocaust education, which I think a lot of us, you know, we learn about the Holocaust through books or maybe even through podcasts, but we don't think about the fact that there's actually a lot that goes into this, both from a theory and practice and methodology perspective. And there are lots of really interesting and complex challenges.

that teachers at all levels have to deal with. And so I've got an old friend and a great guest, Irene Ann Resenly on here to talk to us about Holocaust education in all its forms. Irene Ann, welcome.

Irene Ann Resenly (00:46.776)
Thank you. So I'm happy to be here both as like a scholar of Holocaust education and as a practicing teacher right now. So for the past nearly two decades, I've been a Holocaust educator in many, many different contexts. I worked for a Holocaust survivor in his university office at Boston University.

I was a museum educator at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City. I have been a university instructor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, where I've taught both like social studies methods classes and our university's Holocaust course for several semesters. I've been a classroom teacher in Poland. And right now I am currently an eighth grade world studies teacher in suburban Wisconsin. Also taught about the Holocaust to fifth grade, fifth graders in American public schools too.

And the other hat I have is like my scholarly hat. I have my PhD in curriculum and instruction from University of Wisconsin-Madison with a focus on Holocaust education there. So I come at it like from that perspective more and looking how the Holocaust is taught at a particular site of a former concentration camp in Germany. And I'm also super interested in the questions of how do we make this history age accessible? So that's all like the insights I bring here.

Waitman (02:02.621)
Yeah, I mean, with that experience, it's like, I don't even know. I don't even know where to start because we have, there's so much, there's so much to talk about. It's maybe, maybe let's start with the, um, the American side of things perhaps. And then we can, we can, if we shift into sort of the site heritage aspect of it, we could do that too. So I think maybe, you know, this is kind of a history podcast. So, you know, what's the history of actual Holocaust education?

you know, in the United States. Because I think today, you know, we all kind of take for granted that it's important and that we should talk about it and that it's something you learn about in school. But I don't, it certainly wasn't always that way.

Irene Ann Resenly (02:45.63)
Yes, and that actually is a more complex question than what we might realize because we don't have a national curriculum in the US, unlike other countries, right? Like we have 50 distinct school systems strung together by all being in the same country. So to kind of have a comprehensive history of Holocaust education schools, like that presents one challenge. Another is like K-12 teachers know the reality of this as well. Like...

what might be, to use Michael Apple term, like official curriculum versus what actually plays out in the classroom can be vastly different from state to state, from district to district, even within the same, like two middle schools in the same districts there. But there was one book written, I think about 20 years ago now, called The Emergence of Holocaust Education in American Schools. And that book kind of speaks to like different touch points that impact it, where we could look at some trends of how.

teaching about the Holocaust came into US public schools. Private schools also might be kind of a very different set of questions. And some of the things that shaped that were the move from learning about history in public schools to social studies, meaning like looking at the teaching of history from like the social history lens, like learning history through stories, right? Social studies isn't just history, it's four other disciplines. And so like...

In that book, they identify kind of that move in American public schooling, like coincided with the Holocaust starting to be taught in schools. Right. Some other kind of what we might see as like typical or iconic, like cultural touch points also impacted Holocaust education in public schools, right? Schindler's List did the formation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Even back when Oirobo Oiroba was shown on television, and that was a touch point for families, like as we see these things happen culturally.

we see that shape the curriculum in terms of what stories are being told, whose stories are being told, right? The diary of a young girl and Knight being taught in schools shaped Holocaust education in public schools. And I would say like in the 21st century in particular, kind of the growth of Holocaust museums and resource centers and their robust education departments and resources have also shaped the Holocaust being taught in schools.

Irene Ann Resenly (05:08.446)
Alongside of that too, we also have states mandating Holocaust education. And now I checked before we got on today, it's 40 out of 50 states have some sort of legislation around Holocaust education. So those are all factors that impact the Holocaust moving into public consciousness through public schools.

Waitman (05:28.825)
And is this following roughly, you mentioned some of those important moments, right? And even going farther back to like the Holocaust mini-series or like the Eichmann trial, what time period are we starting about? I guess a question that I would just have as someone that is a Holocaust historian but is not an expert in education, like how soon after World War II?

Did this become, because I mean, at one point it's kind of current events, but then is it following sort of the 60s, 70s arc of interest in the Holocaust, or is it lagging behind that?

Irene Ann Resenly (06:12.302)
That's a great question. If there's a lag behind, I would say it's a small one. Like, typically, like, the topics that are happening kind of in the world of history and academia, it takes a little bit longer for them to get to school. But I think the interest, yes. Right? It's not that, like, as we know, like, that the Holocaust wasn't being discussed right after the war, or that it wasn't being discussed at all until the 60s, when we see different kind of pop culture representations become more prevalent.

But I think in terms of Holocaust being in the curriculum as opposed to teaching about World War II, I would suspect that's not coming up until a little bit later, and so we start to have diaries and memoirs and individual stories kind of become more well known and more popular, and that shaping the narrative from World War II to Holocaust in the context of World War II.

Waitman (07:07.333)
Right. And so I guess the next question, this is one that I was saving it, but I'm just too excited about it. What, so my only experience really is teaching the Holocaust at the university level. Also sometimes via museum programs, these kind of things. I had one experience in Toronto. I was invited, very nice, very kindly invited during one of their

Irene Ann Resenly (07:28.558)
Mm-hmm.

Waitman (07:36.477)
Holocaust remembrance events to teach a short class to I think maybe eighth graders. And even that was like, to me, very challenging because how do you translate, you know, very difficult and complex topics. So can we talk about the challenges of teaching the Holocaust at the secondary school level? And I should also, before I let you answer.

state for the record for all those teachers of secondary school students out there that you are my absolute heroes Because not only are you having to sort of teach difficult topics in difficult environments You're teaching that to people whose brains haven't fully about developed, you know And and are in a way that at least when I'm teaching university student, I can hopefully be Confident that you know, I'm not dealing with sort of their own developmental challenges of teaching children essentially at a certain age so

you sort of have like challenges upon challenges, but let's talk about what are the challenges of teaching this at the secondary school level and then you can you know you can tell us because you've taught literally all ranges of students you know what those challenges are.

Irene Ann Resenly (08:48.438)
Yeah, so actually most recently I just taught a Holocaust lesson to fourth graders in my school district. So I've taught to fourth graders, fifth graders, eighth high school students, and university students. And like first I will say this before talking about the challenges. I like as a social studies teacher have never encountered this phenomenon. Like and this happened even in the fourth grade classroom I taught in last week. Every time I start with like what like

you know, has anyone heard of the Holocaust, know something about the Holocaust? Every single time I've done this over the past 20 years, with every single age group, I have never had a time where no one has raised their hand. It is so extraordinarily powerful as a teacher to have this like as a starting point for learning where people are coming with some knowledge and right, some might be in depth, some might be really cursory, but there is still like.

there's an awareness of this history. And I think that is a tremendous opportunity to have that level of engagement and that level of curiosity. So that would be what I would say is the second thing. Students come incredibly curious to this history. And I then think with that, the challenge is for a teacher always, the challenge is time. There are high schools that have human rights courses that focus a lot on the Holocaust and other genocides.

Waitman (10:05.705)
Mm-hmm.

Irene Ann Resenly (10:13.186)
Some have Holocaust selective courses, but the reality is some teachers might at best have one week for their unit. In social studies, they might have one week for it in a literacy class as well, so time is the biggest thing. I would say another challenge that secondary educators will understand as well is like kind of aligning the enormity of the history.

and the complexity of the history to your goals for learning for students. Right. I've had the privilege to work with teachers in different contexts in teacher education, like through museums, through curricular organizations, through head of my State Department of Ed here in Wisconsin. And a challenge I hear teachers expressing is like the weight of teaching this history. They are very aware of how important it is. They are very aware of the symbolic nature of it. And thinking like,

First, how do they grapple with that and address that as a teacher? And then how do they make sure that really important learning is focused in concrete goals? Because if not, you could get lost. If you're teaching the Holocaust through a US history course, your learning goals are going to look different than, say, me in my world studies course versus my colleague in her humanities course with her fourth graders. And so to know and trust that this

incredibly important from an incredibly overwhelming history still can be shaped meaningfully in those contexts, I think is the biggest challenge.

Waitman (11:47.005)
Yeah, I mean, I imagine it's complex, difficult, you know, because I suspect that, you know, assuming that you're a conscientious teacher, you know, that it's difficult to dip in and out, right? So you can't just sort of have a lesson on Anne Frank, you know, without feeling like there's so much context.

that I need to give you before we look at this, even if it's in an English class, for example, or like, you know, in a reading comprehension class, you know, so I mean, I suspect that those are challenges too, right?

Irene Ann Resenly (12:18.794)
Yeah, I mean, that's actually, Anne Frank is a great example, right, as a text and as someone's story who like virtually all students in public school in the US will encounter Anne in some way, right? Like that in and of itself, that is wild. And, you know, if this is happening in literacy classrooms, right, you might have a teacher who's incredibly well trained at how to analyze a memoir, right, like how to understand people's stories. And then we're asking that teacher on top of that.

to offer historical context that might be a place of learning for them. Maybe best case scenario, they get to collaborate with their social studies teachers, colleagues to kind of offer some background there. But they're dealing both with the enormity of the depth and the complexity of this history, how you support students in grappling with an individual story. And then also, they're practicing reading comprehension and how to read it.

Waitman (13:15.934)
Right.

Irene Ann Resenly (13:18.454)
all of these things intersecting, it's huge. Yeah.

Waitman (13:19.029)
I mean, this is what I'm saying. If I give the Dyer Van Frank to a university student, what I don't have to worry about, hopefully, is that they can understand the words and understand what's going on. I'm not making light of this, because it's a real challenge. I can take for granted and start from a different place, because I'm not trying to juggle as many balls as the secondary school teacher is, right?

Irene Ann Resenly (13:27.895)
Hehehe

Irene Ann Resenly (13:36.877)
Yeah.

Irene Ann Resenly (13:49.042)
And like I think what comes into play there is teachers put a lot of trust and deservedly so in institutions that are helping create resources around it. That way they could trust like they're like they have deep knowledge of students. Right. If we're looking at literacy teachers in particular, you know, they have great training and in how to analyze text, how to use like texts. Right. Like community in their classroom and then for the historical piece are relying on like trusted partners to help support them in that.

I would say for me, so I teach eighth grade world studies and we have a two and a half week Holocaust unit. And part of that timing is because of the expertise I bring to it, because I'm incredibly lucky to have such a supportive school that puts so much trust in teachers and in how we write curriculum and how we deliver it. I can tell you some of the challenges for me are like, even two and a half weeks feels so fast, right? I also taught a whole university course on the Holocaust.

And when I'm making decisions around that, especially because our focus in our class is more of a memory focus and a history focus, how am I making sure they both have a balance of foundational information and ways to tackle this history in a complex way? Because I've thought a lot about this as a middle school teacher in particular, and having gone from being in a university setting and a scholar to a middle school setting as a teacher.

What historians might not realize is most American students in public schools are not learning social studies in a concrete intentional way until middle school. Like there is social studies curriculum in elementary school, but in a lot of places it is very district dependent. It is very teacher dependent on if it is truly social studies and not a literacy lesson posing as historical learning. So it might not be until fifth

or sixth grade that students are having daily structured intentional history learning. So when I have even my students in eighth grade, they might come with knowledge about the Holocaust from like these incredible historical fiction books they're reading. They might get it from pop culture. Some might get it from heritage or family connections, but it might be the first time they are learning about this like in a like structured way beyond just say contextualizing a story in a literacy setting.

Irene Ann Resenly (16:09.878)
And so what counts as that foundational knowledge is something I'm constantly reflecting on as a teacher. And yeah, I think that for us, middle school teachers in particular is a huge challenge. High school has a little, yeah.

Waitman (16:22.225)
Well, it's, it, no, I mean, it's, it's something that, you know, you bring up, you know, having two and a half weeks. And I'm just like, when I have an entire semester, I'm always like, but, but I should be talking about this and like, why haven't I talked about this? And I wish I had more space, you know, it's like, I think maybe an interesting question is, you know, what, what do you want to get, what do you want your students to take away from. The.

Irene Ann Resenly (16:32.302)
Yeah.

Waitman (16:51.997)
the, however long you have on, on the topic, because, you know, I, I look at, I look, I sort of look at education as the process of like, you know, sculpting a statue where, you know, we're always chipping away at it. And so, you know, I get us, I get a work in progress. It's been shipped away at from the high school level and the high school teacher gets something that's been shipped away at, you know, from the, the secondary school and we build on that because we're not expecting necessarily the middle schooler to remember.

you know, the facts of it, maybe, or maybe there are basic facts that you want, you want them to take away. I mean, what, what is, what is the goal? What are you trying? What are your, what are your goals when you're doing it?

Irene Ann Resenly (17:32.942)
Yeah, I so appreciate that question. I think my goal always as a teacher, as a social studies teacher, but for this in particular, because I bring a different kind of passion and expertise to the teaching of this in ways that are just different than some of the other units I teach, I want them to have a foundational like who, what, where, when, why understanding. And maybe that understanding isn't something they

could recall immediately, but a foundational knowledge they could always access if presented to them. But really, I want them to understand impact. I want them to understand impact on people at the time. I want them to understand kind of the legacies of impact of this history today. And I want them to be able to ask really wonderful complex questions as a result of learning about this history, right? Like for me as a social studies teacher, I want to offer history. I wanna offer something in geography, offer something in econ, like,

to them to like work to understand, but really what I care most about is how they carry that with them and the curiosity it fosters and the question it fosters because that's a skill far more important to me than if they tell me the date of when World War II started. I know that might be controversial statement to historians, but I'm not, that can't happen absence of knowledge and foundational knowledge, but to me that isn't right, the period, that's the first part of the paragraph.

Waitman (18:47.481)
No!

Waitman (18:55.561)
Well, I mean, this is like one of those things I agree completely in and maybe it may be sort of heterodoxy for historian, but you know, Whenever I see these sort of polls that come out, you know, periodically about how terrible anybody's any country sort of knowledge of Holocaust is. You know, like I really only look at the one question, which is like how many people know Of the Holocaust. That's the one that really matters. But then there are ones like, you know,

Irene Ann Resenly (19:14.766)
I'm sorry.

Waitman (19:23.689)
three out of four students couldn't find out what was on a map. And I'm like, you know, that not massively important. I mean, obviously as an historian, I think it is. But if you know what the Holocaust is.

You know, to me, that's the most important. And then, you know, if you can't, if you can't locate Auschwitz in Poland, or if you can't, you cannot, you can't locate Poland. I mean, that's a problem, but it's not sort of, it's not the problem that a lot of these polls are trying to sort of, I think, induce fear of, if that makes sense.

Irene Ann Resenly (19:40.675)
Yes.

Irene Ann Resenly (19:56.046)
Yes, I too, and this is the time of year where we usually see articles about those popping up right in anticipation of Yam Heshoah. And I want to seek to understand the intent behind them in saying, in a way of saying education is important and education matters. But I'm always going to say to what ends and for what purpose are we using this. I'm less concerned that they could answer a question on a survey and more that when we're having a rich discussion around.

Holocaust memory that they could bring in some ideas from how we learned about Holocaust history. And I think too, like, I don't know, I don't want our focus to be on when we look at what's happening in classrooms, what we don't know, but like what we do know. Like, I'm really like as a scholar and a teacher, like deeply invested on like, let's look at what's going on, like, that's going well in these spaces. And like, how do we build capacity to keep doing that instead of tearing down like,

We don't know enough here and not enough is happening there. Well, like where is the enough happening and how can we help replicate that? Like that to me is a more productive question. Yeah.

Waitman (21:01.269)
So then what are the, I guess, I'll put you on the spot here. You know, what are sort of the quintessential elements that you think are most important for a student coming out of whatever particular level to take away from this massive event called the Holocaust with all of the sort of strings we can pull from it?

Irene Ann Resenly (21:06.319)
Yeah.

Waitman (21:27.377)
And that's hard, but you know. Ha ha ha.

Irene Ann Resenly (21:28.626)
Yeah, that's hard because I think the context of understanding the why matters, right? Like, I don't know if I could answer that question kind of in vacuum and push me on if this isn't exactly answering that. Like, I want them to have an understanding of systems. I think one place where Holocaust education might not be consistently strong is that we don't balance, tend to focus on balancing systems and stories.

I think as much as is needed to understand both incredibly well. So I want them to walk away with a systemic understanding. I want them to walk away with a humanizing understanding, right? That like systems are comprised of people and impact people. Lessons I want them to learn is like what I don't I don't necessarily know if some of the lessons of the Holocaust might be different than how I would talk about other historical experiences of like.

of mass violence or genocide or even a war. I want them to explore human agency and what is possible and what is impossible in context of violence. I want them to understand, yeah, the humanity and inhumanity and the tension of that, how we can't put all of this in kind of clear-cut labels and boxes, but that there's so much complexity to...

Waitman (22:25.855)
Mm-hmm.

Irene Ann Resenly (22:52.726)
the agency and experience that everyone might have in that context. I don't know. Yeah.

Waitman (22:57.341)
Well, I feel like that one of the challenges also in relation to what you just said is this, and I think, you know, in my own teaching, you know, this is always a challenge too. It's always a tension, which is, you know, portraying the systems, portraying the big plans, you know, the ways in which, you know, big processes are taking place, but also

keeping in mind and keeping a focus on the fact that this is happening to individuals. And this is being experienced by actual real life human beings. And this is why I often say that there's no such thing as sort of six million Jews being killed. It's one Jew being killed six million times, right? In the sense that it's always an individual thing ultimately, right? And you know...

every Holocaust experience is different for, because it's an individual who is experiencing this, you know, and it may be different geographically, it may be different gender wise, maybe different age wise, it may be different experience wise, whether you went to a certain place, but there seems to always be an innate tension, I think both in scholarship, but also in the teaching between sort of explaining and understanding.

Irene Ann Resenly (24:06.274)
Mm-hmm.

Waitman (24:21.445)
large processes and also looking at the particularity and complexity of what happens to individuals. And I think also, you know, one of the challenges there, of course, is the individuals also exist as a counter to sort of huge numbers that we can't understand.

Irene Ann Resenly (24:42.666)
Yes, so one thing that I hope we could continue to embrace in Holocaust education in the US, so one phenomenon that's happened and Simone Schwaver coined this term in this context, like the curricular creep of the Holocaust. So like we saw it being taught in high schools sort of first we see it happening in middle schools, right, the state mandates are requiring that it happens in middle school and high schools like in my state of Wisconsin.

But we're even seeing the Holocaust being addressed in elementary school, in upper elementary school settings. And for younger learners in particular, the pedagogy around Holocaust education is very story focused. And with it kind of comes the assumption that either younger learners don't have enough lived experience or historical background to access systems, like understanding stuff in a systemic context, or that would overwhelm them.

Waitman (25:34.918)
Right. Yep.

Irene Ann Resenly (25:37.69)
And I want to push back on that, even at the elementary level. So when I taught in a fourth grade classroom last week, it's a literacy unit, like a multi-genre literacy unit. So they're looking at informational text, Holocaust historical fiction. But the teacher knew, like, they can't access the richness of those really beautiful stories, and very age-accessible stories, in terms of how they talk about trauma or how they talk about violence.

Like those stories, we lose meaning if you don't put it in a historical context. And I believe and attempted to draft a historical narrative that nine-year-olds might be able to begin to hang certain pieces on, right? Like we didn't talk about all the things, but enough specific to the book to be able to access the stories differently. And then I think, right,

Waitman (26:29.348)
Please tell me the book wasn't Boy in the Striped Pajamas.

Irene Ann Resenly (26:32.226)
Well, that book should be taught never in K-12 schools, but definitely not in fourth graders. No!

Waitman (26:36.055)
Thank goodness. Just wanted to make sure. We can talk about Boynstripe pajamas later, but no.

Irene Ann Resenly (26:42.262)
We're pretty fierce in Wisconsin about advising teachers fiercely against that book. That is one thing we're very confident in saying, no, teachers, please don't. And it actually doesn't come up very often anymore. I don't, I don't know in other states if they're seeing that used still, but we're moving away from it in the Midwest. So I'm.

Waitman (27:00.041)
So, I mean, but I mean, with all with all jokes aside, because that's just an awful, awful book. But so can you tell us maybe like what going on with what you're just talking about with this fourth grade class, right? And, you know, a nine year old. How do you specifically like how did you present the Holocaust to the group people? Like and what you know, what are the what are the because what's really interesting, I think. About.

Irene Ann Resenly (27:10.741)
Mm-hmm.

Waitman (27:29.565)
the secondary school environment, right, is that, you know, these scale, and they scale differently than it does for a university. I mean, obviously, like a freshman, a first year in university, you expect slightly different things, but really, ultimately, on sort of the grand spectrum, we expect kind of the same level of thought. It's not, in other words, it's not as crazily different as it is between like a fifth grader and a ninth grader.

between a freshman and a senior in college, right? So in this instance, right, just to be specific, you know, what did the lesson look like and how did you address this to nine-year-olds?

Irene Ann Resenly (28:11.478)
Yeah, so the, like I said, this was in the context of like a multi-genre literacy unit and this like, me coming in and teaching was meant like to offer them historical background. They were reading as their read aloud together, Lisa of Williston Lane, which is a story of like the kinder transport. And so I, both in that and kind of knowing how I approach teaching about the Holocaust with my fifth graders when I was a fifth grade teacher.

I knew we were gonna lean into the rise of the Nazi party more than the systemization of death. And so we looked at first where, right? As straightforward as pointing out Europe on a map is very necessary for American fourth graders in particular who don't have geography learning, talking about who. And so...

And this was a class where no students in the class were Jewish. So talking about Judaism and Jewish people was a place of learning for everyone in that space. We looked at a definition of the Holocaust and we used the one from Echoes and Reflections in their upper elementary education resources. So they're one of, if not the only, we're one of the largest curricular organizations that are now working to build resources for upper elementary students.

And so we looked at that definition together, right? And that's the first place where these fourth graders saw, right, the number six million. And then we talked about 1930s Germany, and I did it kind of in the framework of, right, talking about the Nazi party as a political party, right, fourth graders, you even have to explain the word party for them to represent a political group. Yeah, right, like all of these considerations.

Waitman (29:56.633)
Right. It's not a party.

Irene Ann Resenly (30:01.854)
And we, I structured it for them as how the Nazi government spread hate, legalized hate, and normalized hate. And we looked at kind of one example of each. And remember, these are fourth graders. So this like historical overview, like I have them for 25 minutes max. And then we talked through Kristallnacht.

Waitman (30:20.356)
Great.

Irene Ann Resenly (30:24.438)
We mentioned the kinder transport since they were going to talk about it more with their book and then I was really transparent with fourth graders and saying, and we're putting a pause on our narrative here. Like this is by no means the whole history of the Holocaust, but this is the part of the history that can help you understand your books and this is the part of the history that you might be able to understand best as a fourth grader. And when you learn about this in eighth grade, you'll learn more of what it meant for six million Jewish people to be killed at this time, right? Like, so we didn't...

I was intentional in saying our story is going to stop here, but this story doesn't stop here. And kids get that. And then it'll be interesting to see how they'll be in touch with their teacher. The informational texts they were looking at were also like historical background associated with some of the picture books they'll be reading. So they were reading, I'm totally blanking on which ones they were now, but one that talks about the experience of Danish Jews.

So I had like a slide for the teacher to talk about like Denmark and the Holocaust. I think there was one, the Whispering Town might be set in France or that one might be set in Denmark. There was another one that was like talking about the Holocaust in France kind of gave the teacher there kind of a one slide. This is what it meant like for this country there. But that's what it looked like for fourth graders. And we'll see how it shakes out as their unit ends. But I felt as

as a teacher and as a scholar of this history that was accessible for them. That is enough to help understand kind of the background of the why of what they're reading without giving them too much to kind of draw from.

Waitman (32:04.277)
I mean, it sounds like you covered an impressively large amount of ground in 25 minutes. Even with that, I mean, that's super impressive. I mean, I'm curious. I guess one of the things that listening to you talk about that example raised for me is this question of maybe tension is the wrong word, but I'm going to use it anyway.

Irene Ann Resenly (32:11.498)
Yeah.

Waitman (32:34.537)
teaching the Holocaust and teaching tolerance slash anti-racism, right? And this, you know, for our listeners will permit me a slightly nerdy historiographical aside, but I think this also stems from a much older sort of debate over whether the Holocaust is this unique experience that can have no comparison and that it's sort of wrong to compare it versus people who say, you know,

we can do comparative genocide and comparative studies. But I have seen places where people sort of say, I can't believe you're watering down the Holocaust by comparing it to, for example, slavery or homophobia or any one of another number of intolerances. Whereas I look at it as if you do it badly, you could do that. But that I think, you know,

Irene Ann Resenly (33:13.257)
Mm.

Waitman (33:31.697)
when you are approaching students, anything you can do to kind of help them in their own mind, get a sense of what you're talking about, work. So that if comparing it to racism, particularly for older students, is something that helps them to understand what antisemitism is about, it seems to me to be a useful kind of thing to do. What is your experience slash take on?

on this, you know, on this particular debate. And is that even something that I'm accurately sort of describing?

Irene Ann Resenly (34:07.102)
Yeah, and there was even a debate in Holocaust education in the 90s too, like, is it even Holocaust education if you're not talking about the systemization of death, particularly the camps? And I don't know how much that is at the forefront of kind of how Holocaust ed plays out now, but the concerns or even at the teacher level, like the fears or worry of comparison, I think is still happens. I'm...

I'm always concerned. It's not a hard no for me, but like, I think we need some critical reflection around like, particularly for younger learners. I see this a lot for kind of organizations wanting to reach out to younger learners and connect, you know, through this history with them. Um, to put the Holocaust in the context of like anti-bullying education, my genuine reflective question would be right. Like why the Holocaust? Like, why is this the most kind of salient?

Waitman (34:59.097)
Right. That's, yeah.

Irene Ann Resenly (35:06.75)
history or these most salient stories to help you with those means. And like, I mean, that is a genuine question upon reflection, because I think if we're not asking that question, it's we might be missing the mark of the purpose on like on either side of that. And I like

Waitman (35:22.557)
I mean, that's the best example, right? That's the one I should have mentioned. That's probably kicking around in my head because racism, I think, and anti-Semitism are very, very comparative, because one is kind of a version of another, but bullying, to say that Kristallnacht is an example of bullying, I think, would be a very problematic comparison.

Irene Ann Resenly (35:48.439)
Yeah, and yes, but I'll throw a wrench in it with this too. This is a true productive challenge for me. When I was talking to those fourth graders on Monday and they're grappling with the why, as learners of every age do, even at this for 20 years, they still grapple with the why. And I heard a student say, in such a beautiful fourth grade way, I don't understand, Dr. Rez, if the Nazis didn't like Jewish people, why didn't they just leave them alone?

That is such a nine-year-old way to process that. I thought that was genuinely beautiful, because I bet their school counselor said, if someone's always being mean to you, we could try this, and then we could try that. And if that doesn't work, just leave each other alone. That's a nine-year-old moral code, trying to implant that on history. And I thought that was so real and such a meaningful way to help keep explaining the why with that kid. So I don't want to dismiss that, but if our

goal is to prevent bullying and we're teaching about the Holocaust, like why the Holocaust, right? If our goal is to grapple with the reality and the legacies of racism, what about Holocaust would be beneficial versus looking at certain aspects of US history? Again, like genuine grappling around that. And I even heard my research participants at the memorial site I did work at for my dissertation also kind of interrogate that in the German context too. They're like, you know, that we put Holocaust in.

Waitman (36:59.366)
Right.

Irene Ann Resenly (37:13.462)
democratic education and moral education and human rights education, what does it mean to kind of pre-prescribe the meaning-making outcome of this history? And I was really taken by that too. Even though as a teacher I am making decisions, right? My learning objectives, whose stories I choose to include, whose I don't, where I start the story, where I end the story, I'm making a lot of those decisions. I try and be really conscious of, am I allowing...

like space for meaning making in like a complex and varied way. And here, like, let's shelf it. I'm not saying meaning making and like, my student learns about the Holocaust for two weeks and leaves denying, right? I'm not talking about that, but in terms of like how they make sense of it, or what connections they make, like that's powerful and that's varied. And that's real because we're always learning history, like through our own positionalities and our own lived experience, like we're going to take up stories and meanings differently. And that's powerful.

Waitman (37:53.841)
Right, right, right.

Irene Ann Resenly (38:11.311)
I think... Yeah.

Waitman (38:11.441)
Well, and that, you know, so one of the things that I had thought about when you were saying that, because it is, I think about my own daughter and like kids her age and everything, you know, and yeah, I mean, like they are in many ways innocent, sort of the ways of the world and the horrible ways in which people think about other people and treat other people. And so like when the student said, you know, why didn't they just leave them alone? Or like, you know, if you don't like, if you don't like Jews, then just

don't like hang out with them or like don't, you know, that would be kind of like, you know, don't, don't put yourself in that situation. Um, it's almost like in order to explain, in order to explain why the Nazis or why they didn't, you have to kind of teach students racism or teach students, teach students a whole way of viewing the world. That's awful, right? But, but you can't understand unless you can explain, you know, well,

you know, race, antisemitism, genetic, racial antisemitism in this case, really, you know, is a thing. And here's, and here's, here's what some people believe, but you're, you're almost like in a way, I don't know if this is making sense, but you're almost like introducing that to somebody who had never thought about the world that way before. And now you're like, and here's this, here's this new horrible way of thinking. I don't think that way, but the only way you can really explain how this group of people behave this way is understanding this horrible thing that

And again, you wouldn't necessarily do this to fourth graders, but I mean, at some point you have to explain, right, to students, well, this group of people thought, this other group of people were literally inferior to them and blah, you know, which may be news to them, you know, in general, right? Does that make sense? Am I just kind of...

Irene Ann Resenly (39:59.666)
It does, yeah, but I think it's because I know the context of that class was a class because my friend is the teacher, so I walked in with some knowledge of how she set up a classroom that would enable us to talk about what we called hard histories with fourth graders and how she's described her class. This is a class that comes from, in a communal sense, a lot of privilege. A lot of those kids have not experienced.

experience or articulated experience of racism themselves, right? This is a class that comes from families with strong socioeconomic backgrounds, right? So like there, I think it would be, it's different depending on the makeup of the students, right? You might have students in your class. When I taught the Holocaust unit in fifth grade, I had Jewish students in the class, right, who were grappling with like, this was something they knew from family stories, from growing up in the synagogue, right?

Waitman (40:52.616)
Right.

Irene Ann Resenly (40:54.186)
What I was teaching them was offering a structure to that knowledge, but was fundamentally not wildly new knowledge for them. And they had to process what it was like to watch their classmates processing, this is new and horrible, right? Like, and so it's, yeah, I think it depends on the people in the room and who you're doing. Like, I think if I might've been teaching to a more, to a less homogenous kind of group of students, they might have been able to access.

understanding it in the context of racism differently or some of their own lived experiences, but because they themselves might not have had that, they weren't bringing it to it. But I do, I want to circle back to the like, like drawing comparisons or parallels because I really, if there's one thing I could scream from the rooftops, like all the teachers I get to work with around teaching this history is to like not be scared of that.

Waitman (41:29.373)
to... Yeah, go ahead, go please, please.

Irene Ann Resenly (41:48.418)
And to really embrace that because to see where students are drawing connections, sometimes for us with our level of learning and background, we might be like, yes, I really see where you're going there. Or for us as educators, it might seem really out of left field or really confusing. But I truly believe in the majority of cases, like students are not doing that out of malice or like testing out hate. Like they are like doing their own grappling. Like this stuff is hard.

Waitman (42:12.079)
No.

Irene Ann Resenly (42:17.858)
This is so hard to confront as an adult or as a teenager when you're learning about this. So I think if they're making comparisons and as a teacher, you might worry it's missing the mark or you might have some concerns like trust yourself and trust your kids that like that's how learning is happening is seeking to make those connections. It is not taking away from it is added value of understanding in my opinion.

Waitman (42:39.645)
Well, and I think often scholars sort of, I'm working on a piece about, about Holocaust denial in the United States. And so I've been reading all this stuff about the rhetoric and Holocaust distortion and, you know, comparisons to COVID and stuff like that. Um, you know, which is clearly nuts, right? Um, but one of the things that I was reading was more theoretical. And it really made a lot of sense because, you know, it said, look, we, as human beings, we understand things often by comparison.

Like literally, like that's just almost like a hard-baked in hard-wired way of looking at the world. You know, like, did you, did you like that concert? Well, yes, it was better than this other one. You know, it was worse than this other one. It was kind of like when I went to see this, right? I mean, like the way we look at the world in a certain sense is comparison. And so, you know, I think, I think what you've said is actually really smart because it, you know, there's, I mean, yes, there are.

great examples of comparison that is of bad faith and does real harm, et cetera. But we're not talking about that. We're talking about children, you know? And they're reaching out to understand things by looking at things that they know or think they know or have experienced, you know? And so like it makes, it's okay. I mean, like comparison is sort of fine in that sense. And as again, and I think this is where it gets back to my analogy of the statue, right? Which is okay, you know?

Irene Ann Resenly (43:54.442)
Yeah.

Waitman (44:08.829)
Maybe in fourth grade they sort of relate, you know, Kristallnacht to bullying. Okay, like fine. We can sort of correct that over time, like moving forward, you know? At some point in their education, hopefully, someone will be able to, they'll learn more and that will nuance that and it'll move that out of that. But if that helps them to be like, wow, that was really bad and people were mistreated and they didn't deserve to be mistreated, then like mission successful.

right at the fourth grade level.

Irene Ann Resenly (44:40.747)
Yes. So, I will always say this, I'm a fierce believer that tiny humans can handle complex things too. So, I would always just want to give the pep talk to the teachers in that setting too and being like, yes, if that's where they're at, and then use that to introduce that one step further that's a little bit deeper because they are so...

Waitman (44:48.538)
Oh yeah, of course.

Irene Ann Resenly (45:03.714)
they're craving it. So I asked my eighth graders, my eighth graders know I do work in teacher education too. And so after our Holocaust unit, the past two years I've been like, all right, I'm gonna go do this workshop for teachers here. I'm doing this there. I'm like, what advice do you want me to give teachers about how to teach about the Holocaust, specifically the middle schoolers? And without fail, every time they say something to the effect of, you don't have to...

Like worry about it being too much for us like I think they like some even said you don't have to sugarcoat it right like that's such a awkward teenage way to describe like I think they're genuinely asking like But I think what they're trying to communicate that is like don't feel like you have to shield us from all the things like We're right like we're ready to handle more than what you might think and right like as a teacher

Waitman (45:37.149)
Yeah, yeah, we're, we're... Sugarcoat the Holocaust, really.

Waitman (45:52.293)
Or dumb it down, which I think is the challenge that, you know, you don't have to put things into Barney style language just because it's a kid. You know, like, I mean, yeah, which is part of just respecting your audience and being like, you know, let me ask you to understand something. And if you don't, then you can ask me if I didn't pitch it, but not to be like, you know, like some people didn't like some other people. And that's, and then, you know.

Irene Ann Resenly (46:01.686)
Yes. Yeah.

Irene Ann Resenly (46:08.686)
Yes.

Irene Ann Resenly (46:21.534)
Exactly. Or that like.

Waitman (46:22.293)
That kind of level, right? But let me move forward really quickly though, because you touch on something that I also want to talk about. I think it goes to precisely this question in a slightly different way, which is the challenge of what we might consider to be graphic content in teaching the Holocaust. And I think this is something again that I experienced, but I think it's probably

way more important in some ways when you're dealing with secondary students. But it's this sort of constant tension between I want my students to have a. An acceptable kind of emotional connection to the material and be like, this is serious and this is bad and this is a really bad event. But I also I don't need to make it violence, porn and sort of show sort of ridiculously awful things.

to sort of shock for shock value purpose alone, right? Because that's also not great, right? And of course, this is often relating to images, but there are things that I've read, words that I've read on a page that have been far more horrendously graphic and violent than any image I've ever seen. So I guess a question that I think is really interesting, and I'd love to hear how you deal with it, particularly at the levels that you're working with.

How do you deal with, particularly as you're moving into that level, maybe eighth grade, high school, right? For those of us who are listening in the UK, I apologize. We're using American distinctions. So like eighth grade would be like, I think maybe like year seven, year eight, something like that. You know, primary school is elementary school for us. Anyway, Irene, how do you deal with that?

Irene Ann Resenly (48:18.938)
Yeah, this is a huge question for me, particularly as a middle school teacher, because a lot of times even resources designed for school-age learners is typically high school, right, 9 through 12. And I think there's a different, I would argue there's a different level of violence and trauma that those students might be able to access in school learning than middle schoolers do. Again, with what might be the first formalized time they're learning about this history.

I think of it most in the context of images. And I think this is why I think of it in images first over text. I think in text it is like you will kind of as a young teenage learner, like you will take up in a text like what you understand. Like you're, but you might not some of the things that we might consider kind of the most graphic or most.

violent, you might not pick up in a text immediately in the same way than you would if you were confronted with seeing it. And again, it's not to say that I don't have considerations for how graphic a text is, but I think I lean into it more in images because it's just so much more visceral for students and our young teenage students are very much visual learners these days and all the way with, right, and how they consume information period. It's very visual.

I will not show images of corpses. I will not show images of dead bodies in my middle school classroom. I don't even know if I would in my college classroom anymore, because I'm very much kind of the ideological end of I don't think, I think I can capture what I want students to confront in text and address it that way instead. I don't think it's about hiding the violence. I think it's about

Waitman (50:04.703)
Mm-hmm.

Irene Ann Resenly (50:10.322)
What it means to, and my friend who is also a teacher and scholar, George Dabbo, says it this way, like, what does it mean for us that we're always seeing genocide, almost always seeing genocide in images through the lens of the perpetrators? And how obvious are we, and apparent are we making that to students? And how are we being critical and conscious of that and how we're framing it for students?

Irene Ann Resenly (50:40.11)
period, I think when we don't have any images that we're showing, we leave it to kids imagination to kind of fill in too much. And I think we miss something there, right? Particularly for students in the US who write, this history feels distant in all of the ways, feels different, distant geographically, chronologically in terms of what they could access or understand emotionally out of the stories here.

But it's hard, and I think the question is so much more value-laden than these teachers might have time to reflect on. So I have a professional development session that I run with teachers where I show eight different images of the Holocaust. I actually do this with pre-service teachers, so people in their teacher training programs. And I show these images, and I ask them, would you use this in a fifth grade classroom? Would you use this in an eighth grade classroom?

Waitman (51:38.328)
Mm-hmm.

Irene Ann Resenly (51:38.474)
and have them name why or why not to kind of help them understand as a teacher, like the images you choose are a reflection of your values of teachers, and those values are a reflection of your perception of students and the complexity they could handle, among other things. I recently too have been rethinking kind of this idea of graphics. So for me, I've always thought about it in the context of violence and violence in terms of bodies.

But as I've worked with younger learners, even some of my eighth graders this year, they've really took to learning about the kinder transport in ways that felt new to me in my teaching this year. Asked so many questions and were so struggling with understanding the trauma of kids being separated from their families in that context where kids had a chance at survival. And I was like, wow, I always think of graphic in

Waitman (52:28.541)
Yeah.

Irene Ann Resenly (52:36.398)
in such a different way. This was, in some sense, graphic for them. This was confronting trauma for them. And I don't know what some of these students.

Waitman (52:38.067)
Yep.

Waitman (52:43.189)
being torn from your parents is something that, you know, a kid who's 10 or 11 or 12 hits in a much different way. You know, yeah, you know, that's really smart. I never really thought about it that way. But in some ways, you could see that in this era of like, video games and Call of Duty and everything else, like, what we would call sort of graphic physical violence.

Irene Ann Resenly (52:49.534)
Even 13. Yeah.

Waitman (53:09.457)
might not hit the same way as being torn from your parents. That's really, I thought about that.

Irene Ann Resenly (53:14.71)
And so I think like, and this is really a new point of reflection for me, is that I think I might be moving towards like less the question of graphic and more of how do we confront or visualize or address trauma through this history. Because I think that might be like the slightly bigger lens for me to think about. But I even, this is like circle back to challenges too. It feels, there's so many times in my teaching where I,

Waitman (53:27.763)
Yeah.

Irene Ann Resenly (53:43.022)
Choice and voice is a phrase you hear in secondary schooling in the US a lot. How could we give students agency in their learning and voice in what and how they're learning? And I struggle with that when teaching about histories of mass violence and genocide like the Holocaust because part of my consideration is, when you're talking about grade five or grade eight learners, you're still talking what makes her a reliable source. We're not just Googling and finding the first thing that comes up.

Waitman (54:08.169)
Right.

Irene Ann Resenly (54:10.262)
you're teaching that, and then if I were to give them kind of some opportunities to learn more about an aspect of this history, like they on their own are gonna be confronting images of trauma, images of violence, and then like what does it mean to support them that way? So another like challenge, like thinking about.

Waitman (54:27.157)
Well, and that seems like just to interject, I mean, that also seems like a challenge because, um, you can't control if they go home and get on Google and, and look up something that you've taught that, you know, which is, which is on the one hand, great. Um, but on the other hand, you know, if they, if they're looking up, you know, what happened to Anne Frank and it takes them to Belson, you know, and shows images, you know, like they're going to.

Irene Ann Resenly (54:42.147)
Hmm?

Irene Ann Resenly (54:52.072)
Mm-hmm.

Waitman (54:55.897)
And then they're going to experience that graphic violence and images in a space without you there to sort of help them through it.

Irene Ann Resenly (55:04.854)
Yeah, but also, and this circles back to kind of what I hope they come away with. I would hope from our learning that there was enough of a foundation where that wouldn't seem so overwhelming in the sense of they couldn't put it in a context and that they would leave with like knowing how to ask questions and process that to either ask someone outside of school or to come back there. Like that's where I think the knowledge and the question asking even more so could come into play as being meaningful.

But it's, yeah, I think it's really hard. There are still some teachers out there who find value in the shock of images and graphic natures. And I really, again, teachers, the demands on us are extraordinary and hard and changing constantly, but I just hope we all, like teachers have a chance to pause and reflect like to what ends and can we, if there are goals within that they are finding important, why does it have to be achieved through that?

Waitman (56:05.374)
Yep.

Irene Ann Resenly (56:05.47)
I have a hard time seeing how it could be, but I think to help those teachers identify the why can then help move them towards a more sound and productive way to address that.

Waitman (56:08.102)
Yep.

Waitman (56:16.333)
And one of the things that I've, in my own teaching, and this is even at the university level, like I have very few sort of really graphically violent things that I show. One of them is the Leopold Einstatt's group in shooting video, but other than that, particularly scenes of naked people before they're shot or something like this, or at Auschwitz. I don't show those anymore, because one of my thoughts with regards to those is sort of like,

Irene Ann Resenly (56:30.071)
Mm.

Waitman (56:45.221)
I'm kind of victimizing these people again, you know, because, you know, they wouldn't want anybody to see this. And this is like the worst, clearly the worst moment of their lives. And you know, I don't need to show this. And I don't need to sort of re-victimize these people by, you know, exposing them literally and figuratively to strangers, right? And it seems like, and what you're saying as well, that, you know, sometimes

And again, giving teachers all the benefit of the doubt. But sometimes the laziest approach, if you will, is I'm just going to provide a really graphic image and be like, da-da, the Holocaust is really important and awful, and here's a terrible image. Whereas you can get to that realization, but it might take a little bit more thinking about what sources you use to get there, but you can get there in a different path without having to sort of...

you know, just put something up that's just incredibly awful and shocking. Um, yeah. And I mean, but that, but that's why we have people like you and why we have, you know, Holocaust educators and why the museums and other places are creating these kinds of, of programs to help and point this stuff out, you know, because, um, I think you're, you're an incredibly positive person and I wish I could channel all of that.

Irene Ann Resenly (57:51.714)
Yes.

Waitman (58:09.069)
all the time, you know, but we want to assume the best that we're not, we're not assuming that the teachers are trying to do the wrong thing or trying to be overly traumatic their students. And so it's, you know, we can help them by, by providing these kinds of resources. Um, but I do want to stop here. And what I want to do now is let you talk about your, your other, the, the other scholarly work that you've done, um, which is, which is, which is related, right. Um, but I think it's something that a lot of listeners as well are going to be interested in because

It deals with education on site, literally, right? When we visit a place of the Holocaust. I guess we're predominantly talking about heritage sites, heritage being the sort of sector, right? In this case, probably for the most part, concentration camp and former concentration camp sites. But what are the challenges there for educators? And as you point out,

Irene Ann Resenly (58:55.01)
Mm-hmm.

Waitman (59:08.537)
really important roles that a lot of these sites, I imagine, over historically over time have added is this education one. I mean, I would imagine that in like the sixties or even maybe in the seventies, Dachau or Auschwitz may not have actually had a dedicated pedagogical sort of expert there to sort of help generate resources, right?

Irene Ann Resenly (59:28.203)
Hmm

Irene Ann Resenly (59:32.418)
Yeah, so the site where I did my dissertation research was the site of a former concentration camp. And I was looking at the memorial site educators there as teachers. And they have a very robust education department, which is pretty extraordinary. And do like tours for student groups, like whole day workshops. They also do multi-day workshops. And I think one of the, again, I'll start with opportunities.

for them there and then like speak to challenges like, I mean, some of the incredible opportunities, right? Are first the most obvious, like the idea of being able to learn at the site, at the place and have like to be able to facilitate that teaching there just resonates differently. And the, how they're able to focus the narrative of the history of the Holocaust, right? Is anchored in the site and is told through and around the site.

And that's pretty incredible to have that quite as like a literal and pedagogical focus. And they're able to engage in kind of types of learning that are different than school learning in Germany, right? They're able for it to be more conversational where students are having like more voice and at least how the site educators would describe is like they typically might in classroom learning that way as well and can be more.

offer some flexibility in the storytelling and like what stories they might sit in longer and what stories they might address differently within it. And so it's, and we know this, whether it's in the context of a site in Germany or outside of school learning kind of more broadly, but it offers opportunities for students to be seen as learners in a maybe different way, right? If there's like a lot of baggage that comes with who they are, how they are in school, like nobody knows that in a space somewhere else.

So learners might be able to engage and ask questions differently or grapple differently because they're kind of free of school constraints. But some of the incredible challenges my participants face, so I can't speak broadly to all sites, but the ones who I was super privileged to work with were so incredible at what they did, right, as their pedagogical goals for what should happen there in connection to the teachers or the schools, and what would happen if there was kind of a mismatch of expectation of what...

Irene Ann Resenly (01:01:50.278)
learning could look like there. Like for example, teachers wanting to come to sites with like students filling out worksheets about the site. And my participants, at least at the time I was working with them, were like, I mean, Shrug, okay, like we offer these like materials because schools are asking them, but that is not the most important thing for us, that they walk around the site and, you know, complete a worksheet there, though they could understand how that might be necessary or important for teachers.

or expectations of behavior at the site, kind of also poses a challenge, right? Teachers are coming there to a place that they know is incredibly consequential for students learning, for German memory writ large, like that awareness is there among all kind of stakeholders in that learning, and they're expecting certain sort of things, their students and site educators are coming into it saying, hey, like you're here, like we're gonna give you an offering of like, these narratives and these questions and these ways of looking at it,

Like you'll leave here in a day, or you'll leave here in an hour and a half, and whatever you take with it, you take with it. Whereas teachers might say like, no, you must take this from it. So all of those things are really real tensions that they're navigating, but the site educators' work is incredibly consequential. I, in my work, have like kind of coined calling them mediators of memory. Like they are mediating that memory so much more explicitly and so much more viscerally than I would argue the.

classroom teachers in that area of Germany were.

Waitman (01:03:20.337)
Well, I suspect that there's a tension here as well with what we might call Holocaust fatigue in Germany. As you know, I remember when I was there for my Fulbright, I was living in Freiburg and, you know, I had a, um, one of my roommates, right. Um, we're wonderful, wonderful person. You know, she was super, super liberal. Um, you know, and we were talking. So when she says.

Irene Ann Resenly (01:03:26.364)
Hmm?

Waitman (01:03:46.929)
you know, there's, there's Holocaust fatigue. It's not coming from a place of like, I don't think it's important. Um, she was just saying that like literally, you know, we almost get taught sometimes the Holocaust to the exclusion of like other aspects of German history. Um, and, and she sort of hinted at that earlier with the sense of like, you know, in, in our, in our liberal values class or in our democracy class or in our politics class, you know, the Holocaust is, is sort of

always there is ever present. On the one hand, of course, as Holocaust historians, we're like, good, you know, because we want Germans. But I think if you're fair, you can see how that, you know, that can actually have the opposite effect of basically encouraging the reaction of like, oh, God, here we go again, you know, with another Holocaust connection.

Irene Ann Resenly (01:04:32.79)
Yeah, I-

Irene Ann Resenly (01:04:40.274)
I would say that also connects to issues in the US as well. So this might seem tangential, but this is connected. So in Wisconsin, there's now a new state law about how literacy should be taught in the state. So kind of the one kind of typical way of approaching it is not matching up with how we know reading should be taught. So there's a huge like curriculum overhaul happening in the state from like kindergarten like through.

eighth grade around how to teach literacy, particularly how to teach reading. And there are a couple of curriculums that the state seems to be adopting. One in the eighth grade curriculum for this literacy, for this teaching reading unit, has an eight week unit where the focus is the Holocaust. So where they're using mouse as an anchor text, but that means in literacy class, eight weeks. So that's a quarter of the school year.

They're learning in eighth grade about the Holocaust through mouse and like other texts to connect it. Also in eighth grade, because of the social studies mandate, they're learning about the Holocaust in my world studies class. And our unit is two and a half weeks there. That of their school year, of their 32 weeks if I did the math right, ish school year. They are learning about the Holocaust for 12 of those weeks. And my class is a world studies class, right? So we're supposed to like learn about something on every continent of the world.

That's an extraordinary amount of time on that. And it is perfectly fair and meaningful for students to say, yes, this history is extraordinarily important. Why 12 weeks on this? And then you might go to a neighboring state and it's one day on it. So the issues of fatigue and the how and the are we making sure in the whether it's one day or whether it's 12 weeks that how we're approaching this.

How we're making the decisions around beginnings and endings of this history, part of the why of this history, is resonating with the students and the generations in front of us is so important to like, to combat that fatigue and combat that questioning of like, why in an uncomfortable way as opposed to why in a really productive and meaningful way. I hope that made sense.

Waitman (01:06:54.065)
Yeah, no, it really does. I mean, again, because you, I think it also goes back to that sort of conversation we had about bullying and tolerance and all of that. You know, if you use the Holocaust as an example for everything, then it sort of loses its historical specificity. It is kind of like, you know, you don't want student reactions to any history, you know, whether it's.

you know, positive, negative, slavery, you know, founding fathers, whatever, you don't want them to ever be like, Oh God, here we go again. Right. Cause as, as you sort of indicate, you want students to always have that interest and that spark of, of curiosity about it. And if they feel like they're basically being served a canned presentation of something that they've already had again, except being, you know, for a different purpose, you know, that seems like a challenge. And I guess to go back to the, to the German context and what are

Irene Ann Resenly (01:07:31.278)
Hmm?

Waitman (01:07:51.969)
What are the challenges? What are the challenges for the German educators dealing with German students on the site?

Irene Ann Resenly (01:08:01.526)
Oh, so I mean, my focus was mostly on the site educators themselves and kind of documenting like how like kind of their narrative of the tour and like how they were telling stories and their interactions. I would say in my time at my site, I saw teachers as incredibly hands off at the site. That it's very much the perspective it seemed that like, like I'm coming here like I am not expert of this, like you site educator expert. So I'm just like.

I'm going to leave the teaching in your very capable hands, but I'm there to kind of like mitigate like student behaviors in that space, if at all. Which is so, to me, I still want to understand that more and unpack that, because my original intent in my research was not just to focus on the site educators, but to focus on site educators and teachers and how they collaborate. Like, I so would have loved to hear their insights more to see like.

Waitman (01:08:31.444)
Like a chaperone.

Irene Ann Resenly (01:08:56.246)
But what in a positive way do they think they could offer in that space? Like I totally respect their, I want to give them the benefit of the doubt, their deference to site educators and the trust that they place in them there. But like they're also coming to that space. Like they know, they know the students really well. They have deep insights into them. They know the context of learning beyond as a day. And I, I don't know if I ever encountered a teacher who I saw who was offering that readily there. Maybe they had in kind of the preparation for the visit.

But once they got to site, they were very, yeah, very hands off.

Waitman (01:09:29.605)
And so what are the challenges though for the site educators? Like what are the things that they have to balance when they're crafting a tour? I mean, this is probably a conversation for an entire podcast, but what are they trying to do? Because they also, like any teacher, but also particularly like teachers at your level, have a very short amount of time really with these students.

Irene Ann Resenly (01:09:42.189)
I'm gonna take it.

Irene Ann Resenly (01:09:53.239)
Hmm?

Irene Ann Resenly (01:09:56.886)
Um, I think they might respond to that as like, depending on like how long a group is going to be there, like, is a group going to be there for a tour? Is it going to be a one day workshop where it's like a tour and then some sort of learning in classrooms around the topic, or is it like a multi-day, I think I saw programs as long as three days workshops where they're like, not only getting a tour, but delving into specific things. Um, I think when it's the tour, they, they had a pretty, um, standard tour, meaning like it's.

the tour wouldn't necessarily change a whole lot from group to group. They might spend a little bit more time at one particular part of the site if they had say like two and a half hours instead of an hour and a half. The narrative of the tour stayed the same, so I don't know if I would identify a challenge there. I think with the workshop model, like a tour and then some sort of learning in the classrooms on the site afterwards, it would be like how are they balancing?

how much they are sharing of the history of the site versus the opportunities for students to grapple with that and do some meaning making around it, timing-wise. Yeah, I think, I'll leave it at that. I think that's kind of their challenge, the balance of content time and processing time might be part of it.

Waitman (01:11:13.813)
Well, that's really, I mean, again, I think it's really fascinating, you know, and as somebody that has some experience with museums as well, you know, I'm always interested in, again, you know, how one of the things that I find, again, this is an aside, but I think one of the things that I found really instructive when I was, my time as a museum director and also teaching about the history of museums, what I find really interesting and I think important about curation is that you have to literally

You literally have space, like a limited amount of space. Like say you're doing an exhibit, a museum exhibit, you might have, I mean, museum professionals talk about this. You know, we have eight feet. We have eight feet of exhibit space. And it makes you think about the past and how you present the past and the choices you make, I think in a very conscious way, that's different than how we think about it when we write a book, where we have, you know.

Irene Ann Resenly (01:12:10.166)
Mm.

Waitman (01:12:11.445)
lots of space just kind of go down rabbit holes and like, oh, this is, I found this really cool tidbit in the archives and it's not necessarily relevant, but I think you should know it, so I'm going to throw it in. But in a museum experience and in a teaching experience, in a tour, I mean, all these things are constrained in sort of very physical and unyielding ways. You know, you only have 25 minutes with your students. You only have an hour tour. You only have 20 feet of exhibit

Waitman (01:12:41.021)
but also reflective, self-reflective about the choices that you're making. Um, which I think is for anybody is, is a really interesting thought experiment. And I would also highly recommend for our listeners, you know, next time you go to a museum, Holocaust or otherwise, or a heritage site, think about the space and the choices that have been made by the museum professionals that have run it. Right. Because.

It's all a choice and that may be mediated by funds. It may be mediated by all kinds of different things, but you know, it's, it's all of a choice to present the history that you're imbibing in a certain way. And as I always say, you know, museums have a thesis and that's not necessarily a bad thing or a, it doesn't mean bias and it's not necessarily a nefarious thing, but all good museums want to teach you something. They want you to leave the museum or the site or the exhibit.

having learned a certain thing or experienced a certain thing or feeling a certain way. And hopefully if it's well done, then all of the work in that space leads you to that. And I think one thing we've heard about in this discussion is that teaching is often the same way. You want students to come out of a class or come out of a series of classes with certain either skills and or feelings and understandings about the past.

Irene Ann Resenly (01:13:52.554)
Yeah.

Waitman (01:14:09.773)
And that requires conscious choices of the educator, right? Um, but I, I'm conscious of time as well, because we've talked about time already and unfortunately this podcast also has a limited amount of time. So maybe we can end by, I ask my, the question I always ask, which is. What's one book on the Holocaust that you think is really important and that you want to recommend?

Irene Ann Resenly (01:14:22.646)
Hehehe

Irene Ann Resenly (01:14:34.542)
Sure, can I share a book and a plea to all historians listening to this too? In connection to the book. So the book I wanted to toss out is 20 years old now, which is so wild, but in terms of like Holocaust education, it's kind of one of the like quintessential texts that I think if you want to get a glimpse into what's happening in classrooms, like even though this was a study done 20 years ago, it's just so like beautifully written, like you, like you feel you are like as if you were a student, like seeing this teacher's practice unfold.

Waitman (01:14:38.789)
Yes.

Irene Ann Resenly (01:15:03.87)
And it's Making Sense of the Holocaust, Lessons from Classroom Practice by Simone Schwaber. I think it's a great starter in terms of looking at Holocaust education. And with that, my plea to any historians, especially historians in university settings who are listening is reach out to your colleagues in the School of Education, to your social studies ed colleagues. Y'all are doing such incredible work unearthing stories that we're still continuing to learn about.

piecing together the narrative of this history in such like nuanced and new ways. And like, we are here for y'all and like figuring out how to make that accessible to teenage learners. So like connect with them because they will love to geek out with you over this. And we are so happy to be ambassadors of these stories for our younger learners.

Waitman (01:15:53.885)
And this is a really great, a really, really great point. And it's a way that I always like to illustrate this is with Anne Frank. And it's not that I have anything against Anne Frank. Like Anne Frank is great. The diary is great. It's important. Um, but I think, you know, what, what Irene has just mentioned is, is a good example of like, you know, there are also other stories, right? That we could also be using. Um, but one of the reasons that we use, that we use Anne Frank is that

Irene Ann Resenly (01:15:54.734)
I'm going to go ahead and turn it off.

Waitman (01:16:20.165)
is that A, it's so sort of widespread and popular. And also, it's something that educators and scholar educators have developed materials for. And I think your point is 100% great. If you want students to learn about a girl, a Jewish girl during the Holocaust who lives in Ukraine, rather than in Amsterdam, which is a...

which is, in some ways, Anne Frank is very much an outlier of like your sort of your average sort of Holocaust victim. But there is an onus then on the scholar to be able to present to a pedagogical person, an education person and say, hey, look, I have the story. How can we make this sort of the Anne Frank of Ukraine and bring that different kind of perspective? Unfortunately, we're gonna have to leave it here,

Irina, and thank you so much for coming on. This is amazing. I really appreciate it. Um, and, and everyone else, um, thank you for listening. Um, please, please do. I say this every time and I don't get any take up on it, but please, please take a minute, go to, uh, Apple podcast, leave a comment and leave a rating for us. Um, it's super helpful for reasons that I'm, you know, I'm not sure what they are, but I know that they are, it is important for the algorithm. Um,

Irene Ann Resenly (01:17:19.242)
Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Waitman (01:17:46.513)
Again, Irene, thank you so much.