Teaching about and teaching through the Holocaust: Insights from (social) psychology

Teaching about and teaching through the Holocaust: Insights from (social) psychology

Barry van Driel International Director for Curriculum Development and

Teacher Education Anne Frank HouseTel: +3120 5567100

Email” [email protected]

Abstract: In this chapter I examine a lesser know quote from the Diary of Anne Frank and examine it with a cognitive and social psychological lens. The quote refers to observations by Anne Frank that anti-Semitism had been growing during the time that the Frank family was in hiding. It is concluded that growing intolerance at the time cannot be solely attributed to the effects of Nazi propaganda.

Monday, May 22, 1944

Dearest Kitty,

To our great sorrow and dismay, we've heard that many people have changed their attitude towards us Jews. We've been told that anti-Semitism has cropped up in circles where once it would have been unthinkable. This fact has affected us all very, very deeply. The reason for the hatred is understandable, maybe even human, but that doesn't make it right. According to the Christians, the Jews are blabbing their secrets to the Germans, denouncing their helpers and causing them to suffer the dreadful fate and punishments which have already been meted out to so many. All of this is true. But as with everything, they should look at the matter from both sides: would Christians act any differently if they were in our place? Could anyone, regardless of whether they're Jews or Christians, remain silent in the face of German pressure?

This less well known passage from the Diary of Anne Frank will serve as the starting point for my reflections in this chapter.Writing in the relative comfort of their hiding place on the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam, Anne Frank put her finger on something quite non-intuitive: that as the suffering of a particular minority community worsens, even though people are aware of it, their response is not necessarily empathy or a growing sense of injustice. Too often the opposite happens. Those suffering injustice meet with negative reactions from theoutside world. Such dynamics tend to be part of human nature, irrespective of one’s cultural or religious background. Why would this be the case and how can we best explain such a phenomenon to young people in our schools? Can it help us to better understand the pervasive nature of prejudice and discrimination in the past and present?

Introduction

In this article, I share some of the insights gained in 20 years of experience in the field and address some issues I haveencountered that have been largely ignored by the field of Holocaust Education. I endeavor to hold these experiences and my reflections up to a social and cognitive psychology light. Generally speaking, cognitive psychology focuses on our mental processes: how do do people think, remember, perceive, and learn? Social psychology focuses more on the situational influences of behavior than, for instance, on personality characteristics. Scholars in the field generally examine the impact of social norms, peer pressure, propaganda, etc. In short, they devote considerable attention to the power of the situation. Elliot Aronson (2000) summarises the social psychological perspective as follows: “each of us is greatly influenced by the power of the social situation—we tend to underestimate the degree of influence the situation exerts on other people and to overestimate the impact of their personalities as determinants of their behavior” (p. 22)

It is my sense that such an analysis can help educators in the field design richer activities that can have more impact for

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contemporary youth, helping them gain some insight into how human beings can blame individuals and communities when those defined as the “other” suffer discrimination and persecution. In short, in this article I focus more on the challenges of teaching young people today about the past and present, rather than on events in the past alone.

Teaching about and through the history of the Holocaust

There are many reasons to teach about the Holocaust in contemporary society, whether or not a society was directly anddeeply impacted by this history. These reasons will vary depending on the educational aims identified by governments, educational authorities, and teachers for educating youth aboutthis topic. The reasons will also depend partially on the particular histories of countries and communities.

From a historical perspective, we might identify at least eightreasons (though this list is by no means complete):

1. To further our understanding of what happened in Germany, Europe, and globally during this period in history—including one's own country and community—and which institutions collaborated with, resisted, or remained silent in the face of, Nazi atrocities.

2. To gain insight into the impact of the Treaty of Versailles before World War II and the way the Holocaust led to the creation of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the creation of the state of Israel.

3. To understand how modern communication and propaganda have been influenced by insights derived from Nazi propaganda towards Jews and others.

4. To advance insight into Jewish life and Jewish history in Germany and Europe, as well as globally, and in one's country before the Holocaust.

5. To commemorate the many innocent (mostly Jewish) victims in Europe and lost Jewish culture.

6. To understand the impact of Nazi policies on other minority communities such as the Roma and blacks, as well as the disabled.

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7. To understand that the Holocaust was a global tragedy that can to some extent be connected to the histories of countries across the globe.

8. To understand how the Nuremberg trials represent the origins of modern international law relating to genocide and crimes against humanity.

The pure focus on history and more macro events has often been criticised and complementary reasons and their concomitant aimshave been identified. For instance, teachers have long complained that it is difficult to interest young people in historical events that took place long before their parents were born.

In their reflections on the aims of Holocaust education, Gross and Stevick (2010) state:

Linked to vigilance, action and prevention, Holocaust education is self-consciously instrumental, eager to transform individual attitudes and dispositions, aspiring to change broader cultures and cultivate better citizens.The underlying philosophies that animate the sustenance and dissemination of Holocaust education may vary, but they share a vision of the world that embraces human rights and cultural differences. (p.18)

In a New York Times opinion piece, Kofi Annan (2010), theformer Secretary General of the United Nations, went much further than this, and directly confronted the expert community involved in teaching about the Holocaust. He lamented what he regarded as the failure of Holocaust education programs to prevent genocide endethnic conflict:

...if we want to prevent future genocides, is it

not equally important to understand the psychology

of the perpetrators and bystanders—to comprehend

what it is that leads

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large numbers of people, often “normal” and

decent, in the company of their own family and

friends, to suppress their natural human empathy

with people belonging to other groups and to join

in, or stand by and witness, their systematic

extermination? Do we not need to focus more on the

social and psychological factors that lead to

these acts of brutality and indifference, so that

we know the warning signs to look out for in

ourselves and our societies? Do current education

programs do enough to reveal the dangers inherent

in racial or religious stereotypes and prejudices,

and inoculate students against them? Does the

teaching of the history of the Holocaust at

classroom level sufficiently link it to the root

causes of contemporary racism or ethnic conflict?

I would certainly agree with Doyle Stevick and Deborah Michaels

(2013), who have criticised such goals as too ambitious for a

subject that tends to occupy, at most, several hours of study

and reflection in most classrooms across the globe. Still,

parts of Annan’s opinion piece challenge educators to reflect

on the way they teach about the Holocaust and the lessons they

draw from this history. In a recent study, Stuart Foster (2013)

and his colleagues at the Institute of Education in London

found that many teachers do exactly what Kofi Annan has called

for. They not only teach “about the Holocaust” for historical

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reasons. In addition, they tend to focus on this tragedy for

more contemporary reasons:

…the research findings demonstrate that the

majority of teachers (across a range of subject

areas) teach about the Holocaust as a “universal

warning” with the aim of addressing broader trans-

disciplinary goals such as “understanding the

ramifications of racism and prejudice”,

“transforming society” and/or “learning the

lessons of the Holocaust to ensure that it never

happens again”. For example, across all survey

respondents, “to develop an understanding of the

roots and ramifications of prejudice, racism and

stereotyping in any society” was the most

popularly prioritised teaching aim, chosen by 71%.

(p. 137)

Such teachers tend to teach through the Holocaust. Foster and

his colleagues found that, at least in the United Kingdom, this

approach was quite pronounced.

If we as Holocaust educators accept the challenge voiced in

Annan’s statements above, and if we want teachers to have the

necessary insights and competencies to help students “make

sense” of the world around them, then we need to look carefully

at some of the other aims that have been identified in relation

to Holocaust education. Listed in random order, I suggest

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eleven other topics of what I will now refer to as “learning

through the Holocaust”:

1. How in even relatively advanced and modern societies,

historical prejudices can be transformed into lethal

ideologies with a total disrespect for human rights and

human dignity

2. The fragility of democracy and “civilisation”

3. The nature of human behavior we putatively define as

“evil”

4. How ordinary people are capable of becoming involved in

and justifying the persecution and murder of innocent

people

5. How certain societies can be seduced by a demagogic

leader and populist causes

6. The human potential for, and the conditions that

promote, caring for others, or courageous risk taking

on behalf of fellow humans who may be in peril

7. How prejudice, discrimination, racism, and the human

capacity for harming others can lead to mass murder if

not addressed

8. The importance of standing up for the rights of others

if we hope to have our own rights respected

9. How we as humans have our interpretations of reality

shaped by the influence of the media, propaganda, and

the opinions of others

10. An understanding of the mechanisms of peer pressure,

group conformity, and social norms

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11. The conditions that can promote indifference to

oppression or suffering.

In this chapter I focus on the last three aims.

Anne Frank’s insight

It is critical to note for educational purposes what Anne Frank

was referring to in her diary entry I quoted at the beginning

of this chapter. It was a dislike of Jews as a category—of

growing anti-Semitism—and not of one particular Jewish person.

With very few Jewish people around to counter any

misconceptions and prejudices, and building on centuries of

anti-Semitism, the propaganda and mythology about Jews as a

category went unchallenged in Germany and surrounding

countries.

But propaganda and the Nazis’ complete control of all the media

in Germany and occupied Europe cannot fully explain the

widespread phenomenon that anti-Semitism grew among the general

population as Jewish men, women, and children were being

humiliated, beaten, and killed. Anti-Semitism was also rampant

in countries where the media were not controlled by the Nazis.

Though newspapers in the United States like the New York Times

reported on the increasing persecution of Jews in Germany and

later in occupied Europe, anti-Semitism among the general

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public in the United States remained strong and by some

accounts even increased.

We know today what the general public at that time thought,

especially in the United States, because the rise of the Nazis

coincided with the emergence of the social sciences and

empirical research methods. Starting in the mid-1930s, polling

companies in the United States surveyed the U.S. public on a

monthly basis about numerous social issues. Some 400 national

surveys were conducted between 1936 and 1945 by Elmo Roper’s

polling firm, George Gallup’s American Institute of Public

Opinion (AIPO), Hadley Cantril’s Office of Public Opinion

Research (OPOR), and the National Opinion Research Council

(NORC). It was the first time in history that attitudes could

be measured as a genocide unfolded.

Several years into the Nazi persecution of Jews, but a few

months before Kristallnacht, the pogrom of November, 1938, a poll

by AIPO showed that 58% of Americans agreed that Jews were at

least partially responsible for their own persecution (see

Figure 1).

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Figure 1 Percentage of US respondents holding that Jews are

responsible for their own persecution, 1938

Half a year later, shortly after Kristallnacht, in which close to

100 Jews were murdered, 30,000 arrested, and more than 250

synagogues torched in Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland

(USHMM 2013), a Gallup Poll revealed that only 21.2% of

Americans thought their government should allow more Jews to

immigrate. At this time, according to such surveys, majorities

of respondents agreed with statements that labeled Jews as

“greedy”, “dishonest”, and “pushy”. The percentages that agreed

that Jews had "too much power in the United States" rose from

to 41% in 1938 to 58% by 1945.

A 1939 Roper poll sheds further light on the existing anti-

Semitism among the American public. Only 39% agreed that Jews

should be treated like other people. Some 53% expressed the

belief that “Jews are different and should be restricted” and

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no less than 10% of the public believed that Jews should be

deported (see e.g. Mazzenga 2009) .

At face value, it seems quite shocking that attitudes towards

Jews would harden and become less tolerant in a place like the

United States during a period of severe persecution. One might

argue that the American public was unaware of what was

happening to the Jews in Germany and elsewhere. However,

information was regularly being communicated to the American

public. Influential newspapers and local papers across the

country covered the events in Germany and Europe. The New York

Times reported on the events associated with the November Pogrom

in several articles at the time. On 11 November, 1938, the

following text was splashed across the front page: “Nazis

smash, loot and burn Jewish shops and temples until Goebbels

calls halt”. The same day, the Cincinnati Enquirer led with an

article on the front page, entitled “Nazis burn property, loot

stores of Jews” (USHMM 2013). The News and Courier in Charleston,

South Carolina also devoted extensive front-page attention to

those events. On the same date it led with the caption

“Frenzied Nazi Terrorists Flout Government Orders and Continue

Destruction”, using words and phrases such as “orgy of

looting”, “hysteria”, and “terror”. The paper also mentioned

multiple murders (of Jews) and suicides. These are just a few

examples of newspaper coverage at the time. Interestingly, the

coverage in such papers, like so many others at the time,

echoed the myth that the pogrom was spontaneous and that the

German government had attempted to stop the violence.

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Failing to empathise

Given this awareness of great suffering, how is it possible

that so many people held on to their anti-Semitic attitudes and

that surveys showed that anti-Semitic sentiment grew? The

growth in anti-Semitic sentiment is perhaps even more

surprising when one realizes that the Jews were being

persecuted by a country at war with the United States. One

would expect empathy towards Jews to increase if only for that

reason.

Arguments with a strong commonsense dimension that would help

explain growing anti-Semitism include those that would point to

already existing anti-Semitic, racist, and other intolerant

beliefs. These certainly had an impact. However, more mundane

psychological mechanisms also explain part of the picture.

Gordon Allport (1954), in his classic study of prejudice,

alluded to the process where humans fail to have empathy for

the suffering of others:

There is a good reason why out-groups are often

chosen as the object of hate and aggression rather

than individuals. One human being is, after all,

pretty much like another—like oneself. One can

scarcely sympathize with the victim. To attack him

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would be to arouse some pain in ourselves. Our own

“body image” would be involved, for his body is

like our own body. But there is no body image of a

group. It is more abstract, more impersonal. (p.

363)

Melvin Lerner (1980) offers some insight into why individuals

might not empathize with those who are the targets of

persecution. Heavily influenced by Milgram’s work on obedience,

Lerner arrived at what he called the ‘just world hypothesis’.

Lerner wanted to understand how individuals could accept social

norms that justified the harming of others. He also wanted to

know why oppressive regimes could survive and also attract

popular support. During his clinical training he had seen how

educated and caring people—health care practitioners—had the

tendency to blame mentally ill patients for their own

suffering. The just world hypothesis asserts that people have

an intuitive belief in justice and that the world is fair. Seen

from this perspective, people and groups get what they deserve.

To put it simply: good people are rewarded and bad people are

punished. If a particular community suffers, then this

community is perceived as in some way having caused or provoked

that suffering (see also Major, Quinto, McCoy, and Schmader

2000).

The phenomenon of blaming the victim when reflecting on the

causes of Jewish (and perhaps other groups’) suffering before

and during the Holocaust can be concretely illustrated by a

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question I pose after asking teachers and their students what

they know about the Holocaust. Generally speaking, teachers and

their students, at least those in Europe and North America, are

somewhat familiar with the Holocaust (or Shoah). The number of

6 million Jews murdered does not come as a shock. But when I

ask both history teachers and their students what percentage of

the German population was Jewish in the early 1930s, their

responses are almost always completely off target.

The study I mentioned earlier by Stuart Foster (2013) and his

colleagues at the University of London confirms what I have

found in dozens of countries. Foster comments on their study as

follows:

One question, for example, asked teachers what, in

percentage terms, was the Jewish population in Germany in

1933. Teachers were offered 5 choices: more than 30%;

approximately 15%; approximately 5%; less than 1%; not

sure. Of note, the correct answer (i.e., less than 1%)

was provided by a relatively small number of teachers in

all subject areas. In fact, just under a third of

history teachers answered correctly and less than one-in-

five citizenship, English and religious education

teachers provided an accurate response. Many teachers

significantly overestimated the pre-war Jewish population

in Germany, with 40% of citizenship teachers, for

example, claiming that the answer was approximately 15%

or more than 30% of the population…it is arguably very

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important that teachers and their students are aware of

the very small numbers of Jews living in pre-war Germany.

If teachers commonly over-estimate the size of the German

Jewish population (in some cases by 15 or 30 times), then

it might be that myths and stereotypes about their power,

wealth and control are inappropriately and unwittingly

reinforced. (p. 140)

A valid question here is why so many teachers and students

overestimate the number of Jews living in Germany in 1933. The

answer might be partly explained by the fact that most teachers

and their students initially believe that it was primarily

German Jews who were murdered. But I believe that another

psychological mechanism plays a role, one that is largely

subconscious yet can have negative repercussions for minority

groups. It also points to a challenge for educators when they

attempt to explain the Nazis’ persecution of the European Jews.

Given that individuals tend to seek the causes of persecution—

at least to a certain extent—in the social characteristics or

behavior of targeted groups, it is perhaps not surprising that

public opinion in the United States towards Jews worsened in

the late 1930s and 1940s. It is perhaps also not surprising

that teachers and students today overestimate the number of

Jews living in Germany in 1933. In both cases the reasoning

goes something like this: If the Nazis hated the Jews so much

and were willing to go to such lengths to persecute them, then

the Jews must have done something to deserve or provoke this.

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During my work in countries such as Lithuania and Hungary,

people sometimes expressed this reasoning overtly when we were

delving more deeply into this issue. When I posed the question

about the number of Jews in Germany to 15 museum guides who

were being trained to become guides for the traveling Anne Frank

in the World Exhibition in Lithuania, I got responses between 30% and

70%. When I then gave the participants the correct percentage

(under 1%) and asked why they thought the Jews, a small

minority, had been targeted for persecution, they argued that

the Jews had certainly provoked societal anger and envy because

they were “so rich”. When I asked them what evidence they had

for this, the informal leader of the group reiterated that it

was obvious because they were targeted for persecution. I then

asked the group if they all agreed with this and their verbal

and non-verbal behavior indicated that they did, though the

group could sense that I was hoping for a different kind of

response.

The phenomenon of vastly overestimating the size of oppressed

minority groups can also be found today. For instance, Navarro

and Arechavaleta (2010) conducted research in 2007–2008 among

secondary school students in the Basque Country of Spain. The

students were asked what percentage of the population of the

Basque Country they thought were foreigners (viewed negatively

by the majority of the population). While the actual percentage

at the time was 4.6%, the estimates were generally much higher.

More than 66% thought the percentage was over 13% of the

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population (this was the anchor the researchers used). More

than 20% thought the percentage exceeded 25%. In 2012, the

independent think tank British Future (2010) conducted a poll

in the United Kingdom in which they asked respondents what

percentage of their population they thought were refugees. The

actual percentage is 0.4% but some 40% of those surveyed though

it was more than 10%. Finally, in a comparative international

study, the Transatlantic Trends Immigration survey (Topline

Data 2011), respondents were asked the following question: “In

your opinion, what percentage of the total (COUNTRY) population

were born in another country?” While the foreign-born

population in the United States at the time was approximately

13%, the mean estimate was 37.8%. The study found similar

exaggerated estimates in the UK, Spain, France, Germany, and

Italy (page 54, question 28a).

The overestimates regarding the size of minority groups in

society feed neatly into discourses that see such groups as a

threat to tradition, nation, and culture. Throughout Europe,

overtly nationalist and far-right groups, like Jobbik in

Hungary, the English Defence League in the United Kingdom, and

Golden Dawn in Greece, attempt to reinforce notions that

minority groups such as the Roma (pejoratively known as

gypsies) and immigrants are “flooding into the country”, taking

over the nation, and need to be stopped.

Social conformity and social norms

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Exaggerating the size and power of minority groups is not

uncommon and can serve as a core rationale for attempts to

“protect” the majority from the minority. Such exaggerations

can also lead to justifications for denying minority groups

certain rights. Individuals, as social beings, rarely arrive at

their opinions about social groups in a social vacuum. When

majority opinion holds that a persecuted group must have

deserved its fate and can be blamed in some way for its

suffering, social norms to accept such a definition of the

situation can be strong. This tendency has also been referred

to as social conformity.

Two classic social conformity experiments were conducted by

Stanley Milgram (1965) and Solomon Asch (1955). Both arrived at

very non-intuitive results. Few people predicted how strong

normative pressure could be on the judgments of individuals.

While Milgram looked at obedience to authority figures, Asch

attempted to show that people did not fall in line “like

sheep”; he looked at how a person’s opinion is influenced by

majority opinion. In the traditional Asch experiment, an

unsuspecting subject is asked to make a fairly simple judgment

about physical reality, like the length of a line. The subject

is placed with a group of confederates who all disagree with

the subject, although it is very clear that the subject’s

perception of the situation is correct. Contrary to what Asch

had anticipated, instead of disagreeing with the others, the

subjects in these experiments strongly tended to go along with

the group consensus. Asked later why they did this, the

subjects frequently pointed out that the others must have had a

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better view or had information the subject did not have. In an

extensive review of social norms and social conformity,

Cialdini and Trost (1998) summarise what happens to the kind of

dramatic and unexpected conformity found in the Asch experiment

and validated more recently. They say this conformity becomes

“more understandable when one considers three powerful personal

goals that conformity can serve”. This kind of “shift toward a

group consensus can allow an individual (1) to believe that he

or she now sees things more accurately, (2) to gain the

approval and acceptance of desirable others, (3) to avoid a

self-conception as different, deviant or intransigent” (p.

168).

Individuals do differ in the extent to which they are

influenced by others when forming an opinion about social

issues. The concepts of field dependence and field independence

have been used to distinguish the extent to which individuals

are influenced by their outside impulses and the social

environment when learning, forming opinions, etc. Wooldridge

(1995) summarises the difference as follows: “field dependent

individuals are interpersonally oriented and rely heavily on

external stimuli. This motivates them to look toward others for

reinforcement of opinions and attitudes” (p. 51).

To such observations, Cialdini and Trost (1998) add that the

evidence collected over the past few decades has shown that

conformity to majority opinion is more pronounced in

collectivist societies than in individualistic ones. Because

most research conducted on social conformity has taken place in

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North America (which is highly individualistic) and it

demonstrates how powerful this psychological mechanism is in

that particular context, we can expect the educational

challenges to be even greater elsewhere.

In sum, individuals—to different degrees—will consciously and

also subconsciously look for environmental cues when trying to

form an opinion about ambiguous situations, but even in rather

non-ambiguous situations such normative pressure is present. It

is difficult to go against majority opinion, especially when

the majority is respected. Following majority opinion brings a

number of social rewards, such as praise, inclusion, and

approval by others. It also prevents social punishment.

Conclusions and discussion

In this article I have attempted to apply some insights from

the fields of cognitive psychology and social psychology to

learning about and learning through the Holocaust. It is my

belief that these academic fields can shed some light on why

some—both in the past and present—might not feel empathetic

towards the Jewish (and perhaps other) victims of the Holocaust

or communities persecuted more recently.

A key question we can ask ourselves is this: What are the

implications of such insights from cognitive and social

psychology for our teaching of students—mostly teens at an age

when peer influence is quite strong? To address this question,

I would like to finish by discussing two activities I have

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personally found to lead participants to a better understanding

of the processes and mechanisms I have mentioned here. The

first is relatively simple and already touched upon; the second

is somewhat more complicated to implement.

As mentioned earlier, Foster’s (2013) question can serve as a

potentially effective and fairly simple activity—early in

teaching about the Holocaust—to help young people understand

how the process of blaming the victim functions and how the

just world hypothesis can negatively impact our opinion of

minorities. The question he asked was: “How many Jews do you

think lived in Germany in 1933?” The teacher can first have

students write down the question individually, to have a record

and to avoid students being influenced by others; it can also

be done in a plenary session. In my experience, students (and

too often teachers) are very surprised by the correct answer.

The obvious follow up question is why they think this is the

case. Most will most likely give rather vague answers.

But a confrontation with the actual percentage can provide just

enough cognitive discomfort for students to want to know more.

They will be motivated to resolve what has been referred to as

a certain level of cognitive dissonance. This is the feeling of

discomfort that results from holding two conflicting beliefs

simultaneously. Individuals, the evidence points out, will be

motivated to remove this discomfort (referred to as dissonance

reduction) and restore equilibrium. The dissonance will

manifest itself cognitively something like this: “Jews were

innocent and there is no reason to persecute innocent people—

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but they were the victims of one of the most destructive

campaigns of mass murder in history”. This is a direct

confrontation with people’s sense that good things happen to

good people—that there is a just world. This discovery in

itself can be slightly unsettling for some youth.

A discussion of the processes of blaming the victim (without

blaming the students for getting the percentage wrong), based

on their own answers, can lead to learning about themselves and

about human cognition. Mentioning that less than 1% of the

German population was Jewish does something else that can have

a motivational impact. This information is non-intuitive and

providing non-intuitive information is more powerful as a

learning tool than providing information that students expect

to receive. Simmons and Nelson (2006) found that “intuitive

biases are particularly pervasive, occurring even when all

relevant information in the immediate decision context is

processed and understood” (p. 423), but also that “decreasing

confidence in the intuition will decrease, or even eliminate,

such biases” (p. 426). I would argue further that an important

first step is understanding that one’s intuitions regarding why

individuals and groups tend to face discrimination can be

faulty. In a similar vein, according to Cialdini and Trost

(1998), identifying the social norms of important referent

people and one’s willingness to comply with those expectations

can be an important intervention tool.

Learning is always more effective when students are pulled

slightly out of their comfort zone and are challenged to

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address their own biases, especially when the challenge is non-

threatening to their self-esteem or social status. Other

examples of non-intuitive information relating to the history

of the Holocaust—for many youth—are that the Jews were not the

only victims and that propaganda was directed at other groups

as well, that Adolf Hitler was elected into power, that even

some Nazis helped Jews, that the Jews were not passively led to

the slaughter, that in many countries local populations led the

killing campaigns, that anti-Semitism and persecution of the

Jews is centuries old, and that many Jewish Germans had a

strong Jewish identity and even fought for Germany in World War

I.

A few years ago, at a seminar for the New Mexico Human Rights

projects, facilitator Daena Giardella also went beyond the

comfort zone of many participants. After I had done a

relatively impersonal yet interactive activity that focused on

the concepts of perpetrator, helper, bystander, and

victim/target, Deana asked the participants to reflect on

conflicts that they had experienced in their families when they

were young, and the primary role they had played in those

conflicts. She then asked the approximately 30 teachers to

stand in one of four corners of the room. They could choose

between corners labeled “victim/target”, “perpetrator”,

“helper”, or “bystander”. Though Deana focused on having people

from the different corners enter into a discussion with each

other—mostly about feelings—I was also interested to observe

how those who saw themselves as perpetrators (a few were

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willing to admit this) or as bystanders perceived the situation

and their siblings who had been victimised in some way. Though

all my evidence was gathered unsystematically in the hallway

and during lunch, it was telling. Several who admitted they had

been perpetrators or bystanders mentioned that at the time they

felt that the victim had in some way “deserved” the negative

treatment he or she received (though they now had a different

view). Those who had been bystanders also mentioned issues such

as fear of reprisal, not wanting to get involved, not feeling

responsible, and feeling helpless to intervene. The activity

had a powerful impact and provoked rather emotional responses

from some participants. Not all teachers will feel comfortable

with such an activity.

Nevertheless, it is precisely activities like the two above

that can generate the kind of reflection that can help students

gain more insight into why we as human beings might blame the

victim rather than empathise with the victim.

References

Allport, G. (1954). The Nature of Prejudice. Cambridge: Perseus

Books Publishing LLC.

Asch, S. E. (1955). Opinions and social pressure. Scientific

American, 193, 35–35.

Annan, K. (2010, 17 June).

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