After the Holocaust: Human Rights and Genocide Education in the Approaching Post-Witness Era ed. by Charlotte Schallié, Helga Thorson, and Andrea Van Noord

Abstract

Reviewed by: After the Holocaust: Human Rights and Genocide Education in the Approaching Post-Witness Era ed. by Charlotte Schallié, Helga Thorson, and Andrea Van Noord Avril Alba After the Holocaust: Human Rights and Genocide Education in the Approaching Post-Witness Era. Edited by Charlotte Schallié, Helga Thorson, and Andrea Van Noord. Saskatchewan: University of Regina Press, 2020. Pp. xxix + 320. Paper $39.95. ISBN 9780889777644. After the Holocaust: Human Rights and Genocide Education in the Approaching Post-Witness Era is an ambitious volume that seeks to meet the educational challenges encapsulated in its title. Largely successful in their goal, the editors present a range of contributions, both creative and scholarly, that address the vital concerns for those undertaking Holocaust education today. These studies cover three broad thematic areas that the editors label "critical Holocaust education," "Global connections," and education in a "Time of Transition"—an acknowledgment that this work will soon be undertaken in a postwitness era. Each of these themes is fruitfully explored throughout the six sections of the volume beginning with the words of survivors and addressing the changing nature of witness testimony over time. Interestingly, the second section then plunges the reader squarely into the Canadian context, the national context of the editors, as Canada's history of settler colonialism is brought into dialogue with Canadian Holocaust history and memory. The third section reverts to the personal at one generation's remove, with descendants' reflections about individual and communal legacies of violence, while section 4 again broadens the focus, examining Holocaust, Genocide, and Peace education initiatives in global settings. Section 5 provides fine-grained analyses of critical pedagogical approaches to historical learning, with the final section comprising practitioner reflections on educational initiatives undertaken in archival, communal, and site-specific contexts. These wide-ranging studies are grounded in an understanding of critical Holocaust education which refuses to sever the historical study of the Holocaust from its contemporary relevance. The diverse methodologies utilized and analyzed in the book provide outstanding examples of how to teach the historical specificity of the Holocaust, while also explicitly addressing its connections to other historical and contemporary instances of genocide and human rights abuse. Indeed, what is most interesting about the book is that the contributors are less concerned with debating these paradigms, many of which remain controversial in the scholarly discourse on Holocaust education, but rather focus on demonstrating how they can be effectively deployed. Indeed, perhaps the greatest contribution of the volume is that its explicitly self-reflexive posture challenges its readers to become better practitioners as well as scholars, to critically evaluate the educational limits and potentialities of their disciplines, and to acknowledge that Holocaust and genocide education is an iterative process that demands equal attention to methodology and content. [End Page 382] This approach is particularly effective in those chapters that focus on the relationship between Holocaust education and other educational paradigms concerned with mass violence and human rights education. Interestingly, the perspective of nonexperts such as Richard Kool provide perhaps the most novel insights. In Kool's chapter, we see theoretical discussions that have animated debates in Holocaust history and education (in this case, the tension between the particular and the universal), effectively and movingly harnessed by an individual seeking to understand how Jewish memorial initiatives can truly engage with, and impact, contemporary social justice causes. Similar perspectives are evidenced in the chapters outlining a variety of exhibitions and memorial projects. In many of these studies, we find the local intersecting with the global in powerful and sometimes unexpected ways. While this focus is admirable, a greater emphasis on evaluation—such as that in Maggie Ziegler's chapter outlining the development and implementation of a traveling exhibition that explicitly linked the Rwandan genocide with postgenocide peace-keeping initiatives—would allow for a deeper understanding of educational impact. The deliberate and carefully structured inclusion of ongoing evaluation by the exhibition curators and educators meant that Ziegler could critically evaluate the premises of the project. However, even evaluation has its limits, as Ziegler admits that while participant responses revealed the exhibition and education programs to be successful in shifting local attitudes and behaviors internally, there was no indication as to...