On either side of the fence: A second- and third-generation view of the Shoah
Submitted by:
Ilana Elkad-Lehman
Abstract:
This paper will present phenomenological research based on a seminar held in two higher education institutes, one in Germany and one in Israel, as part of an initiative to develop cooperation on literature education. In this project, literature served as a source for discourse and forging a relationship between Israeli and German students who constitute the third generation since the events of World War II or the Shoah. Participants in the study were 14 Israeli students, 31 students in the German class (including two guest students from France and Italy), and the two researchers, both second-generation descendants of Shoah and World War II.
The goals of the seminar were: To facilitate a discourse between Jewish and German students about the Shoah and about memory, using literature on the subject; To create an awareness of the differences and commonalities in perspectives on memory; To enhance awareness of issues such as prejudice, racism, anti-Semitism, and attitudes toward minorities; To encourage thinking about the meanings of testimony (Felman & Laub, 1992), memory (Erll, 2011), memory and history (Nora, 1989; Friedländer, 1979), empathy, and forgiveness; To create a real situation in which reading literature is part of life – emerging from questions of the learner’s identity, moving on to the literary space, and back to the learner’s identity; To develop critical thinking.
The literary corpus included works by German and Israeli writers: Jenny Erpenbeck's Heimsuchung [Homecoming], autobiographical texts by Lizzie Doron, stories by Etgar Keret, picturebooks by Tomi Ungerer, Iwona Chmielewska, Uri Orlev, an essay by Amos Oz, and others.
Data collection is based on students' portfolios, researchers' electronic dialogue via e-mail, and researchers' journals The texts are analyzed using mixed approaches from qualitative research (Lieblich, Tuval-Mashiach, & Zilber, 1998), and content analysis.
Findings indicate possibilities and challenges for inter-cultural Israeli-German dialogue about the Shoah.
Erll, A. (2011). Memory in culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Felman, S., Laub, D. (1992). Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History. New York and London: Routledge.
Friedländer, S. (1979). When Memory Comes. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux.
Lieblich, A., Tuval-Mashiach,R., & Zilber, T. (1998). Narrative research - reading, analysis and interpretation (Vol. 47). California: Sage Publications, Inc.
Nora, P. (1989). Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire. Representations, 26/ 4, 7-24.