Discovering the Holocaust: http://www.blechner.com/

Studying the Holocaust can be overwhelming. Quite apart from the emotional impact of the terrible events it is the scale of the tragedy in terms of numbers of lives, the enormity of the loss, the complexity of the narrative, the breadth of the geography, the numbing myriad of perpetrator motivation and so on that makes the events so difficult to fathom. Nevertheless, I think that there are ways of understanding both the enormity of the events whilst still maintaining a connection with the human story.

As part of the Imperial War Museum’s Holocaust Education Fellowship (something that I would wholeheartedly recommend to all teachers) I’m trying to produce what I pompously call an ‘online exhibition builder’ that will, I hope, eventually be available on the IWM’s website. The important part, however, is that the source material that I am fortunate to be using comes from the unqiue Blechner archive. Essentially the archive consists of around 250 letters and documents that all tell the story of one family - a mother, father and four sons - and what happens to them during the Holocaust. Whilst the letters certainly tell the story of fear, separation, loss, desperation and hope they also hint at the overall narrative. The stories contained within the archive include depictions of deportation, transports, refugees, concentration camps, murder and escape. I would recommend a visit to the website, compiled by Anthony Blechner, that tells the tale of one family caught up in the unique tragedy…

Please visit http://www.blechner.com/

For information on the IWM’s Holocaust Education Fellowship visit http://london.iwm.org.uk/upload/pdf/FellowshipHolocaustEducation2007v1.pdf