This article focuses on war photography as a cultural phenomenon as used in secondary school history textbooks in the context of post-1989 Poland. It argues that the focus on the Second World War, its military aspects, and the threads previously erased from public memory, was specific to the Polish context. It also proves that the visuality of…

Value co-creation unfolds as a system of interactions in which the user and service provider play an active role in collaboratively creating values that go beyond economical and financial worth. Value co-creation is a growing trend in museums; however, little is known about how it can enhance educational activities, especially concerning digital…

This article examines two key practices in shaping Holocaust remembrance: Educational trips to Poland for Israeli youth and Holocaust films. Both educational tour guides and cinematic directors face challenges in representing trauma, navigating between historical realism and fragmented, implicit representations that reflect the post-traumatic…

Among the growing body of literature concerning teaching and learning about the Holocaust, very little research has explored the experiences of teachers from an emotional perspective. This study considers the emotion work done by educators who are teaching about the Holocaust at the site of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Through the lens of 'emotional…

Purpose: The article intends to analyse the manner in which banished soldiers are presented in the new history curriculum at schools in Poland as an example of the politics of memory. Design/methodology/approach: The analysis is a case study of the phenomenon of banished soldiers in the Polish public discourse. It includes the following issues:…

January 2015 marked the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by the Soviet Army. In 2014 alone, over one and a half million visitors crossed the same threshold, beneath the infamous words: "Arbeit Macht Frei." Of these visitors, a majority were organised educational groups, particularly high school, college and…

This article examines the relationship between school and cultural knowledge of Second World War in contemporary Poland. Drawing on analysis of 126 student responses to well-known photographs (photo elicitation), the author addresses what it means for schoolchildren to learn about an aspect of a contested past, the Holocaust, within the frame of…

In many European countries, disparities have grown between history and the memory of the Holocaust. Debates on Polish-Jewish relations during the Holocaust and empirical studies in the field of education reveal that there is a gap between research and education. The emphasis in this paper is on the content of new history textbooks published after…

Research by the Centre for Holocaust Education has suggested that students need and want more help with building an overview of the historical roots of antisemitism and that they often lack knowledge of Jewish life prior to the Holocaust. Darius Jackson has attended to these problems with a lesson that examines the context of antisemitism in two…

The aim of this article is to analyze the findings of a research project on how the Holocaust is taught around the world. The project analyzes central issues and educational events that occur while teaching the Holocaust "behind the classroom door," in public schools in different countries. Researchers from 10 nations participated in the…

This article highlights the role of teachers in confronting traumatic, hidden wartime histories in communities traumatized by them. The study illuminates patterns based on field observations, emails, and surveys of 60 teachers who participated in a Holocaust teacher preparation program in Poland during the summer of 2010. The teachers surveyed…

This article analyzes the historical and political context of Holocaust education, and its implementation in Polish schools. Perceptions of the Holocaust continue to change, influenced by Poland's social and political situation. The Polish historical context is quite specific; it includes the long history of Poles and Jews as neighbors, with local…

Few had heard of Irena Sendlerowa in 1999. Now, after more than 290 presentations of the student play "Life in a Jar," as well as a website with high traffic, and worldwide media attention, Irena is known to the world. Irena Sendler (as she became known), a social worker, believed in standing up for others. Her father, who was a doctor,…

National history and collective memory and their impact on adolescents' knowledge and attitudes are the topic of this article. A follow-up study, it examines the long-term impact of a journey to historical monuments. Israeli Jewish high-school students have the option of experiential study, visiting cities and death camps in Poland. The first…

Gerda Weissmann Klein was 15 years old in September 1939 when Germany invaded the city of Bielitz (present-day Bielsko), Poland. In her memoir, "All But My Life," she recounts the horror of losing family and friends, of life in concentration camps, of the death march and of liberation in 1945 by an American soldier named Kurt Klein, who…