Teaching the Representation of the Holocaust

Can the story be told? Jorge Semprun asked after his liberation from Buchenwald. The question is addressed from many angles in this volume of essays on teaching about the Holocaust. In their introduction, Marianne Hirsch and Irene Kacandes argue that Semprun's question is as vital now, and as difficult and complex, as it was for the survivors in 1945.The thirty-eight contributors to come from various disciplines (history, literary criticism, psychology, film studies) and address a wide range of issues pertinent to the teaching of a subject that many teachers and students feel is an essential part of a liberal arts education. This volume offers approaches to such works as Jurek Becker's , Roberto Benigni's , Anne Frank's diary, Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's , Claude Lanzmann's , Primo Levi's , Cynthia Ozick's , Dan Pagis's "Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway Car," Art Spiegelman's , Steven Spielberg's , Elie Wiesel's , and Abraham Yehoshua's .To the challenge "How do we transmit so hurtful an image of our own species without killing hope and breeding indifference?" posed by Geoffrey Hartman in this volume, the editors respond, "Only in the very human context of classroom interaction can we hope to avoid either false redemption or unending despair."