Introduction by Yariv Lapid

The external experts were welcomed at the Mauthausen Memorial.

Before the day was started, Yariv Lapid gave an introduction about the work at the Mauthausen Memorial and the project itself. The basic statements were:

When dealing with topics such as the Holocaust, National Socialism, torture or mass murder, it is important to be aware of our helplessness in attempting to grasp our subject matter. We need to acknowledge the limits of our understanding.

When we attempt to create educational concepts and structures, it is particularly important for us to legitimize this basic helplessness. The sought discourse is to provide the space needed to search for the right questions.

In the course of this project, instead of focusing on what we DO know, we are to allow ourselves to experiment with and talk about what we DON’T know.

That is why it is important for the experts to feel free to admit to helplessness and not understanding. Communication on an equal plane with the participating guides in the working groups is also key.

The challenge at the Mauthausen Memorial is to connect place, history and visitor. Interaction appears to constitute the appropriate means to that end.

Hence, two mayor questions are going to accompany this project:

  1. What happens when interaction takes place? Which problems arise, which opportunities?

  2. How can we create a training process for the guides in order to enable interaction?

Another goal for the Think Tank is to find ways to better connect the expert, academic and theoretician with the guide and the grass roots of everyday work with the groups. The idea is for theory to approximate the reality of the groups as much as possible.

The international and interdisciplinary influx represented by the experts is seen as an especially promising attribute of the project.

After Yariv Lapid’s introduction, each Think Tank member was given the opportunity to introduce themselves to the group.

The Pedagogical Concept and its Challenges

The main foci of tours at the Mauthausen Memorial are supposed to be:

  • Interaction

    • Involving people, talking about what all this means

  • Discussing environment

    • Embedding the concentration camp in the (social, economic...) environment

But it seems not to be enough for a complete tour. For some there is the impression that the narrative of a tour ends at the main gate.

A lot of questions arise when thinking about how to improve guided tours at the Mauthausen Memorial:

  • How do we handle difficult subjects like the victims and the detention camp itself using interaction, especially after entering the main gate?

  • How can we authentically ask questions that convey a sense of real interest for what a group has to say?

  • How do we not seem suggestive or manipulating? Which kinds of questions can help us avoid that?

  • What is an open question that creates a learning process - for the guide just as much as for the group?

  • How can you identify with somebody and come close to a situation without it becoming kitschy? At this point Paul Salmons asked how far it is even possible to imagine what it must have been like for the victims. In his opinion, historical and biographical documents can offer insights into those peoples’ thoughts and open up new perspectives – sometimes that insights may surprise us. Christian Staffa added that, acknowledging the imminent dangers of simplifications and kitsch, we cannot do without identifying with the victims. We must avoid ruling out identification or “demonizing” the need for it.

How would we define our goals? Prevention is definitely one of them. On a methodical level, we focus on observing processes in order to ask for their meaning (it is about the why, not the how). Yariv Lapid says that the main goal is to create reflection. To achieve that, we present certain pieces of information that can cause reflection.

The meta-narrative accompanying a visit to Mauthausen Memorial is: How was it possible that 100.000 people were murdered amidst a civilian society? A discussion on the term meta-narrative unfolds, and Paul Salmons offered instead the term "Exploration Questions".

Research has focused on what happened, but hardly on why things happened. Christian Gudehus talked about the lack of understanding of human behavior (what engenders and motivates it) among people involved in the work at memorial sites. If prevention is a goal one must first understand what makes people behave in such ways. Then you have to ask if prevention can be at all achieved through a visit to a site like this.

What can this place teach that other places can’t?

On the one hand, a memorial influences public discourses. Thus the concepts and attitudes memorials develop influence society. On the other hand, the question about the impact on the individual visitor is diffuse. Still, there are people who affirm that a visit at the memorial site has had a deep and lasting impact on their lives.

In comparison to the Mauthausen Memorial, at the Anne-Frank-House guides tell about Anne Frank and World War II in general, as Ayellet Grassiani pointed out. They try to connect small-scale and large-scale history and pose the question why no one helped. Sometimes they bring up the subject of bullying.
In Dachau, Waltraud Burger said, the “master-narrative” is the “path of the prisoners”- the usual stations and situations a person had to endure as a prisoner. They hardly talk about the perpetrator, that’s a taboo. The main goal at Dachau in the future could be talking about the consequences of war and how it affects us today. But that’s all still very vague.

What do we need for our debate in May?

Representing perpetrators: They were NOT monsters, and they were NOT forced to do what they did. Not everyone did what most did, so it wasn’t a purely rational decision that everyone shared – it was more complicated than that.

Historical narrations can never be free from intents of manipulation – usually you deliberately pick what you want to talk about for specific reasons. Yet you can never know what visitors find interesting and what they will remember – can you ever really control what the students actually take with them?

Without a specific goal you will have to talk on an abstract level, thus the question about the specific goals was raised again.

Staff Education

The main difficulty for guides is to accomplish useful interaction. The crucial challenge is to create a setting conducive to a discussion within the group. Often the guide’s planned agenda conflicts with giving a group the chance to really ask questions and develop interests.

How do you convey to the group that you are genuinely interested in them?

How do you find within you real questions that aren’t manipulative, that have several possible answers, or that you have no answer to and are struggling with yourself?
How do we empower the participants not to be afraid to expose their opinions and notions, how do we alleviate their fear of being made fun of or being put to shame? How do we enable guides to see the positive potential in the participants contributions and thus reflect his positive attitude onto them? How do we teach a guide to trust himself and the group enough not to be overbearing and censoring?

Which kinds of historic materials/questions open/close discussions?

Maybe the second part of the tour doesn’t need to be fully interactive. Maybe a very interactive first part of the tour creates a setting that makes it unnecessary.

Relation between the working groupsmade up of guides at the memorial and the ThinkTank

Working Group 1 (13 people)

Dealing with three out of the five themes: Narratives, Station Sequences, Materials.
Within the bigger working group individual members will focus more or less exclusively on one of these specific themes.

Working Group 2  (5 people)

Three out of five team members are social workers.

The group is dealing with: How could we go about developing ideas for supporting our guides?
Challenge: How can we enable the guides to connect with each other?

Evaluation Group (?)

Tasks of the Think Tank

Using the varied expertise of the international participants to help the guides with the groups.

Finding constructive ways of giving feedback to the guides.

 

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