Session on Narratives (working group 1)

The group presented their preliminary foci and main questions as well as new ideas:

• Might there be other master-narratives than the existing one (How was it possible that 100.000 people were murdered amidst a civilian society?)?

• Which subjects/themes are there? Are there any missing?

• Do we have the right balance between surroundings/bystanders – perpetrators – victims within the guided tours?

• Does the splitting into these groups make sense? It’s tempting to assign guilt, and the splitting may encourage more of that.

• Relations/influences between the three groups?

• The above mentioned terminology may carry various connotations (e.g. perpetrators = active — victims = passive)

• How do we talk about the lives of the inmates during a tour?

• How can we present the perpetrators?

• A biographical approach is important and helps to

  • show individuals instead of groups

  • look at a victim’s life before, during and after the experience of victimisation.

• Draft for a different master-narrative

  • talk about “what happened to different people at this place, what did they do?”

 

Discussion

Christian Gudehus suggested using “master-narrative” instead of “meta-narrative”, because the term can be misleading (it was subsequently changed in the bullet points above). Paul Salmons suggested using the term “inquiring question with sub-questions”, because different groups of visitors may chose to talk about different narratives when confronted with the same question.

Should we avoid to use labels such as “victim” and “perpetrator”, but just describe people and their actions? With groups there’s also the option to talk about “who is a perpetrator?”. Paul Salmons: “Maybe if it’s a good question in here, it’s also a good question out there (for the groups)”.

During the tours we might offer biographies, tell stories about persons and actions. This way we can create a more detailed view.

While today we call the SS-guards “perpetrators”, at the time most of these people didn’t consider themselves perpetrators. How can we talk about these complicated issues without totally confusing the pupils with that level of complexity?

We can and must confront pupils with complex structures and horrible things, the question is how we can do so in a careful way. What about displaying moments of decision-making for prisoners?

How can we do so in a way that avoids to create kitsch as well as the impression that students can now understand what it’s like to be a prisoner (e. g. to be tortured)?

Still, especially young students may benefit in some way from simplification – so we also shouldn’t have too much fear of kitsch/simplification (e. g. saying “put yourself in this victim’s position”).

We cannot just mention the prisoners who had the chance to perform acts resistance, who created art, who managed to preserve a sense of self and agency. How do you talk about prisoners who were passive, who had given up, who's agency had been eradicated? They also need to be represented in the tour.

Session on Interactive Sequences (working group 1)

During the second presentation the working group members were contemplating the integration of more diverse places within the Mauthausen Memorial into tours. Other questions were: How can we combine places and topics in new ways?

How do we deal with the creation of suspense in relation to the basement system and the gas chamber / crematoria at the end of the tour?

How do we share and discuss “good questions” among guides?

Discussion

Most visitors are here to see (among other things) the gas chamber, some even exclusively for that. After the visit, other places may become more important. Is there a chance to start a tour with the gas chamber?

Maybe a good way to address this is to implement a “good” station right after the gas chamber while still getting to it near the end of a tour.

Possibility: Demystify the gas chamber by pointing out that the actual technical process of a gas chamber killing is a very simple process. That way the realization may emerge that what really is more complex and interesting are the people involved and responsible.

Another interesting chance for discussion: It’s difficult to talk about the fact that lots of buildings and structures related to the SS aren’t visible anymore, the reason being that the people who established the memorial didn’t want it to depict the “perpetrators' side”.

This could offer a chance to discuss how and with which thoughts the memorial was established and how it changed over time.

Session on Material (working group 1)

• Guides need more material about the everyday lives of prisoners and guards

• What defines useful material? “What questions do I have relating to that material?”, “What questions could other people/pupils have?”

• How do we choose material?

• Is there a main goal? What should visitors learn?

• Do we create a connection to present times?

• How can we increase the flexibility of the intermediary/guide? (different groups, questions, …)

Discussion

Possible ways of categorizing material:

• It has to be representative of more than one group of prisoners

• The facts need to be correct

On the other hand, strictly defining categories may be counterproductive . Different places and thoughts require different impulses.

Conclusive Discussion

The pedagogical team will keep supporting the working group during the time until the second Think Tank Workshop.

The guides could experiment with giving a tour without using the terms “perpetrator” or “victim”. Also, they could try integrating the garage yard as a station during their tours.

Teachers may have an expectation that the place alone will convey a special, significant emotion. But in reality, you also need material and stories at these historic places to facilitate that. The guide’s task could be to create that authenticity that the place alone cannot convey.

Session on Support (working group 2)

The working group 2 gave a short introduction on the current situation of the guides at the Mauthausen Memorial. The group emphasized three dimensions that could and should be worked on in order to improve the conditions/situation:

• Self-positioning:

The first important topic would be the self-positioning of the guides (e.g. towards the guide pool, the educational team, the administration framework, the memorial etc), which would help to achieve some clarity regarding the representation of interests, communication and so on.

• Self-image:

  • What would a job description contain? Do we need a job description? Is it even possible to formulate one?

Goal: the self-reflective educational/didactical/political self

• Self-empowerment:

  • create spaces and methods that help the guides to progress in their work

  • the group presented an assortment of methods (ranging from ways to facilitate easier access to specific knowledge to various possible forms for psychological support (e.g. individual supervision, intervision, feedback dialogue etc))

Goal: learning, communicating/communicative and acting network

Discussion

Important facts about the guide pool were told to the experts. One of the most important questions is: How can we create a good basis for networking among the guides in the pool? There needs to be something in it for the guides, some kind of significance, because people would offer their time and have travelling expenses. When asynchronous communication doesn’t work, maybe another possibility is synchronous communication like Skype. That would also eliminate travelling costs.

Should we have meetings for all 100 guides? What would motivate them to come to such meetings? Perhaps it's a matter of themes: themes that are important to everyone, or themes that are important to specific groups with specific agendas for meetings. Why not start working on several ideas simultaneously, visible for everyone, and let everyone see the results to get/keep them interested? An effect could be that small groups with big cohesion would continue to organize themselves and work on one project together. Issues that turn out be of little interest for the guides could be allowed to “fail” and could be stopped anytime. Most important might be providing a framework that helps starting the work on specific issues.

Why is there so little initiative from the guides? Maybe because the guides don’t work at the memorial full-time and they can’t be sure that their ideas will even be heard.

The pedagogical team has more of an idea of funding. Is there any space in which these ideas could be developed?

Conclusion

Apparently initiatives mainly depend on finding funding – so it’s a top-down process since obviously the educational team needs to take care of that.

As far as the system and structure of communication is concerned, the primary goal must be for the guides to get the feeling of being helped and supported.

Apart from that, guides need to know who to contact if they want to start initiatives. This means that in the future, institutionalized rules and forms of taking up the guides’ interests must be established.

In the next phase of the EU project, the support group will continue to work on the different tools and methods which could help to achieve the three goals mentioned above.

Evaluation

Defining the goals is basic for evaluation, but these goals can’t be named yet. Therefore the next steps are:

• Defining goals and sub-goals of guided tours

• Clarifying: Which of these goals can’t even be achieved? Which ones can?

1) The main idea: Is there any way to evaluate what people perceive during tours? To evaluate which parts of the tours work and which don’t? The intention is to create a way to evaluate everything that happens during a tour, and subsequently to define a standard process that would allow the memorial to continue the evaluation process by itself.

2. On the other hand there could be some kind of original research. Maybe the newest knowledge on violence research combined with concrete material you can find at the memorial?

If those are the goals – what are the methods with which I can evaluate those goals?