Using “Living Artifacts” to Foster Increased Student Engagement in Jewish and Holocaust Studies
As the number of living Holocaust survivors dwindles, the collective and visceral memory they held in trust for society also grows fainter with each generation and passing year. In particular, Generation Z, those born after 1996 who now form the traditional undergraduate body in our higher education institutions, will most likely never meet a Holocaust survivor. This group of students does not even remember 9/11, and as a result, their generation has not been shaped by that relatively recent tragedy. Instead, today’s undergraduates have been attached to a smartphone since their formative, adolescent years and have relied on social media platforms to establish and cultivate many of their significant relationships. These technology-addicted students prefer to receive information through fast-paced multimedia or other sensory stimulating activities and therefore often do not respond to the traditional lecture-based methodologies of the history classroom or read assigned books and articles. As a result, educators face the daunting challenge of devising relevant and engaging pedagogical strategies for presenting Holocaust studies.
Nevertheless, in what seems almost paradoxical to Generation Z’s immersion in the virtual world, these same individuals are also demonstrating an unprecedented level of social consciousness, as can be seen in their leadership as climate activists. Research has also confirmed that observation, indicating that these emerging adults are more likely than those of previous generations to work toward enacting positive change in our world.¹ Consequently, Holocaust educators can leverage this burgeoning social awareness to instill a sense of inherited responsibility in their students, an especially critical mission in the face of rising anti-Semitism around the globe.
So given the specific proclivities of today’s average undergraduate student and the fact that the Holocaust seems as remote to their generation as the American Civil War has to previous generations, I propose that an engaging pedagogical approach for Holocaust curriculum can be achieved by creating “living artifacts” through musical instruments and compositions that can continue to give voice to those who are now silent. Music’s highly associative nature along with its transformational power renders it uniquely suited for this use. In fact, the belief in music’s incomparable ability to touch and resonate with the human spirit can be traced back to ancient civilizations and has continued to be reaffirmed by great minds over the course of history. “At the most fundamental level, music’s influence seems related to its fleeting temporal quality, as it only exists in a given moment and not truly in a permanent physical form. Unlike a painting where the object on display does not merely represent the potential for a work of art but is the tangible creation, musical works on paper in their notated form provide only the instructions or blueprint for the creation of music.”² According to music historian Dr. Robert Greenberg, a piece of music endures as a living entity that is revived with every performance and, as a result, concert halls that resound with music from the past should not be classified as sepulchers or mausoleums, but as “reanimation facilities.”³ Greenberg also reminds us that music functions as a mirror of the time in which it was written, and thus provides the contextual framework for greater immersion and engagement in a topic such as the Holocaust by allowing the spiritual essence of the music, the people, and the time to be recreated again with the same intensity as in its inception.
An example of the successful use of music as a living artifact for Holocaust education can be seen through the Violins of Hope project started by the second-generation Israeli luthier Amnon Weinstein, whose parents had fled from Vilna in 1938 and settled in Palestine. As Jewish musicians also immigrated to Palestine in the 1930s, many of them arrived with German-made violins, which they began to reject and even destroy in response to Nazi atrocities. After his father’s death, Amnon discovered a collection of these German instruments that his father had bought and stored in a back room, rather than see them destroyed. Eventually, Amnon himself began to collect and restore violins that were played during the Holocaust. Violins of Hope now features over 80 restored instruments — living artifacts that travel around the world for exhibitions, educational programs, and concerts, with a mission to honor the lives lost in the Holocaust and to bring awareness to the dangers of intolerance. Numerous universities throughout the United States have hosted this project, including as close to our region as Charlotte, Knoxville, and Louisville.
Another example of an engaging educational opportunity through music is the Defiant Requiem, a multimedia concert experience envisioned by conductor Murry Sidlin in 2012. During the late 1990s, Sidlin had learned about the extraordinary musical life of those imprisoned in the Terezín concentration camp. He was especially moved by discovering that Verdi’s Requiem had been performed numerous times under the leadership of choral conductor Rafael Schächter and that the beleaguered prisoners had used the Latin text to pronounce judgement on their Nazi captors. In 2006, Maestro Sidlin traveled to Terezín with a choir and soloists to recreate that Requiem performance. The two stories of Verdi in Terezín, Schächter and Sidlin, formed the basis of a documentary film, Defiant Requiem, and then evolved into a multimedia concert presentation. As with Violins of Hope, the Defiant Requiem Foundation partners with higher education institutions and professional music organizations to present this poignant program, such as with the Asheville Symphony Orchestra in June 2019.
While the two examples above require a large-scale commitment of time and resources, the use of music as a pedagogical tool for Holocaust educators can be adapted and structured at any level. By demonstrating that the music written and performed by musicians during the Holocaust constitutes living artifacts, as does their surviving instruments, educators can utilize music and the personal narratives of individuals, such as the German-Jewish Holocaust survivor and cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, to communicate the subject matter in a way that connects to Generation Z students. Exposure to these living artifacts can provide a meaningful impetus for these socially conscious students to bear witness to the painful past, to take a critical look at our current world, and to assume the mantle of responsibility to make sure that this never happens again.
(This is a position paper that was presented at the Southeast German Studies Conference in March 2021 sponsored by the Center for Judaic, Holocaust and Peace Studies at Appalachian State University. Participants were limited to 3 pages for their argument.)
¹Seemiller, Corey, & Grace, Meghan. Generation Z Goes to College. Jossey-Bass, 2016.
²Brown, Kellie D. The Sound of Hope: Music as Solace, Resistance and Salvation During the Holocaust and World War II. McFarland, 2020.
³Greenberg, Robert. How to Listen to Great Music: A Guide to Its History, Culture, and Heart. The Teaching Company, 2011.
