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Des White Buses to Auschwitz de la Norvège aux Treni della Memoria italiens

Translated Title

From Norway's White Buses to Auschwitz to Italy's Treni della Memoria

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Abstract

My paper will focus on the Italian memorial trains to Auschwitz, which have become a very popular phenomenon that is still unparalleled in Europe. Namely, I will argue that they are an example of the deterioration of teaching about the Holocaust and the trivialization of Auschwitz. First, neither their pedagogy nor their methodology are sufficiently accurate because most of the teachers who take part in these projects have a passive attitude and fail to coordinate their students’ learning experience. Second, there is a lack of precision regarding the definition of historical facts, which leads to the use of unsuitable language. For instance, terms such as “political deportation,” “forced labor” and “the extermination of the Jews” are conflated. This lack of precision also leads to a moralizing of the Holocaust that risks overlooking and minimizing the specificity of the genocide.
Given the great success of the memorial trains and the initiative’s strong influence on the teaching of history, it is essential that we consider the ways in which teachers respond to the major challenge facing them: how to combine good history instruction with the moral lessons of Auschwitz.

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Geographic Coverage

Italy   Norway   Poland

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Volume/Issue

206

Page Number / Article Number

129-151

DOI

Link

Link to article including link to pdf, Des White Buses to Auschwitz de la Norvège aux Treni della Memoria italiens

Bibliographic Information

Fontana, Laura Des White Buses to Auschwitz de la Norvège aux Treni della Memoria italiens. Revue D’histoire De La Shoah. 2017: 129-151.  https://archive.jpr.org.uk/10.3917/rhsho.206.0129