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Teaching the holocaust through landscape study: The Liverpool experience

Author(s): Charlesworth, Andrew

Date: 1994

Topics: Holocaust Education, Universities / Higher Education, Teaching and Pedagogy, Geography, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial

Abstract: There are a number of ways in which the Holocaust can be taught at various educational levels. This article explains the experiences of one university geography field course, which seeks to use ‘conventional’ landscape study approaches to provide an understanding of aspects of the Holocaust. It describes the methodology of the course, the experiences of students and staff, and details the difficulties of such study. In particular, it emphasizes the need for sensitive staff‐student relations and the wider educational impact of such work. Whilst stressing the uniqueness of such a course in a geography degree, it commends the strategy to teachers in many other disciplines.

Memorialization and the Ecological Landscapes of Holocaust Sites: The cases of Plaszow and Auschwitz-Birkenau

Author(s): Charlesworth, Andrew; Addis, Michael

Date: 2002

Topics: Geography, Holocaust Memorials, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Environment

Abstract: The memorialization of Holocaust sites has been discussed so far in terms of their monuments and camp remains. Commentators have focused on aesthetics and questions of authenticity and preservation. The ecological component of these landscapes of horror has barely been considered. Yet the ecological management of these two sites is and will continue to be crucial to visitor perception and access. For a variety of reasons, Auschwitz has come to be the place that symbolizes the Holocaust. Plaszow has gained its notoriety amongst the plethora of concentration and slave-labour camp sites in Eastern Europe through the film Schindler's List. These two sites, so different in size and appearance, were chosen for analysis because of their fame and their differing management regimes. They illustrate the extremes of the visitor encounter with the ecology of sites. At Plaszow, with barely any remains of the camp extant, unmanaged ecological succession threatens to erase history; at Auschwitz, with a distinctive assemblage of camp remains actively conserved for the visitor, the ecological management by the Auschwitz Museum seeks for the most part merely to frame the remains.

‘Out of Place’ in Auschwitz? Contested Development in Post-War and Post-Socialist Oświęcim

Author(s): Charlesworth, Andrew; Stenning, Alison; Guzik, Robert; Paszkowski, Michal

Date: 2006

Topics: Geography, Jewish - Non - Jewish Relations, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Holocaust Memorials

Abstract: Over the past 20 years the Polish town of Oświęcim, the site of the most infamous death camp, has seen a series of well-publicised disputes over land use around the Auschwitz Museum. Each of these disputes has featured certain groups making certain claims for the ‘appropriate’ use of land. The public's perception outside Poland of these disputes has been guided by Jewish groups prioritising their claims above all others. There has been a failure to recognise how far Polish claims are rooted in other equally valid moral geographies, not least those shaped both by Polish Catholic and communist traditions.