From Embodiment to Memory Practices: In-Person and On-Screen Talks with a Holocaust Survivors in German High School Classes

In 2018, the project “Learning with Digital Testimonies” was initiated at the University of Munich. Based on the testimony of a male Holocaust survivor from Lithunia, my team developed an interactive German-speaking version. Since the survivor has been quite popular in schools in the Munich area, our research team had the opportunity to accompany him to school classes in early 2020 in order to study high school students’ reactions. In 2021, we were able to investigate high school students’ experiences with the online version of his testimony during the Covid-19-pandemic. Because of the lockdown, the survivor could not continue his in-person talks. Instead, the accessible online version of his interactive biography served as a substitute for teaching the Holocaust in class. My observations of these two modes of conveying testimony gave us the opportunity to explore and compare students’ perceptions in depth. When my team and I accomponied the Holocaust survivor to school classes in 2020, we noticed a variety of bodily connections and reactions between the survivor and the high school students. In 2021, we were curious to see how the absence of the survivor’s body affected his testimony and the students’ relationship to him.

In this paper, I first introduce the survivor we observed and worked with. Second, I describe the theoretical frame of bodily presence on which the research is based. Then I present the results of our empirical study comparing high school students’ reactions to in-person and on-screen talks by the survivor. Finally, I discuss the findings in light of Holocaust education and memory studies to draw conclusions for integrating biographies in school classes after the era of the eyewitness.