Holocaust Education Online

by David M. Durant -- Library Journal, 12/1/2000

The World Wide Web offers an enormously powerful tool for helping to educate people about the Holocaust, as well as a wealth of information for students, educators, librarians, and researchers. It can also be used to misinform and mislead, but several sites listed below directly counteract the efforts of Holocaust deniers.

The three featured sites provide a good starting point, with wide-ranging information, while alternate sites focus on particular aspects of the Holocaust, such as the Nuremberg trials, audio/ video survivor testimony, and genocide in its broader manifestations.

Simon Wiesenthal Center: Multimedia Learning Center Online
http://motlc.wiesenthal.org/index.html
Date Visited: 11/5/00
Developer/Provider: Simon Wiesenthal Center
The Simon Wiesenthal Center's Multimedia Learning Center includes a comprehensive ready-reference source (at upper left), with brief entries for people, places, organizations, events, and concepts. Most of the text descriptions come directly from the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (Macmillan, 1990). Among the broad subject areas are The Jews, The Nazis, and World War II. Righteous Among the Nations offers entries on non-Jewish individuals who risked their lives to save Jews. Select People and then pick Germany for a profile of Oskar Schindler.

Virtual Exhibits contains three online exhibits from the Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. Dignity & Defiance offers a detailed look at the Warsaw Ghetto from 1939 to 1943. The other two exhibits cover Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat who saved the lives of some 6000 Jews, and a collection of pre-Holocaust images of Polish Jews.

In the Teacher's Resources section, The Courage To Remember presents nearly 200 annotated images from the period. Under Education there are links to a list of over 50 Holocaust bibliographies, including ones for children and for high school students. Also available are links to several articles and a Holocaust Timeline.

In the Library section, the online book Genocide: Critical Issues of the Holocaust offers educators and college students an excellent introductory overview of this subject. Frequently Asked Questions includes brief answers to 36 questions about the Holocaust and a web form for submitting questions. In Special Collections there are scanned reproductions of over 13,000 original documents and photographs, most in German or Hebrew.

The Bottom Line: This is a rich, authoritative site for users of all levels, grounded in the basic Encyclopedia of the Holocaust and drawing on the wealth of texts and images available from the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

U.S. Holocause Memorial Museum
http://www.ushmm.org
Date Visited: 11/4/00
Developer/Provider: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
The web site of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington offers online exhibitions, educational resources, and visitor information, but the most valuable starting point is the Library section. Somewhat obscured under the Research Help subsection is a useful Holocaust FAQ, several annotated bibliographies (e.g., Raoul Wallenberg), and an excellent annotated directory of sites.

Also in the Library, the Family History subsection offers advice and sources for tracing the genealogy of Holocaust victims and survivors. The Online Catalog allows users to find books and other items held by the museum library. Searchable by title, subject, author, or keyword, the catalog provides a convenient way to find Holocaust research materials.

The Education section features a good introduction to the Holocaust for students (A Learning Site), with text, images, and maps. Online Exhibitions include sophisticated text and image descriptions of Kristallnacht, the 1936 Berlin Olympics, and the history of the Kovno Ghetto. Collections and Archives features a searchable database of about 1500 digitized photographs. Holocaust-Era Assets offers documents and links, including information for survivors seeking reparations.

The Bottom Line: While somewhat sprawling, this site offers a good introduction to the Holocaust, bibliographic and web information for in-depth research, plus online exhibitions. Users engaged in genealogical or reparations research will find it especially valuable.

A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust
http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust
Date Visited: 11/6/00
Developer/Provider: Florida Center for Instructional Technology
Aimed at students and educators, this site offers documents, images, links, and audio/video files. Overall, it is extremely well constructed, with logical links and a good site map. Pop-up definitions appear at numerous points within the text.

Timeline offers a brief narrative account of the Holocaust with links to documents, photographs, and curriculum plans. The People section has information and resources on the Nazi leadership and movement (Perpetrators), world reaction (Bystanders), Jewish resistance (Resisters), and others. The Victims page provides information not only on Jews targeted by the Nazis but also on others such as Poles, Gypsies, and homosexuals.

In the Arts section, the Art subsection features descriptions and images of art from the Nazi camps, as well as Nazi art and art the Nazis labeled "degenerate." Especially noteworthy is the Teacher Resources section, which includes a thorough index, organized by type of resource. Books offers bibliographies for both teachers and students.

Under Articles, find citations and abstracts for journal articles on teaching the Holocaust, plus a variety of documents and audio/video files, along with a lengthy annotated list of other web sites.

The Bottom Line: While others have more historical text, this well-organized site is valuable for not only teachers and students but anyone new to the subject.

Alternate Sites
Yad Vashem
http://www.yadvashem.org.il
Yad Vashem is the official web site of Israel's Holocaust memorial. The About the Holocaust-Shoah section includes a chronology, an excellent FAQ, a lengthy bibliography, and over 200 documents from Germany, Poland, and the Soviet Union, translated into English. Under Collections and Resources, there are excerpts from the museum's photo archive. Righteous Among the Nations features a numerical breakdown by country of those recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Gentiles for having helped rescue Jews during the Holocaust.

Holocaust Denial: An Online Guide
http://www.adl.org/frames/front_holocaust_denial.html
Nizkor Project
http://www.nizkor.org
Holocaust Denial, an Anti-Defamation League web site, identifies the most prominent deniers and discusses their background, motivations, and tactics (which include use of the web), then offers rebuttals from professional historians. The Nizkor Project offers a more detailed look at the deniers, with point-by-point responses under the section Holocaust Research Guides. People offers information on a number of individuals involved in the Holocaust, or current controversies. Click on David Irving for a detailed section on the controversial historian and reputed Holocaust denier. The Nuremberg Trials section offers full-text access to many of the official transcripts. Under Organizations, select American, and then Skeptic Magazine to read several excellent articles refuting Holocaust denial. Special Features provides the complete transcripts of the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann. Shofar FTP Archives contains a massive directory of Usenet and mailing list messages. Not all documents on this site are presented with author credentials.

America and the Holocaust
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust 
The Einsatzgruppen
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/german/einsatzgruppen/esg
The Shtetl
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shtetl
Women and the Holocaust
http://www.interlog.com/~mighty
America and the Holocaust is the companion site for a PBS "American Experience" documentary on U.S. reaction to the Holocaust. The Film & More provides a complete program transcript, interviews, primary documents, and a bibliography. The site also includes maps, time lines, and descriptions of people and events. The Einsatzgruppen is an extensive site on the SS units responsible for murdering over one million Jews and others during the Nazi invasion of the USSR. The Shoah section features a broad collection of documents relating to these units. The Shtetl is the companion site to a PBS Frontline program on the horrific fate of Poland's large prewar Jewish community during the Holocaust. The Polish-Jewish Relations section offers articles and a time line. Women and the Holocaust, produced by a female survivor, offers firsthand accounts from Holocaust survivors as well as articles and essays from scholars.

Avalon Project: Nuremberg War Crimes Trials
http://www.yale.edu/ lawweb/avalon/imt/imt.htm
Holocaust and Genocide Studies
http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/holocaust.html
Web Genocide Documentation Centre http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/genocide.htm 
Sponsored by Yale Law School, the Avalon Project provides full-text access to numerous historical international treaties and legal documents. Its Nuremberg site offers the complete trial proceedings, as well as numerous supporting documents. Among the items available are copies of the infamous Wannsee Protocol and the Nazi report on the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto in April 1943. Holocaust and Genocide Studies, created by a professor at Webster University in St. Louis, includes a sizable list of web links on the Holocaust and other examples of genocide, such as Armenia, Cambodia, and the Balkans. The site includes a list of recommended readings. The Web Genocide Documentation Centre from the University of the West of England similarly contains many Internet links on genocide and mass killings. The Jewish Holocaust link includes official Nazi reports and communications. Click on Appropriation for documents and links on the Holocaust-era assets controversy.

Fortunoff Video Archive
http://www.library.yale.edu/testimonies
Voice Vision
http://holocaust.umd.umich.edu
The Fortunoff Video Archive at Yale University collects videotaped testimony from Holocaust survivors and witnesses. Its web site includes audio, video, and text excerpts from selected interviews, as well as general information about the collection. Voice Vision, an oral history project at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, offers clips of selected survivor interviews, with transcripts available in PDF.

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen
http://www.goldhagen.com
Norman Finkelstein
http://www.normanfinkelstein.com
Daniel Goldhagen's site features articles and other writings by the Harvard political scientist, written in response to criticism of his controversial 1996 book Hitler's Willing Executioners. Goldhagen criticizes NYU professor and controversial anti-Zionist Norman Finkelstein, whose own site includes sections on Goldhagen and on his own controversial new work The Holocaust Industry.