January 2023 MBR The Holocaust Studies Shelf

The Holocaust Studies Shelf

Understanding and Teaching the Holocaust
Laura Hilton, editor
Avinoam Patt, editor
University of Wisconsin Press
728 State Street, Suite 443, Madison, WI 53706-1418
www.uwpress.wisc.edu
9780299328603, $34.95, PB, 336pp

https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Teaching-Holocaust-Goldberg-History/dp/0299328600

Synopsis: Few topics in modern history draw the attention that the Holocaust does. The Shoah has become synonymous with unspeakable atrocity and unbearable suffering. Yet it has also been used to teach tolerance, empathy, resistance, and hope.

Collaboratively compiled and co-edited by academicians Laura Hilton and Avinoam Patt, "Understanding and Teaching the Holocaust" provides a starting point for classroom teachers in many disciplines to illuminate this crucial event in world history for students. Using a vast array of source materials ranging from literature and film to survivor testimonies and interviews, the contributors to "Understanding and Teaching the Holocaust" effectively demonstrate how to guide students through these sensitive and painful subjects within their specific historical and social contexts.

Each individual chapter comprising "Understanding and Teaching the Holocaust" provides pedagogical case studies for teaching content such as antisemitism, resistance and rescue, and the postwar lives of displaced persons. Simply stated, "Understanding and Teaching the Holocaust" will transform how students learn about the Holocaust and the circumstances surrounding it.

Critique: A part of The Harvey Goldberg Series for Understanding and Teaching History from the University of Wisconsin Press, "Understanding and Teaching the Holocaust" features an informative Introduction (The Challenges and Necessity of Teaching the Holocaust in the Twenty-First Century), twenty erudite essays deftly organized into two major sections (Teaching Specific Content; Sources, Methods and Media for Teaching the Holocaust), a six page listing of the contributors and their credentials, and a twenty-five page Index. "Understanding and Teaching the Holocaust" is a timely and highly recommended contribution (given the current rise in Anti-Semitism at home and abroad) to personal, professional, college, and university library Holocaust Education collections.

Editorial Note #1: Laura Hilton (https://www.muskingum.edu/directory/hilton-laura) is a Professor of History at Muskingum University, where she has taught courses on the Holocaust for sixteen years.

Editorial Note #2: Avinoam Patt (https://languages.uconn.edu/person/avinoam-patt) is the Doris and Simon Konover Chair of Judaic Studies and Director of the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of Finding Home and Homeland: Jewish Youth and Zionism in the Aftermath of the Holocaust.

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