Dear Readers,
Welcome to the latest edition of the LaG magazine. This issue has been prepared in partnership with the Arolsen Archives - International Center on Nazi Persecution. As well as presenting their educational offerings, it also provides an overview of the historical development of this internationally oriented institution known as the International Tracing Service (ITS) up until May 2019. This magazine is an extended and revised version of a German language edition from June 2018.
At the heart of the Arolsen Archives lies the archive built up by the ITS. It contains over 30 million documents, the majority of which are digitally accessible in the Digital Archive. More than 14 million of these documents are also available online. The documents are concerned with people who were persecuted by the National Socialists, with the Holocaust, with forced labor and with Displaced Persons.
The archive was not accessible to the public until 2007. The decision to open up the documentary holdings to the public marked the beginning of a new phase in the work of the ITS, as it was then known. Since that time, a wide range of educational materials have been developed and this edition of the magazine will provide you with information on the latest offerings.
The International Tracing Service came into being in 1948. It was an institution in a constant state of flux. Isabel Panek and Henning Borggräfe give a historical account of its development and describe the tasks fulfilled by the Arolsen Archives today.
Tracing, i.e. the search for survivors of Nazi persecution and the provision of information to their relatives, still constitutes one of the core tasks of the Arolsen Archives today. The article authored by Anna Meier-Osiński gives an insight into this service.
In another article, Anna Meier-Osiński together with Kamila Kolakowski presents the #StolenMemory traveling exhibition, which focuses on personal effects and the life stories of their former owners. These personal effects are belongings which were taken away from prisoners in concentration camps.
Akim Jah and Elisabeth Schwabauer explore the question of „who are Displaced Persons?“ and consider what potential the stories of their lives after National Socialist persecution have for learning in schools and other contexts.
Ingolf Seidel discusses the fundamental opportunities and challenges encountered when working with the biographies of the victims of Nazi persecution in an educational context. He pays special attention to the use of biographical fragments such as those preserved in the Arolsen Archives.
Akim Jah highlights the importance of historical documents for learning about history. He uses the three stages of historical inquiry – comprehension, source criticism and source interpretation – to throw light on the use of sources in an educational context.
In another article, Akim Jah describes the archival education workshops offered by the Arolsen Archives, outlines the methods used, and the topics covered.
Christiane Weber presents the e-Guide, a tool which enables students in the class room or lecture hall to better understand the documents of the Arolsen Archives.
A new enterprise of the Arolsen Archives is the documentED project. Teachers and other educators can use the resources it offers to prepare and follow up a visit to a memorial site. Christian Höschler explains how this works in practice and what support the Arolsen Archives provide.
A pilot project for documentED was carried out in partnership with the Max Mannheimer Study Center in Dachau. Steffen Jost and Nina Ritz share their experiences and describe the added value provided by the project when preparing visits to memorial sites.
Marcus von der Straten focuses on working with the archival holdings of the Arolsen Archives in connection with research-based learning and describes his experiences as a teacher in the classroom.
Christa Kaletsch and Manuel Glittenberg describe the project titled “Zusammenleben neu gestalten” (“Redesigning the way we live together”) to show how sources from the Arolsen Archives can be used to focus attention on flight and migration in the context of education for democratic citizenship.
Lilian Black concentrates on the cooperation between the Arolsen Archives and the Holocaust Survivors’ Friendship Association in Great Britain. The author writes from the perspective of the daughter of a Holocaust survivor who has researched the history of her father’s persecution.
Another institution which uses the archival holdings kept in Bad Arolsen for its work is the Russian Research and Educational Center for Oral History of the Voronezh Institute of High Technologies. Olga Kulinchenko describes her impressions and experiences as a participant in the biennial joint Winter School held by the ITS / Arolsen Archives and the Nazi Forced Labor Documentation Center in Berlin-Schöneweide.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington is an important partner of the Arolsen Archives at the international level. Elizabeth Anthony shows how the institutions structure their cooperation and presents publications the USHMM has produced on the basis of documents from the Arolsen Archives.
Finally, Misko Stanisic presents a professional development project for librarians and archivists in Serbia, which the Arolsen Archives have supported by running workshops and giving lectures.
We would like to thank the staff of the Arolsen Archives as well as all the other authors who have contributed to this issue.
The next LaG magazine will be published on 26 February 2020 and will focus on comics and graphic novels.
Your LaG Editorial Team