Hear Our Voices : Holocaust Survivors Share their Stories of Trauma and Hate

Abstract

Welcome to the Hear Our Voices: Survivors Share Stories of Trauma and Hate project. This bilingual online course places the voices of Holocaust survivors at the centre of learning about the Holocaust and Antisemitism. It includes new oral history interviews with survivors, members of the second generation, and families of righteous gentiles. This educational resource also presents curated oral histories from archives from across Canada and around the world. These span the long history of survivor testimony permitting an overarching view of a range of experiences and perspectives of survivors who were of varying ages during the war. Organized through the thematic question of each module, oral histories enrich our understanding of the complexity and variability of Holocaust experiences. Cumulatively, these oral histories invite us to reflect not only on the horror of the Holocaust, but also on the humanity of those who survived and perished.

Hear Our Voices is organized through five online modules to provides curated resources for learning about the Holocaust. It consists of the following modules: Oral History, Gender and Sexuality, Religion and Culture, Antisemitism and Racism, and Memory and the Holocaust. Each module is composed of short mini lectures by module Chairs, oral histories, and mini lectures by invited experts. Each places oral histories in context through mini-lectures and by bringing the oral histories into conversation with other oral histories, primary source archival sources such as documents, photographs, artefacts and historical film footage. Students will interact with the material through interactive content such as a timelines, maps, and “hot-spot” images that allow students to click through to learn more about an artefact or topic. Our hope is that students directly engage these oral histories in their historical and theoretical contexts.