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| You are here: 2000 / Workshops, Panels and Seminars / Panel 3: Holocaust Research - From the Archives to the Classroom / Presentation by Professor David Bankier | |||||||||
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Report from Panel 3 - on Holocaust Research - From the Archives to the Classroom Presentation by Professor Michael R. Marrus Presentation by Professor Ulrich Herbert Presentation by Professor David Bankier Presentation by Professor David Bankier Bankier, David Presentation by Professor David Bankier The past decade, commencing with the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellites, has given access to original historical sources on a scale not possible before the end of the 1980s. The areas of what was formerly know as the Soviet Bloc, by virtue of their primary involvement in the events of WW II, contain information which has been regularly used in the latest research and publications concerning the Holocaust. These latest findings have considerably expanded and altered prior historical perceptions on the course of events leading to the extermination of the Jews. A central question which has arisen in Holocaust Studies is the most effective manner of transmitting these new findings based on archival research to the community of teachers and their students. Teachers lack time to do their own investigations; they are not researchers, they are educators and rightly dependent on scholars to supply materials for pedagogic use. If teachers don't do research, students less so. A mechanism is needed to bring archival material into textbook outlets periodically so that there is a far greater rapport between new research and basic texts. The greatest obstacle has thus far been the natural unwillingness of textbook publishers to have short textbook shelf lives. Such obstacle, I can be readily overcome in the new age of computer. For example, formerly, legal publishers, which necessarily issued constant updates of new statutes and precedents, did so in the form of pamphlets to be read after and in conjunction with previously bound volumes. Now, computer research tools enable legal publishers to introduce instantly into the text of pre-existing "volumes" new material without incurring more cost than that of writers and editors, who are always available and willing to render their services for compensation. Analogously, the same methodology may be used such that, when important papers based on new archival materials are delivered at conferences, computer publishers of school texts will be able to have writers and editors introduce new material into the texts which are accessed by teachers and, at the direction of the teachers, by their students. Thus, textbook publishers which have until now been the main impediment to rapidly and routinely introducing new material into existing texts will be at the forefront of the dissemination of new findings, specifically because the textbook publishers will generate fees to themselves from electronic access. An alternative method may be to place on the internet collections of annotated documents such as those published by Yad Vashem in Hebrew, English and Spanish and to regularly update them. With available scanning technology, the technical end of the process is not difficult. As for copyright problems that may pose an impediment to the foregoing, it is probable that not-for-profit entities will donate their material, but that private concerns will not. It may be that charitable contributions may be used to pay the publishing houses for the use of their material. >> Back to top |
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Introduction Opening Session: Messages and speeches Plenary Sessions: Messages and speeches Workshops, Panels and Seminars
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