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Carol Rittner and John K Roth, "This Time: Teaching the Holocaust Today" (iPub Cloud, 2026)
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John Roth
Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Marcy Maserato
Hello everyone and welcome to New Books Network. I am your host, Marcy Maserato, coming at you from the beautiful Jersey Shore. Welcome to with me today are Sister Carol Rittner and John Roth to discuss their latest book, this time Teaching the Holocaust Today. Thank you both so much for joining me.
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John Roth
Thank you for having us.
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Sister Carol Rittner
Thank you for having us.
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Marcy Maserato
Yeah, so I'm excited to have you both here. So this is an edited collection basically just off the press. And to start I would like to hear a little bit more and kind of introduce you to our listeners. So, John, we'll start with you. Tell us what inspired you to start Studying the Holocaust and teaching about it. What. What was that impetus?
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John Roth
I began studying the Holocaust more than 50 years ago, and there was a pretty specific moment that led to a turn in my personal and professional life that led me into Holocaust studies and research and writing and teaching about it. I was reading at the suggestion of a friend of mine in 1972, shortly after my second child had been born. I was reading Elie Wiesel's writings, and in particular, his famous memoir called Night But. But Other Things by Him Too. And as I got into that reading experience, I found my life changed. It changed because I was a young academic at the time. I focused my work on American themes and American thinkers, and my life was going great. It was a version of the American Dream, as I think of it. But what I was reading about in Elie Wiesel's authorship was the antithesis of all that. It was a series of narratives that were about the loss of family, of opportunities, of hopes and dreams. And it caused a collision in my. In my life. And one thing led to another. I decided I had to find out more about, you know, what had happened to Elie Wiesel and his family and to millions of other Jewish families like his. And I've been on that journey ever since. And fortunately, the journey has had a partner, and the partner has been Carol Rittner, very often.
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Marcy Maserato
Sister Carol.
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Sister Carol Rittner
Well, I also was impacted by a book. Like John, I've been involved in teaching, researching, writing about the Holocaust for nearly 50 years. And the book that really impacted me was Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning. I am a member of the Roman Catholic order of nuns known as the Religious Sisters of Mercy. And I was a very young nun. This would have been about 1970, 71, something like that. I was teaching in a high school. I was at the very beginning of my teaching career. I was teaching at a high school in Dunmore, Pennsylvania, which is a kind of suburb of Scranton, Pennsylvania. And part of our high school curriculum in English was to teach an excerpt of Anne Frank's book, the Diary of Anne Frank. Now, when I taught that book to juniors in high school, I think it was, I kind of taught it as a book of human triumph. I mean, you remember that sentence from Anne's book. Despite everything, I still believe that human beings are good at heart. So I saw this as very hopeful kind of book. And then maybe about a year or two into my teaching, as I say it was about 1971 or so, I read Viktor Frankl's book Man's Search for Meaning. And what I missed in Anne Frank's book struck me when I read Viktor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning. And what was it that struck me? That Frankl, as you may know, was a Viennese psychiatrist. He went through Auschwitz. He lost his most of his family, his wife, I think a child if I remember correctly. In any event, when I read this book about Viktor Frankl, I began thinking to myself, well, where were the Christians? Why didn't Christians help this Jewish man in his time of need? And that question, where were the Christians and why didn't they help? Is the question that has really plagued me, pursued me, compelled me to research and teach and write about the Holocaust. Because what I discovered as I began reading more and exploring more was the Christians were there. They were in Vienna, they were in occupied Europe, but so many of them ignored or were indifferent to what was happening to the Jews. And I discovered that there was what one might call an underside to Christian theology. And by an underside, I mean a long terrible history of preaching and teaching about Jews and Judaism in Christian theology that, yes, I'll say, denigrated the Jews and in effect inoculated the Christians in a very negative way. Many Christians from helping Jews during the Holocaust. So it's Viktor Frankl. It's the question where were the Christians during the Holocaust? That really impacted me and I can say changed my life. I should also say I was reading Frankl. And then of course I read Elie Wiesel and other Charlotte Delbeau and many other authors and their memoirs or reflections on the Holocaust in a post Vatican II church, which from Vatican II came the document Nostra Aetate and the important paragraph four. And that paragraph four, which some people say exonerated or cleared the Jews from crucifying Jesus, also had a great impact on me. So all of this was like sort of coming together for me as I was just beginning graduate study at the University of Maryland.
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Marcy Maserato
Now you're one of the first, if not the first scholarly voice to discuss rescuers of the Holocaust. And you have this wonderful film, the Courage to Care, which if our listeners have not seen, you should definitely check it out. It's really powerful and discusses a lot of these things that are very near and dear to your heart and. And rescuers are discussed a little bit in, in this book. So just as a kind of, as a quick aside, do you think that discussing rescuers in Holocaust studies is still important today?
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Sister Carol Rittner
Oh, absolutely. I think it's vitally important that we look at the topic, the issue, the subject of rescuers. But rescuers don't sort of clear us of our, if I could say, collaboration with antisemites, with the Nazis, against Jews. But it is important that. To teach about rescuers. But it has to be balanced. You can't say, see, we weren't so bad because there were these rescuers. I was just on a. I've moderated, actually a zoom seminar on Dutch women during the Holocaust. Now, it was an hour and 15 minute seminar with. There were four speakers, each of whom made comments, and about 15 minutes. And someone sent me an email and said, did you mention Corrie Ten Boom? Corrie Ten Boom was an evangelical Christian and she and her family hid and helped Jews during the Holocaust. And then I said, well, no, we didn't. And I got another essay. Well, she saved 800 Jews. And I'm like, I can't get into this discussion because I felt like I'd have to start defending or asking, where's the evidence? I mean, she has been honored by Yad Vashem, but I think it's an inflated number to say 800 Jews. But to answer your question, yes, I think it's extremely important to teach about rescuers. But in context, let me add a
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John Roth
little bit to what Carol has just said. I agree about the importance of teaching about rescuers, but for me, there are two questions that come up in relation to that. One has to do in preparing to teach a course on the Holocaust. There was for me always the question of when in the course do I talk about rescuers? And it tended to be at the end, toward the end, for one reason that Carol underscored, which was the rescuers are in a way a minority, a very small minority of the people who are in the cast of characters surrounding what we call the Holocaust. So you can't overestimate what they did. Therefore, you know, you don't foreground them. You put them in a context where eventually you get to them. And it's important to say that they were present and they did tremendous things and good. Now, why is it important in teaching the Holocaust today, which is the topic of our book, why would it be important to teach about rescuers? And my answer would be, because rescuers were resistors. They refused to bow the knee to tyranny. They refused to bow the knee to corruption, to dictatorship, to all sorts of corrupt practices that demeaned and distorted and destroyed human lives. So they are the resisters. Now, there were military resisters, of course, but these are civilian people who Decided that we will not stand for the killing, the destruction, the persecution, the racism, the prejudice that was being unleashed against the European Jews under Hitler. That's, in my view, why it would be important to teach about rescuers today. Because they are the people who represent and embody resistance and refusal and protest, and they risk their lives to do it. And they showed. This is very important. I think they showed that it is not inevitable, it is not determined that nothing can be done about the dire straits that people are in. You can take an action, you can make a choice. Yes, it may be risky, it may be dangerous, but you can still do it. And you can save lives. And maybe in the process of saving lives, you also save in some ways the reputation of a people, a country, a church. Not in a way that redeems it and excuses it, but in a way that at least says, we can be different, we can be better. So, yes, it's important to teach about the rescuers, but not just as part of the history, but as examples that have to do with answering the question, why do we teach about the Holocaust now, today, in our times and places?
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Marcy Maserato
You get a lot of great praise for the book because the book really is great. And I want to read a couple different pieces from the praise that you have in the first couple pages of the book, which go along to the point that you're both making. Teaching the Holocaust today means confronting distance, distortion, and denial. As survivors disappear and misinformation spreads, educators face new challenges in making the history meaningful without losing its moral and historical weight. Rittner and Roth's searing analysis of the current political situation in the United States sets the context of. For a spectrum of perspectives on the challenges of Holocaust education today. Taken as a whole, the collection zeros in on topics many simply have not had the fortitude to address and the contributions. You know, overall, it's a. It's a pretty small book, but it's really powerful, and there's a lot of stuff here. Can you talk a little bit about what was the moment or what was, you know, certainly there? This is a very timely book. But what was the moment that you're like, we need to really ask, like, how do we teach it now and what do we teach it for?
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John Roth
Well, what if I start on this and then Carol can add to it? I was looking back in the opening pages of the book, and there's a place where it says that on March 17, 2025, Carol and I sent letters of invitation to Holocaust scholars, teachers, friends of ours, to invite them to participate in a book project that was going to be called, this Time Teaching the Holocaust Today. And the invitation included questions we hoped they would address. But the focus of it was to get people to reflect, if they would, on why it's important in 2025, 2026 in the United States. And that's important because we invited American Holocaust scholars and educators to participate in this project. We didn't circle the globe and invite people from all over the world. Our focus was on our country, on the United States, and why it would be important now in. In our country, in our time, to teach about the Holocaust. So we invited people just a little over a year ago to do this. And Carol and I were committed, and we told the people we invited that we had this commitment. We wanted a book that could be out in pretty much breakneck speed. We weren't going to go through a university press process where it might take three or four years for everything to be wrapped up before the book appeared. So we worked with a publisher who could get the book out, and we got the essays in. And just about less than a year, I think, Carol, after we invited people, the book existed and it had this timeliness. Now, I'll mention just one other date, which is important for the book, and then Carol can chime in with where she would like to go on this. I would say the other anchoring date, in a way, for the book is late April of 1993, which was the time when the United States Holocaust Memorial museum in Washington, D.C. opened its doors. It was dedicated, and then its doors opened to the public for the first time in 1993, just about this time in the spring. And Carol and I thought, well, this kind of anchors the thing for our American Holocaust scholar friends because of two things. One was the world and our country were utterly different in 1993 than they are in 2026. Just, for example, most Americans did not know the name Donald Trump in 1993. Today, we all know it. And the second thing was that the Holocaust Museum opened its doors at a hopeful time. It was hoped that the presence of a Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C. right near the Capitol and the White House, would be emblematic of the posture of the United States as a bulwark against everything that Nazi Germany and the Holocaust embodied. And again, now, today, the world is very different. The hopes that were baked into the opening of the Holocaust Museum, namely that this would really help to, you know, stem the tide of antisemitism, that it would lead Americans to be more dedicated to democracy and more dedicated to truth telling and more dedicated to defending human rights. All of that seems kind of like a pipe dream in some ways, 30 some years later. So the book is anchored in current events that led us to think we need to ask what does it mean? And what is involved in teaching about the Holocaust this time today in 25:26? And how is that comparing and contrasting with the hopes and the world that existed in 1993 when the Holocaust Museum opened its doors in Washington, D.C. it's
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Sister Carol Rittner
I want to draw attention to another date that struck me and That's June of 2015, when Donald Trump and his third wife Melania came down the golden elevator and Donald Trump announced his candidacy to be President of the United States. And Steve Bannon, who is often described as a right wing provocateur who does many podcasts and broadcasts after he listened to Donald Trump. And I think it was at the June 2015 date when Trump announced his candidacy. When Steve Bannon listened to Donald Trump, he said that's Hitler. And he didn't mean that as an insult, he meant it as a compliment. And that struck me also as like, wow. As a person who spent like 40 years teaching about the Holocaust, I had never ever asked my students to consider, particularly after Trump was elected. I had never asked my students to examine an American president for the kind of policies and statements that he was making about individuals and groups and countries. But when Trump, during his campaign and during his first presidency, it was like, do I hear historical echoes here of the past? Is Steve Bannon right? Is Trump a kind of Hitler now? Trump is not Hitler. Trump is Donald Trump. But as Timothy Snyder says, history does not repeat, but we can learn from history. And so I think that one of the reasons that we teach about the Holocaust is to see what we can learn from history. And unfortunately, now I have to admit, I'm emeritus, so I'm not teaching. I haven't taught a class either online or in person about the Holocaust in several years. I do do some lecturing about the Holocaust, but I don't see how anyone can teach about the Holocaust today and avoid hearing historical echoes from the late 20s, 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. I mean, everything from the speeches that Donald Trump gives about individuals and groups to the kind of policies about rounding up people, immigrants, documented and undocumented immigrants, putting them into camps. Some call them concentration camps. In fact, the governor of Florida calls a place that he established in Florida for documented and undocumented immigrants, Alligator Alcatraz, the deporting of immigrants, documented and undocumented immigrants to other countries. There are so many echoes from the past that I hear and what's happening today that I cannot see how anyone can teach about the Holocaust simply as a discrete historical event without making connections or at least raising questions about what's happening today.
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Marcy Maserato
Now, in your, in your epilogue, you are very specific where you say, don't confuse, let alone equate the present with the past. Remember that the United States today is not the Germany of the 1930s and 40s, but also. John, in the very first chapter in Complex Fate, you particularly discuss teaching about the Holocaust now requires me to draw uncomfortable comparisons between Hitler's Germany in the 1930s and my United States in the 2000s. Dive in a little bit further about so that people can get a clear understanding where you're saying, we're not equating, we're not confusing, but we must discuss the thread, the comparisons. We must compare as part of that integral component to how we discuss the Holocaust Now.
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John Roth
Teaching about the Holocaust has been going on for a long time. There are reasons to say that teaching about it was taking place while it was happening. There were people recording, writing in diaries. They were sharing what they knew with one another. So the teaching has A long, long history. As it developed, let's say, post 1993, when the Holocaust Museum opened in Washington D.C. there was a kind of presumption that the Holocaust was a very, very special event. There was even a time in Holocaust studies when there was a whole cottage industry. Books were published, essays were written on the uniqueness of the Holocaust. And the argument that the Holocaust was unique led to a kind of set of taboos, and the taboos included. Don't compare anything with the Holocaust. Don't take the risk of running analyses and writings in a way that might say, well, there's something going on now that echoes or is eerily reminiscent of things that happened that at least led to the Holocaust. And certainly don't go to the extreme of suggesting that any American leader might be reflecting tendencies and qualities that have anything to do with what Hitler did in Germany in the 1930s and the 1940s. Now, I think the way the world has changed and unfolded, those taboos are being broken out of necessity because the evidence suggests, as Carol pointed out, that there are similarities, there are echoes, there are worries, there are warnings that are lurking in the history of the Holocaust. For us, the notion earlier was that, well, nothing like this could possibly happen here. The purpose of having the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C. is to reaffirm that, to reaffirm the very ideals of American life. Its adherence to the rule of law, its concern about justice, its concern about human rights. It was to reinforce that view that Americans are not like that. And lo and behold, that turns out to have been immensely overly optimistic. It won't bear scrutiny if we look at it closely. Americans are all too much ready to look the other way, be indifferent to corruption and evil, blink their eyes when people are rounded up and deported without due process of law. So teaching about the Holocaust today in my mind is all about warnings for us now. Which is not to say that I think that the United States is on a trajectory that is going to lead to our creating places like Treblinka and Auschwitz and, you know, committing genocide against people. But I think the Holocaust came about in a context, a political context, a historical context, which was immensely anti democratic and opposed to the rule of law. And this is the warning for us that when democracy and the values that we hold dear as Americans, when we are at our best, when those are compromised, this is the way I like to put it. It isn't that genocide happens, but that bad things happen. And those bad things are upon us. We are witnessing them every day, particularly right now, as we watch Gas prices soar and Donald Trump is in the midst of his war of choice with Iran.
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Sister Carol Rittner
Could I just raise a question, an issue which of course is raised in our book this Time Teaching the Holocaust Today. And for me, this is a very difficult issue to raise because I have been a supporter of the state of Israel believing that the Jews have a right to a state, also believing that Palestinians have a right to a state. I would be for a two state solution to the very complex situation in the Middle east at the present time. But the issue I want to just raise is the accusation against Israel of genocide. Again, one of the issues that's discussed in the book this Time, Teaching the Holocaust Today, is what happened in Israel on October 7, 2023, when Israel was attacked from Gaza by Hamas. And I think it's 1200 Jews, both Israeli and visiting farm workers and others were murdered by hamas. And about 250 people were taken prisoner into Gaza. And Israel retaliated against Gaza, against Hamas. But the retaliation was so severe and as scholars and other commentators have commented, and I would tend to agree with this, it seemed like it was a retaliation that was out of proportion. And I think the figure of people killed in Gaza By Israel, the IDF, is about 58,000 people were killed and 170,000, I believe the number is, were injured. In any event, South Africa took out a charge of genocide against Israel with
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Marcy Maserato
the,
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Sister Carol Rittner
was it the International Court? I forget which court. It was at the Hague. Here's my point. I think that today in teaching about the Holocaust, we can't avoid the question. I mean, students will ask, well, wait a minute. These Jews who were victims during the Holocaust, now they have a state of their own. The Jews have not. They have a state of their own. They've retaliated against. Now they're genocidists, genocidal perpetrators. Now, how do you deal with that? I mean, there are so many complex questions that intrude on our teaching about the Holocaust that we have to deal with. And I don't know, John, maybe you can say a little bit more about that, but it's one of the questions I think we can't avoid today when we're teaching about the Holocaust. Another issue that, and we have at least two essays in the book that give attention to this is the Military and Legitimate Orders, Professor Westerman, and I forget who, I'm blanking on his name, the other scholar who wrote about being members of the Military and Legitimate Orders. I mean, when you talk about the German army during World War II and the Holocaust Students will inevitably ask about what they're reading in the newspapers about our army. I mean, even as John said, we have a war of choice. And the US Military is using rockets and missiles to destroy boats in the Caribbean that they say are carrying narcotics. Are these legitimate orders? There's been no due process to really see if these boats are narco terrorist carrying narco terrorists and narcotics to the U.S. i mean, there are so many complex issues and questions today that we cannot avoid touching on that affect the United States in a way that in 1993 we probably wouldn't even thought about teaching about when we were teaching about the Holocaust.
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John Roth
Teaching about the Holocaust has always been hard, emotionally draining, and just difficult. Conceptually. It's always been that way. And students who study it under the guidance of skilled teachers feel that too. But I would say that it's never been more fraught than it is in 2026, for reasons that we've been detailing, and that Carol has complicated even more by bringing up the politics of the Middle east in the aftermath of October 7, 2023. So one of the things that has happened is that there are fractures, I would say disagreements, certainly sometimes fractures in the community of Holocaust scholars and Holocaust educators about what the right approaches are and what the right questions are, and lots of difficulties, as Carol has pointed out, about how to address them. But it's because the challenge is how to teach about the Holocaust in the world that is ours today, which for American Holocaust educators, Jews, non Jews among them, includes our own political situation, plus the fact of our engagement in the Middle East. American support for Israel has a long history and is understandable for various reasons. But it's also become immensely complicated and difficult. And one of the things that anyone who's teaching about the Holocaust today in the United States has to have on their mind, I think, because it's unavoidable, is what does this teaching say, if anything, about. About the relationship between Holocaust education and current politics in the Middle East. My view personally would be that I could no longer teach about the Holocaust as I once did, where I didn't pay much attention to what Palestinians call the Nakba, their version of the catastrophe that that involved displacement when the state of Israel came into existence, and now the immense, at the very least, humanitarian, crisis that Palestinians face in the aftermath of what we sometimes are now calling the Israel Hamas War of 2023. 24.
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Sister Carol Rittner
You know, another issue, this is not about the Middle east issues, but
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Marcy Maserato
we've
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Sister Carol Rittner
seen in our time, in the last, particularly since October 7, 2020, 3, and the retaliation of the state of Israel against Hamas, now in southern Lebanon against Hezbollah. There's been a surge in the rise of antisemitism. And how do we deal with that? I mean, of course, I've always, whenever I've taught about the Holocaust, I've tried to teach about what antisemitism is and if I could say, the evils of antisemitism. But we can't. I mean, we have to talk about antisemitism today. Christian nationalism, white Christian nationalism. And of course you will, I would assume. Now, this is an assumption I'm making, but I think we not only have to somehow try to deal with the antisemitism, the surge in antisemitism, but, but I think some students will raise the issue about, hey, you know, I saw online or I saw in the New York Times, or I saw on the front page or inside my local newspaper the picture of that Israeli soldier destroying the statue of Jesus. How can you talk about antisemitism without talking about anti Christianism among Jews? I mean, there are so many complicated issues that we have to deal with, and I assume that some teachers are trying to deal with it. On the other hand, one of the things I wonder is, are teachers just saying, listen, it is so complicated to talk about the national and the geopolitical issues surrounding Israel, American politics, I'm sticking to, hey, here's who Adolf Hitler is. Here's when the Nazis began, this is what they did. Amen. I'm not getting into those other issues.
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Marcy Maserato
There certainly is a need for discussion and for discourse and conversation. Not obviously academically, but, but just with people. And we, we, we certainly live in a extremely polarized world. Social media has not helped those spaces. Now, one of the questions that I think a lot of your contributors that you're attempting to answer, which you touched upon a little bit, is, is Holocaust studies, is it meant to fight to combat antisemitism? Is that a goal? Was that a goal? Does that remain a goal? And how has that goal been?
- [45:17]
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John Roth
I'll start. Carol Kanad. I would say absolutely. I don't think you can teach the Holocaust responsibly without foregrounding the dangers, the evil of Antisemitism and antisemitism must always be contested. And we know enough now to be disabused of the optimistic assumption that the teaching about the Holocaust could rid us of antisemitism. That was kind of a hope early on and even of the Holocaust Museum in D.C. that America, too has had its history of antisemitism. And the thought was, well, Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C. will educate the millions of Americans who will go through it, and we won't have to deal with antisemitism in our country as much as we once did. That proved to be untrue as an assumption. But you can't teach the Holocaust responsibly without exposing and resisting and calling out how wrong antisemitism is. And there are two reasons for doing that. One is that, of course, antisemitism is immensely harmful to Jews, but historically speaking, antisemitism is very harmful to the regimes that perpetrate it. You know, Nazi Germany ended up in ruins, and one of the reasons why was because it was anti Semitic and racist. So if Timothy Snyder is right to say history doesn't repeat, but it does instruct, it sort of is suggesting, you know, antisemitism is not a great idea to have in the foreground. If your goal is, you know, national success, it just doesn't play out that way. So you can't teach the Holocaust without foregrounding, attacking, undermining any credibility of antisemitism. The complication that enters in today is what counts as antisemitism. What is it? What are its boundaries? Does it preclude, or put it this way, what does it preclude with regard to criticism of the current political structure and policies of the State of Israel? Can one be opposed to antisemitism and still be a vigorous critic of Benjamin Netanyahu and his leadership and his goals and aspirations? I think the answer is, yes, you can be both, but people will disagree about this. Now, just one other point. Earlier on, it would have been thought that perhaps the major reason to teach about the Holocaust was to use Holocaust education as a foil against antisemitism. This was big in terms of the philosophy behind Holocaust education. It can be the antidote to antisemitism. Well, as I've suggested earlier, that's a false assumption, but it puts in perspective here and in context. What else does teaching about the Holocaust have to focus on if teaching it as a foil against antisemitism is either inadequate or not? The only thing that needs to be focused on and attended to, I think
- [49:46]
Sister Carol Rittner
one of the things that teaching about the Holocaust that we should include in our teaching about the Holocaust is the importance of words and how important what we say, the words we use are. Elie Wiesel, of course, spoke about that. He would say, be careful with words. Words can kill. I think was Abraham Joshua Heschel, who said, the Holocaust did not begin with guns and gas chambers. It began with words, with hateful words. So trying to. I'm not saying that teaching about the Holocaust will necessarily prevent our students or whoever, adult audiences that may be listening to us when we lecture, prevent them from using words that denigrate others. But maybe our teaching can help our students to think before they use words in a demeaning way, that words have consequences. Yeah, I think that's one of the things I think we have to teach about. The other thing I think we have to teach about and raise in our teaching about the Holocaust is how the teaching and preaching of the Christian churches, the Roman Catholic Church, but also the mainstream Protestant churches and some of the evangelical traditions as well, how their teaching about Jews and Judaism has evolved and changed in a positive way. I mean, there's so much, you know, as I think, about teaching about the Holocaust today, undergraduates or graduates. I mean, there is so much that one has to teach and so many nuances to what we teach, and that we have to be prepared for the question that students will raise that perhaps we've not really thought about in the past. I remember this was an undergraduate class. There were two students who were. I think they were Vietnamese. They may have been Buddhist by tradition. But I was giving some lecture about Jews and Judaism, a kind of background context to what I was going to say in the course on the Holocaust. And I said, jesus was a Jew. And I whacked eloquently on how Jesus was a Jew in Judaism. And so a young man, I remember, he raised his hand and he said, how do you know that Jesus was a Jew? And I said, well, it's in the Christian scriptures. Well, this kid had no clue. I mean, one of the things is, we cannot assume that the only students that we teach are Christians and Jews. You know, we teach now. I mean, students with various religious backgrounds or no background at all, with no knowledge about some of this. So I think it's become more difficult to teach about the Holocaust at any time, but certainly today than it has been in the past.
- [53:53]
Marcy Maserato
And I think, again, language certainly does matter, as does context, right? I mean, when I was. I'm the daughter of Italian Brazilian immigrants, I spent My first, you know, six. Six years of school in Southern Brazil. And so our education in terms of history was obviously very different than it was here. But I remember when I came back, people had, you know, kids had the saying, sticks and stones maybe may break my bones and words will never hurt me. And I just remember even as a child, I had a visceral, like, hatred for that saying. Because I'm like, are you kidding me? Words are incredibly powerful. That's like. And so. And I think that's so important in everything that we do and certainly in Holocaust studies. As someone who teaches communication and media and looks at how the Nazi regime used the media to manipulate people. And it's all through words, right? And that's the slow burn of the end of democracy and the collapse of democracy, which is another kind of running theme that is in the book of looking at, again, those comparisons and those parallels of, well, when you start destroying the democracy, we're all in trouble. Right?
- [55:10]
John Roth
I think one of the things that's important for anyone who teaches about the Holocaust to think about is this was a massive event. It was not the only event that was utterly destructive. Worse things may happen in human history in the future than the Holocaust. But this is a moment that deserves recognition and that has a lot to teach if we let it into our experience. So on the one hand, we have to be a little bit modest. As Holocaust teachers and educators, we're not teaching the only event that can have moral impact and worldwide significance. But we do concentrate on a time and a place in human history that we ignore at our peril and that we fail to focus on. If we're. Well, we're not being honest. If we don't give it attention. Now, for me, the key lesson, I think, as I reflect on this, that I would want my students to take away. And I come at this as a philosopher. I'm a Christian like Carol, but I'm a philosopher, and I'm very interested in ethics, the difference between right and wrong, the choices that people can make and things of that kind of. And I think what I would want to emphasize about the Holocaust in my teaching is that this event did not have to happen. It happened because people and governments and institutions made choices. And the choices were not fated. They were not determined. They were not inevitable. They could have been different. And because of that, we know that whatever situation we're in, it isn't completely ordained how it will turn out. Now, I know that the doors do close and that situations reach a point where there is no return from them. But when we're talking about large scale kinds of political circumstances and consequences that are at play and policies that are being implemented and things of that kind, there is a way in which it isn't inevitable, it isn't determined in advance. It depends always on the choices and decisions that people make. This goes back to why it's important to teach about the rescuers. So that's what I would want my students to take away. Yeah, there were horrible things that happened. The doors did close. You couldn't escape from the gas chamber at certain points. But how all those closed doors came into existence depended on choices that people made beforehand. And it's at that point that the teaching about the Holocaust can help to alert and warn and move people to be aware of their own responsibilities, their own options, their freedom to make decisions that don't have to necessarily go in a negative way.
- [58:51]
Sister Carol Rittner
I suppose that as I think about how would I teach the Holocaust this time? If someone asked me to teach a course, an undergraduate or a graduate course about the Holocaust, how would I do it? I would try to do it by holding the past and the present in dialogue, by asking hard questions without flinching, and by refusing to separate memory from responsibility. It's not a enough to just remember the past, but there is a responsibility comes along with that. The point of Holocaust study, it seems to me, is not only to understand what happened then, meaning what, 70, 80, soon, 90 years ago, but to equip ourselves and our students to recognize and resist the dangers that we face now. That's what I would want to do if I were to teach a course about the Holocaust today.
- [60:05]
Marcy Maserato
One of the other threads that I picked up on in reading this book, and it relates to Darrell Horn's book on People Love Dead Jews, which I do think is a really powerful book that folks, if they're not familiar with it, should definitely Reid is. And Michael Barenbaum also talks about, makes this point in his article in his. In terms of how he kind of lists bullet points of different things that he would do if he was teaching it in this place and time is to depict how Jews lived and to depict, you know, and he talks specifically about before the Holocaust. I would add after the Holocaust. How important do you think it is to talk about the culture just of living Jews in terms of the context of Holocaust studies?
- [60:56]
Sister Carol Rittner
Well, you can't teach everything. And while I think it's important, I mean, I'm not quite sure how I would incorporate that in a 15 week undergraduate or graduate course. John, maybe you can?
- [61:16]
John Roth
Yeah. I think it gets incorporated in nearly every instance of responsible teaching. Because one of the things that a good teacher has to address is, well, in the Holocaust, Jewish people, the European Jews were targeted for annihilation. So who are these people, and why were they targeted by the Nazis? And to answer that question requires you to share as best one can. I mean, it's easier for a person who's grown up in the Jewish tradition to do this than for someone like me who knows about the Jewish tradition, but through the lens of Christianity, in a good way, I hope. But you explain who these people are. Well, what would you want to say? They are in some way the people of the Book, as we say. These are people who trace their heritage back to Moses, to the Ten Commandments, to the prophets like Amos and Micah, who talk a lot about justice and respecting the stranger and things of that kind. And then you talk where you can about, well, what kind of a home. If you're reading Elie Wiesel, you know, he talks about this in Night a little bit. What was his home like? And the question that arises pretty quickly is, well, were these people threats? Were these people dangers to the social order? And it becomes pretty clear, without teasing it too much, that the answer to that is no. Unless one is bringing a whole lot of baggage into the picture, which the term antisemitism is the word that captures it. A long history of believing and thinking and accusing and perpetrating the idea that, oh, yes, these people are threats. Why are they threats? Well, they practice a different religion, they have different holidays, they eat different foods. They aren't like us. They are other. And because they're that way, they threaten the purity and the homogeneity of my nation or my way of life. And we have to. If you just turn the screws a bit on this, throw in racism into the mix, and pretty soon you're dealing with a toxic brew of discrimination, persecution. And then if you're in a Nazi state that really takes seriously that no matter how cunning it is to say it, these people give the appearance that they're not a threat. But they are. They really are a threat. And they're more threatening because they don't seem to be a threat.
- [64:41]
Sister Carol Rittner
But, John, isn't that.
- [64:42]
John Roth
And then you're on the way to genocide because you have to get rid of them.
- [64:49]
Sister Carol Rittner
You're talking. I suppose what I was kind of referring to when I said you can't teach everything. I mean, I agree with what you're saying about teaching about the people that the Nazis tried to destroy. But post Holocaust Jewish life, I mean, it could be a whole course just on pre and post Holocaust Jewish life. And I think that even from what you've just said, I mean, earlier on I made a comment about white Christian nationalism. I mean, when you're talking about the people who think the Jews are destroying the purity of my race, my country, I mean, there is so much. There is so much to teach. I mean, all of these issues that we've talked about this afternoon and the questions that you asked Marcy, they're all touched on in this book. This Time Teaching the Holocaust Today. Maybe they're not totally and completely discussed, but they're all touched on. There are future, there are references in our bibliography for further reading on some of these issues. And that's why I think this Time Teaching the Holocaust Today is such an interesting and impactful book for any interested reader, for any student of the Holocaust, for any teacher of the Holocaust. Because there is so much in every essay in the book, let me add
- [66:46]
John Roth
just a bit to what Carol's saying. Now, the first thing I would say is no two courses on the Holocaust are going to be exactly the same. They're going to reflect the training, the dispositions, the questions that each teacher brings to the classroom, and they will also reflect the students who are taking the class. And I think this comes out in the book as well, because the teachers who wrote essays for this time have spent their lives and careers in very different places in different contexts. And the students who come into their classes are very different, and they bring different questions. So there's going to be a variety and difference of emphasis and focus depending on who the teacher is and who the students are. Now, the second thing I want to say is that just today, Carol and I are working to find ways to expand the influence of this book and the work that it does. And, Marcy, I included you in the mailing that went out because you're part of the team here in a way now. So Carol and I are working with a publisher who is eager, I would say, to make this book widely available and is doing so by effectively making the digital version of it, the digital edition of it, available to teachers and students without any charge. It's available. It will be, you know, it's available probably today for any teacher and for any students who are working with a teacher to have it for free, to look and see what contains and what it may involve teaching. And the second step, in the memo that went out this morning to you and to Our contributors is to announce a video interview series with Holocaust teachers in a compact way to get them to talk and share their responses to questions such as what does it mean to be a Holocaust teacher today? How do you teach the Holocaust? Why do you think it's particularly important to teach it today in your context, in your situation? And these are open ended and we're going to try to generate a series of short video interviews that will be again available to anyone who wants to use them. Just because our publisher and Carol and I certainly think this book merits that kind of open access.
- [69:45]
Marcy Maserato
That's wonderful. That's really great news that you can share this book far and wide. As I do agree, I think it should, should be shared. You know, context. I, I stress that so much in my classes as well, because it's not only just the context of how it's been taught, how it is being taught now. And as you, you both have mentioned, of who's teaching and, and how it's being taught and who it's being taught too. And so there's, there's so much there right? And, and there's so much reading and, and, and I think the conversation part of it is really important, which was why I'm so grateful to, to chat a little bit with you both today. Now, as we wrap up, you made a very specific decision to dedicate the book to Charlotte Delbo, who spent time in Auschwitz as a prisoner because of her activities and the French Resistance. Why? Why did you dedicate the book to her?
- [70:38]
John Roth
Carol, you want to start?
- [70:40]
Sister Carol Rittner
Well, I actually think, John, it would be good if you commented because
- [70:48]
John Roth
it
- [70:48]
Sister Carol Rittner
was your suggestion that we dedicate the book to Charlotte Delbo, who was a non Jewish victim of the Nazis. And you know, I would say, you know, non Jewish victims of the Nazis should not be forgotten when we're teaching about the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel always said not all victims of the Nazis were Jews, but all Jews were victims. So with that comment, John, I let you comment.
- [71:27]
John Roth
Charlotte Delbo is one of the greatest writers to emerge out of the Holocaust history. She wrote a brilliant trilogy that is called Auschwitz and After. And it's unparalleled in the testimony and reflective literature that comes out of that genocide that was a reason enough to dedicate the book to her. I think her writings are widely taught in Holocaust courses. And my experience as a teacher in the field of Holocaust education was that for my students at least no writing left a deeper imprint on them than Charlotte Delbo's writing. So she also has a way with words going back to what Carol was saying about the emphasis on words. That is amazingly powerful because of the utter simplicity of the language. But when it's put into the context, the simplicity is what gives it huge power. So the epigraph that accompanies the dedication, I think I'm remembering this right. Is a simple phrase from Charlotte Delbo that says, forgetting is out of the question. What a simple statement. It comes from a place in Charlotte Delbo's writings where one of the voices in the writing says, this forgetting is out of the question. And the context for it is to say that anybody who survived cannot forget. Forgetting is out of the question. You aren't emerging from these places of death and destruction in a way that gives you the luxury of forgetting. But at the same time, what Delbo says about her own experience and that of especially the other women she knew who went. Went through it with her, forgetting is out of the question is a pivotal point for anyone who teaches about the Holocaust or who wants to engage students with that history and its reverberations. We can't forget. Forgetting is out of the question. And we can't forget about what happened, but we can't forget about what is happening now as well. So Charlotte Delbo, her presence is kind of a thread that runs through the whole book. In the little connecting essays that link the different parts of the book, they often contain an allusion or a reference or a statement from Charlotte Delbo that I think works really well to help us to see why it's important to teach about the Holocaust this time.
- [75:04]
Marcy Maserato
Yeah, I certainly appreciated that you dedicated to her, included her, because she's a symbol of resistance in the most powerful and beautiful way. And I think we need to. In teaching. Just in teaching today, period, in any topic, is really instilling within our students that indifference is not an option. And neither is forgetting of the past. Right. And being able to learn from it and ensure that it doesn't happen again. So, Sister Carol John, thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciated chatting with you today.
- [75:38]
Sister Carol Rittner
Thank you.
- [75:39]
John Roth
Thank you so much, Marcy. Your questions and commentary really set us up perfectly for. For a good conversation, I think.
- [75:51]
Sister Carol Rittner
Thank you.
- [75:51]
Marcy Maserato
I appreciate. And thank you to all of the listeners also for joining me today. And until next time, everyone cheer.