If Walls Could Talk: Everyday Spaces in Holocaust Education: A Spatial Approach to the Case of Primary School De Witte Olifant
Wijnschenk, Ruïe-Jalo (2025)
2025
Master's Programme in Peace, Mediation and Conflict Research
Yhteiskuntatieteiden tiedekunta - Faculty of Social Sciences
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2025-05-14
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202505145431
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202505145431
Tiivistelmä
As the possibility of using in-person survivor testimonies in Holocaust education diminishes in light of the approaching post-witness era, the preservation and transmission of Holocaust memory becomes more challenging. Drawing on the spatial turn in peace and conflict research, this thesis supports the development of alternatives to the use of in-person testimonies in Holocaust education. Analysing the interplay between space and memory, this research particularly explores the dynamics of Holocaust education at public primary school De Witte Olifant in the Netherlands.
De Witte Olifant is located in the Jewish Quarter of Amsterdam and its building housed two Jewish schools and one non-Jewish school during the Second World War. The research uses interviews with teachers and staff members to investigate the instrumentalization and effects of the history attached to the school building on Holocaust education and related memory practices at De Witte Olifant. The research demonstrates how the approach to Holocaust education and related memory practices at De Witte Olifant is inherently tied to the space of the school building and its history. This produces teaching practices which are rooted in place-based learning and spatially grounded knowledge. Additionally, the deliberate incorporation of space in Holocaust education at De Witte Olifant generates tangible history and embodied knowledge of the past.
Approaching Holocaust education as a form of peace education, this thesis advances the understanding of the connection between memory and Holocaust education by demonstrating how engaging with everyday spaces through place-based educational approaches and spatial memory practices offers models for sustainable memory transmission in Holocaust education in response to the challenges of the post-witness era and the growing temporal distance between the present and the Holocaust. In addition to arguing the potential of deliberate incorporation of space into memory practices, this thesis also contributes to the further integration of the spatial turn in peace and conflict research and highlights the significance of spatiality in the conceptualization(s) of peace.
De Witte Olifant is located in the Jewish Quarter of Amsterdam and its building housed two Jewish schools and one non-Jewish school during the Second World War. The research uses interviews with teachers and staff members to investigate the instrumentalization and effects of the history attached to the school building on Holocaust education and related memory practices at De Witte Olifant. The research demonstrates how the approach to Holocaust education and related memory practices at De Witte Olifant is inherently tied to the space of the school building and its history. This produces teaching practices which are rooted in place-based learning and spatially grounded knowledge. Additionally, the deliberate incorporation of space in Holocaust education at De Witte Olifant generates tangible history and embodied knowledge of the past.
Approaching Holocaust education as a form of peace education, this thesis advances the understanding of the connection between memory and Holocaust education by demonstrating how engaging with everyday spaces through place-based educational approaches and spatial memory practices offers models for sustainable memory transmission in Holocaust education in response to the challenges of the post-witness era and the growing temporal distance between the present and the Holocaust. In addition to arguing the potential of deliberate incorporation of space into memory practices, this thesis also contributes to the further integration of the spatial turn in peace and conflict research and highlights the significance of spatiality in the conceptualization(s) of peace.