My name is Professor Sara Jones and I am PI on the AHRC-funded network, “Culture and
its Uses as Testimony”, which for the past two years has been looking at the ways in
which testimony is produced in and through different forms of culture, such as literature,
film, media, videos, education, the law and so on. One of the outputs of the network is
that we are now working with the National Holocaust Centre and Museum, the Holocaust
Educational Trust, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and colleagues from the University
of Nottingham to produce educational resources that hope to help teachers work with these
different forms of testimony in the classroom. So we’ve been looking at this from quite
an academic perspective and we have the privilege today to get quite a different perspective
on these questions. I’m going to be discussing the question of testimony and its use in different
forms of culture with Ruth Barnett. Ruth came to Britain on the Kindertransport. She’s
the author of several books and campaigns against injustice, discrimination and against
war and genocide. Thank you Ruth for joining me today.
I wonder if you could start by telling us why you give your testimony and why you think
testimony is important in education.
Yes, thank you for inviting me. I’m very interested in this research project, because
testimony is much more likely to engage people who might not otherwise be engaged in books
and films. I think testimony is enormously important. Not long after the Kindertransport
broke into the public domain at the conference for the fiftieth anniversary of the coming
to England, the government put Holocaust Education in the National Curriculum without preparing
the teachers beforehand, without preparing any teaching material and the teachers needed
help. And I agreed to join a group going into schools to help the teachers and talk with
the children. I found it was so much appreciated and necessary and fruitful that I wound down
my psychotherapy practice gradually over quite a few years to have more time to go further
afield than London and now I go all over the country, talking whenever I’m invited, because
I do think it’s so important. I think it’s important for another reason. The youngsters
are moving away from face-to-face engagement. They’re busy on their smart phones and I
find it quite alarming the statistics I read of how much time they spend engaging with
machines and how less and less time they spend engaging with people.
So what do you think is important for students to know before they meet a survivor and what
is it important for them to do afterwards?
Beforehand it’s useful if they have some background, historical background, in which
the event, the experience, the testimony-giver is going to speak. Afterwards, I think it’s
absolutely essential that particularly younger people have a chance in smaller groups to
discuss what it has left them feeling and thinking.
What do you hope it will leave them feeling and thinking?
Well, when I speak, I like to throw some challenging material. And I tell them that I don’t expect
them to agree with my opinion. They have to believe my story, because I actually lived
it. It’s lived history. But when I tell them what I think, I want them to think and
I hope to leave them with a lot to think about.
What role do you think empathy plays in that process of critical thinking about the survivor’s
testimony?
I think that’s enormously important. When I talk to audiences, particularly younger
children, primary children, I challenge them to think along with me. I tell them things
like, one of the first things the Nazis did in 1933 was to sack all the professionals
who happened to be Jewish. My dad was a judge, he was told to go. He wouldn’t go. He didn’t
see why he should go. He protested in his courtroom until the Gestapo came and frogmarched
him out at the point of a gun. Now, can you imagine your dad, whatever his work is, can
you imagine him being frogmarched out of his work place at the point of a gun? That’s
what it was like under the Nazis.
And how important is it then that there’s that face-to-face encounter with the survivor?
You are also a writer of books. What role can books and film and different kinds of
media play in that process of getting students to think critically, of getting them to empathise?
I think books are important too, because if you’re really engaged and listening to someone
speaking, you can’t possibly remember it all. And once you’ve met a speaker and enjoyed
the feeling of being with them and engaged with what they are saying, I think you want
to read a book they’ve written for more and to remind you. Perhaps the book will say
the things over again with more detail that they can engage with and remember. And act
on.
And do you think fiction has a role to play in that regard?
I often think about the role of fiction. I think fiction definitely has a role. But I’m
a little bit worried about how children, particularly very young children actually react to some
fiction that is very disturbing unless it’s very carefully presented to them with an opportunity
for checking out what they’ve understood. Because children think very literally compared
to adults. They haven’t yet sort of got control of the idea of ‘as if’ and linking
that to their thinking, so they can take it very literally. I’m thinking of the Boy
in the Striped Pyjamas, which should not be taken literally. It’s a brilliant book for
adults, who know the story, because it brings in the ‘as if’, ‘what if’ and gets
them thinking. But I’m dubious whether it’s suitable for primary children.
Do you think it might have a role in teaching – perhaps not about the Holocaust – but
about processes of discrimination and injustice in secondary education, where perhaps students
are able to do ‘as if’ thinking?
I definitely agree with you that themes of injustice and discrimination – that various
art forms, not only literature, but also performing arts can bring home truths that just prose
telling doesn’t quite, isn’t quite as effective. That’s why I’ve written a play
about my family, because I think it really brings home the injustice, not only of the
Nazi time, but the injustice of the middle-Nazis as I call them, the ones in the professional
layer, who were just never sacked from their posts, never denazified. The denazification
process was curtailed far too soon. And they were just cheerfully in their posts, carrying
on in the same way as they did through the twelve years of the Reich. Particularly in
the legal profession. 80% of the posts in the legal profession after the war were occupied
by former Nazis who had never left their posts.
And would you hope that students might perform the play?
I would be delighted if any school or university would like to take the play on. I would give
them all the help. It was my son’s idea actually, because my father’s story was
first written as a novel by a German author, who won a prize with the novel. It was then
commissioned as a film on German television. And my book was translated into German and
I was invited to speak about my book. And I had huge audiences who just wanted to talk
about the film. So my son had the idea that the real story should be told and he suggested
in the form of a play, because he’s always been interested in amateur drama. And I made
a deal with him. I will write the play if you produce it and he did – last May with
his amateur drama group in Liverpool. But all our friends in London wanted to see it,
but weren’t able to go to Liverpool, so I’m now trying to get it a bit nearer London.
It’s quite interesting the range of different forms that have played a role in the telling
of your story and the story of your family. What do you think makes for an authentic story,
an authentic testimony?
That’s a difficult one to answer. That is where you have to hear it from the person
who lived it. It’s very difficult to be authentic with somebody else’s story. My
daughter complained about this for a long time. I had great difficulty persuading her,
don’t think of it as my story, think of it as the story of your family. And tell it
from your own point of view. And I think that’s important. I think it’s important that whatever
the testimony-giver is saying is their own point of view. But they also need to make
it quite clear what is their opinion and what are facts they are basing it on. Children
need that particularly.
What role do you think testimony in particular can play in creating a genuine culture of
never again?
I won’t say it’s absolutely essential, because the knowledge is rapidly still being
increased through research and I think that will go on for a long time. The knowledge
is there for people to go and get it and learn it and teach it. But it does make it easier
to engage, if you hear human beings giving testimony.
Second and third generation, who are starting to give testimony for their family, particularly
if the survivors in their family are not any longer alive or able to talk, need to make
it their own story, their family history. So that they are speaking genuinely about
how it’s affected them. Like my grandson when asked what it was like having a granny
like me, who spoke to young people, thought for a moment and then said, ‘well, I’m
very well aware that I wouldn’t be alive if my granny hadn’t been rescued.
So do you think that second and third generations are going to have an important role to play
in Holocaust Education in the future?
I hope so. Because until humanity gets a handle on genocide and stops it, Holocaust Education
must go on. And it needs to go on in the context, the wider context, of genocide. And the Holocaust
needs to be represented, either by second and third generation or by historians, researchers.
But the ongoing genocide of the time also needs to be represented by people who are
involved and who know and accept what is happening and can talk about it, as well as a survivor
of a post-Holocaust genocide, who can give their actual experience. The past and the
ongoing present need to be represented, as well as a survivor speaker. That is my opinion
of what makes a really powerful educational experience. Because I’ve been on panels.
How would you hope that Holocaust Education might look in, say, ten years’ time?
Well, in ten years’ time, I doubt whether there will be any Holocaust survivors still
able to speak, so it will be the second and third generation. But not only them, there
are other people who can represent the Holocaust. The testimony of somebody who actually experienced
genocide is hugely important. But the past needs representing and the current experience
needs representing by somebody involved, because it needs to be represented before any survivors
can be expected to be ready to speak. And I have witnessed survivors of post-Holocaust
genocides being pressured into speaking before they are ready and that is actually quite
cruel, because it can re-traumatise them.
Ruth, I’d like to thank you so much for coming to talk to me today. It’s been illuminating
and you’ve given us some really interesting perspectives on the questions we’ve been
thinking about.
Thank you for inviting me. I’ve found talking with you quite energising, which I like.
And if you’d like to find out more about the network and also the resources we are
developing then you can do so by visiting the website below: www.cultureastestimony.wordpress.com