The Auschwitz Album - Guidelines for Educators

In this video, “The Auschwitz Album – Guidelines for Educators”, Dr. Na’ama Shik presents a rare, important piece of visual documentation of the workings at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp - known as the “Auschwitz Album”. Depicting the arrival and selection of a transport of Hungarian Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia in 1944, Dr. Shik provides the historical background and pedagogical analysis of the album, in order to assist the educator with teaching this subject in the classroom.

Dr. Na’ama Shik is Director of the Educational Technologies Department at the International School for Holocaust Studies, Yad Vashem.

• Part 1: The Auschwitz Album – Guidelines for Educators
• Part 2: Historical Background 1:43
• Part 3: Arrival at Auschwitz 2:43
• Part 4: The Selections and the Walk to the Gas Chambers 4:57
• Part 5: The "Sauna" and the Process of Dehumanization 8:24
• Part 6: The Murder Process 11:18

Further pedagogical considerations

• Provide a focus on life and the living within Auschwitz.
• Outline the face of the individual within the "Final Solution"
• Counter approaches that see Auschwitz as “another planet” - stressing its continuing relevance to us today.
• Despite the difficult, unsettling scenes presented, stress that this is a real-world, human experience
• Consider the ramifications of the gap between what we see in these pictures, and the nullification that soon followed; these people are no longer here to speak or remember.

Teaching aids