Dan Pagis was a Romanian-born Holocaust survivor who wrote about the Holocaust some 25 years after the events. The poem "Testimony" deals with complex ethical, philosophical and theological issues that troubled Pagis, such as man's inhumanity to man, the question of God during the Holocaust, the essence and role of testimony, and other issues pertaining to guilt and to forgiveness. The poem "Testimony" allows a glympse into these complex questions and is fertile ground for classroom discussion.
Jackie Metzger is a staff member at the International School for Holocaust Studies, Yad Vashem.
Further pedagogical considerations
- The multidisciplinary connection within the video, between art and poetry allows for further discussion of issues that go beyond the historical facts alone.
- Poetry conveys universal aspects of the Holocaust.
- This particular poem artisitically raises moral, philosophical and theological questions and dilemmas that engage us after the Holocaust, allowing for a fertile educational discussion.
Teaching aids
Lesson plans
- Written in Pencil in the Sealed Freightcar
- Dan Pagis' Poetry
- Seven Poems, Seven Paintings
- Teaching the Holocaust through Literature
- Teaching about Perpetrators: A Case Study about a Deportation of German Jews from Düsseldorf to Riga
- Using Testimony in Holocaust Education
- Liberation and Survival
- "Your Son, Your Only One" - The Sacrifice of Isaac as a Motif in Holocaust Poetry
- Teaching the Holocaust Through Poetry
Resources
Online Exhibitions
