Today marks the first anniversary of the launch of the Seeking Protection blog. In this special post we curate all our content about the Holocaust and refugees into useful topics for educators, to say thank you for supporting our work.
Our posts so far have particularly drawn attention to six topics:
- Contemporary Relevance
- The Kindertransport
- Difficult Journeys
- Personal Stories
- Responsibility: Rescuers and Bystanders
- Challenging Questions
Contemporary Relevance
The remit of Seeking Protection is to explore what we can learn about refugees before, during and after the Holocaust – for today. The following posts particularly highlight areas of contemporary relevance.
- IHRA delegates share their thoughts about how to sensitively approach the contemporary relevance of the Holocaust
- Anastasia Vakaloudi introduces an educational programme in Thessaloniki
- A lesson from Facing History and Ourselves connects the present day global refugee situation to the history of the Holocaust
- Ben Barkow, Director of the Wiener Library considers debates raised when we confront refugee situations past and present
- Support Refugees – a website created to enable the Jewish community to support refugees
- IHRA delegate Karen Polak asks can we compare refugees fleeing the Holocaust with situations today?
- Historian Carl Bon Tempo reflects on US refugee policies past and present
- Political philosopher Tamar de Waal questions how we face today’s situations and whether we have learned from the past
- Alice Herscovitch, Montreal Holocaust Museum, considers what we can do today
- Belle Jarniewski explains how the Jewish community of Winnipeg are supporting Yazidis refugees
The Kindertransport
2018 marks the 80th anniversary of the first Kindertransport. These discussions and resources could help you to plan commemorations.
- Michael Newman, Chief Executive of The Association of Jewish Refugees introduces the Kindertransport
- Discover some of the issues raised in the Wiener library’s temporary exhibition A Bitter Road: Britain and the Refugee Crisis of the 1930s and 1940s
- Amy Williams questions whether moral lessons can be learnt from Kindertransport fiction
Difficult Journeys
Refugees’ stories are often shaped by complex journeys as they attempt to escape persecution and find a potentially safer place to call home. These posts offer a range of examples of precarious trips made by Jewish refugees before, during and after the Holocaust.
- Resources from the Joint Distribution Committee about the difficulty of returning home from Displaced Persons camps
- Read the story of the tragic fate of the passengers of the St. Louis, who sought entry to the United States
- Visual History Archive of the USC Shoah Foundation resources about the difficulties Polish Jews faced trying to flee, post-war
- Find out about the precarious trips Romanian Jews made in the early 1940s
- Resources about seeking refuge in Latin America and Cuba
- Dr. Susanne Heim discusses the difficulties faced by Jewish refugees trying to flee Nazi Germany
- Resources about the internment of Jewish refugees in Canada from the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre
Personal Stories
Humanising refugees helps learners to understand them as individuals. This collection of narratives offers personal perspectives of Jewish refugees and those that tried to help them.
- Explore the stories of two Jewish families from Münster
- Find out how Sir Erich Reich fled to England from Vienna via the Kindertransport
- Explore video testimony courtesy of the IWitness activity ‘We Were Refugees’
- Resources about Sousa Mendes, who resisted Portuguese refugee policy to save hundreds of Jews
Responsibility: Rescuers and Bystanders
For those looking for lessons that can be learnt from the past, one issue to reflect on is our responsibility as nations and as individuals to help others. These posts address rescue and what it means to be a bystander.
- Reflections on opposition towards refugees and the position of neutral countries
- Online module about the Evian Conference (1938)
- Belle Jarniewski discusses the establishment of the U.S. War Refugee Board
- Find out how a Portuguese Consul saved hundreds of Jews
Challenging Questions
As Holocaust educators, we can often face difficult questions. The following posts attempt to offer succinct answers to some frequently heard queries.
- Why didn’t they all leave? – Yad Vashem and USHMM resources
- Why didn’t more countries help? An online module by the House of the Wannsee Conference
- Can we compare? A resource from Facing History and Ourselves
- How can we draw contemporary relevance from the Holocaust in sensitive ways?
You can keep a handy visual version of this post by sharing or emailing the presentation below:
If you have any suggestions for topics we should explore in 2018, let us know in the comment section below. If you are interested in writing for Seeking Protection, check out the guidelines for contributors and get in touch. Thank you again for your continuing support. We hope this post will help you with your future teaching.
Seeking Protection 
We would like to share our educational resources that are available on our grassroots website. We are embarking on a new project which is collaborating with students at Glasgow Caledonian University to use our resources in schools from their perspective and within the context of their disciplines.
Thank you, I will tell my MA students (British and other) at the University of Amsterdam!