Available since January 2007, Recollections: Eyewitnesses Remember the Holocaust is HET’s ground breaking new teaching and learning resource. The result of HET’s successful partnership with the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation Institute, this interactive DVD-Rom provides key stage 3 and key stage 4 students with unique video footage of eyewitness testimony of the Holocaust.

From nearly 52,000 visual history testimonies available in the Shoah Foundation Institute archives, eighteen were chosen for inclusion in the DVD. Each testimony tells a different story and together they cover a broad range of experiences of the Holocaust: ‘Recollections’ will provide compelling visual material to enrich students’ understanding of this period in history. The testimonies are supported by a range of innovative learning activities, which cover a range of National Curriculum subjects including Citizenship, History, Religious Studies and English.

The Holocaust narrative is vast. It includes an enormous range of events and experiences that one single resource could not hope to cover. The resource is a unique tool for teaching about aspects of the Holocaust through personal narratives, which by definition will not be historically or geographically comprehensive.

A central aspect of the Holocaust Educational Trust’s work is bringing Holocaust survivors to speak to young people in schools across Britain. Survivors’ testimonies are a key teaching tool for educating about this period in history. By humanising the individuals involved, a potentially distant event from the past becomes something more immediate and compelling. These visual histories provide students with opportunities to engage with the past in ways that go beyond analysing statistics or evaluating the decisions of political figures. As well as challenging and deepening young people’s understanding of the chronology and context of the past, these testimonies function on a human level that is accessible to all students, irrespective of ability.

As survivors grow frailer with each year that passes, it will become increasingly difficult to meet the demand from schools to bring these people into the classroom. ‘Recollections’ ensures survivors’ continue to tell their stories to today’s generation of young people so that they will understand and learn the lessons from this catastrophic period in Europe’s history.

The DVD-Rom was launched in October 2006 and was used very successfully with a group of students from Pimlico School, London. The launch was attended by Survivor Harry Bibring (whose testimony features on the resource), Professor Douglas Greenberg from SFI and Mike O'Brian the Solicitor General.

If you are a teacher / educator and would like to order your FREE copy of Recollections please email us using the Contact Us facility. You MUST include the following information or we will not be able to send you a copy:

• Name
• Job title
• Full address including post code
• Contact telephone number

PLEASE NOTE, THIS RESOURCE HAS BEEN PRODUCED FOR THE UK MARKET AND IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH DVD PLAYERS IN THE USA, CANADA AND OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD