19 The Historical is Personal: Learning and Teaching Traumatic Histories
19 The Historical is Personal: Learning and Teaching Traumatic Histories
Andrea Eidinger
Learning and teaching history is hard work. The physical, mental, and emotional toll can be high, for both educators and learners. This is especially the case when it comes to traumatic histories. For educators, it is difficult to balance the desire to make an emotional impact on your students without inflicting (further) trauma. For learners, it is difficult to balance curiosity with respect. We are often implored to “never forget,” but we seldom take a moment to talk about what and how we are supposed to remember.
All of us come to the field of history from different backgrounds, and the ways in which we interact with history as educators and learners are shaped by these early experiences. But, with certain exceptions, it remains rare for anyone to talk about this, especially when it comes to teaching. So in this blog post, I wanted to take the opportunity to talk about my personal experiences learning and teaching about traumatic histories and specifically how my experiences as a Jewish-Canadian woman who was taught about the Holocaust as a child shaped my approach to teaching first-year university students about residential schools.
I was born and raised on the island of Montreal, the traditional territory of the Kanien’kehá:ka people, which was also a place of meeting and exchange for many nations. My family lived in the city of Côte Saint-Luc, an Anglophone enclave and home to the largest Jewish population on the island. My ancestors came from Russia, Poland, and Austria, and landed in North America between the 1890s and 1910s. At the time of my birth, I was the third generation of my family born in Canada.
I had been fascinated by history for as long as I can remember, though I often found myself wondering why none of my textbooks talked about Jewish people. This is why I was initially (somewhat) enthusiastic when my parents enrolled me in a Jewish Studies program in elementary school. My enthusiasm was cut short when my teachers introduced the subject of the Holocaust in grade three. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that day remains vivid in my memory. Here is a brief summary of what I learned:
Once upon a time there was an evil man in Germany named Hitler. He didn’t like Jews, and neither did the German people. So, he decided that all of the Jews needed to be killed. He sent them to these places called “concentration camps.” When people got to the camps, the girls and boys were separated, and the guards took all their belongings. In groups, the girls and boys were told to go and take showers. They entered into the showers, expecting to wash, but that’s not what happened. Instead of water, gas came out of the showerheads. This was poisonous gas, and the people in the showers started to suffocate. They tried to use their fingernails to scratch through the doors. If you visit the showers today, you can still see the marks the people made with their nails. Once a