by Chava Baruch

Displayed in the new Hungarian Holocaust Center in Budapest is a copy of The Auschwitz Album, a collection of some 200 captioned photographs depicting the deportation of a transport of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The album (whose original is displayed in the Yad Vashem’s new Museum) currently serves as an educational tool for both teachers and pupils to learn about the Holocaust until the center’s permanent exhibition is completed.

Two young Hungarian teachers, Szilvia Dittel and Tibor Pecsi, are members of the center’s educational staff, and graduates of training seminars at Yad Vashem. Using the material and tools learned at Yad Vashem, Dittel and Pecsi have initiated educational activities that take place not only outside the classroom but also outside the museum. As a way to interest Hungarian pupils in Holocaust studies, they have organized a summer seminar based on tours around Budapest. The tour was specifically chosen for the topics the facilitators wished to stress, and includes centers of Jewish intellectual life before the war; the Hungarian Parliament, which passed the anti-Jewish laws of 1938-1939; the streets and squares from which young Jews were sent to forced labor camps; the brick factory, Teglagyar Obudai, where the Jews of the city were concentrated; the streets of the closed ghetto; and the buildings in which the Zionist youth movement operated in 1944. Participants also visit the memorial on the banks of the Danube commemorating the thousands of Jews shot into the freezing river in the winter of 1944.

During the seminar, pupils fill out questionnaires, hold discussions, hear survivor testimonies, read passages from personal diaries, and view works by Jewish artists sent to forced labor camps, such as the painter Amos Imre. After three days of tours, they return to the center, where they use The Auschwitz Album to learn about the death camps.

“Pupils who participated in the study days underwent a significant change in their attitude and outlook,” says Szilvia. “They wished to learn more about the Holocaust, and many of the participants who were previously willing to sympathize with the anti-Jewish legislation became radically opposed to it by the end of the program.” She continues: “Our goal is to connect with the youth by relating the material to their everyday lives, as well as by teaching the history of the Holocaust through tours around their native city. The rest is up to them and their teachers, whom we encourage to address the moral questions that arise during the tour.”

The author is Head of the Hungarian and Romanian Desk, European Department, The International School for Holocaust Studies.

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