Working With Pages of Testimony

Objectives

In this lesson, teachers will focus on the human stories behind the details found on the Pages of Testimony, with the help of the extensive databases available on the Yad Vashem website.

After students have completed collecting Pages of Testimony, teachers can explain to their classes how to embark on a “Journey of Discovery” with Pages of Testimony.

The "Journey of Discovery” project enables us to become better acquainted with the life-stories of a number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust. These human stories are based on the biographical details found in the Pages, and help in the educational effort to restore the human face of the Holocaust victims.

Pages of Testimony allow students to research and create other “journeys”, which include:

The victim’s life before the Holocaust;
His/her story during the Holocaust;
His/her fate and the fate of the extended family.

Procedure

After examining the Page of Testimony, students should be asked to write a short profile of the victim’s life. Additional information that does not appear on the Page can also be added. If the submitter completed several Pages on different family members, students can build a family tree.

For a sample Page of Testimony regarding the fate of Fritz Stein click here.

At this stage, students can expand their research project by utilizing Yad Vashem’s extensive Internet database. By entering the Holocaust Resource Center and using key words, a wealth of information can be found about the stories of the Jewish victims during the Holocaust. This site offers a rich variety of photographs, diaries and letters, documents, artifacts and works of art. These are just some of the resources the student can use to create his “journey”, whilst expanding on as many of the fields of information as possible appearing on the Pages of Testimony.

Additionally, the submitter of every Page of Testimony signs the Page at the bottom, adding his/her biographical details. These can also be used to expand on the “journey”. For example, if we look on Fritz Stein’s Page, his sister-in-law, Bella Stein, who submitted the Page, now lives in Australia. This continent became a haven for Holocaust survivors: information can be found in the Holocaust Resource Center under the lexicon entry “Australia, refugees”.

After completing their research, students will report to the class about what they have learned. Teachers may wish to conclude the project with a discussion about the importance of commemorating the memory of individual victims by deepening our knowledge of them and their communities. Teachers should note that through their participation in this project, their students have become an integral part of the effort to memorialize and retrieve as many faces as possible from the abyss, and many personal identities of Jews that were murdered in the Holocaust.