Abstract
A narrative analysis of 53 high school student essays demonstrated that Polish youth still hold deeply ethno-national narratives of World War II. This group wrote about ruin, resistance, and victimization, impervious to the influence of a decade of media and international attention to Polish-Jewish relations and the Holocaust. In general, they tamed and domesticated the World War II past. A subset of responses demonstrated that knowledge of the Holocaust and the Jewish-Polish experience during World War II is present in the form of a budding counter-narrative, or an interpretation that goes against what is commonly believed in Polish society. The implications from this chapter are that school may be one of the most important sources for children to receive new and critical information about a nation’s past.
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Appendix
Appendix
Questionnaire
To the best of your ability, please tell me the history of World War II from the beginning.
Where does your understanding of World War II come from?
Rank the following sources in order of importance. Only rank the sources you used. (1 = most important) | Indicate how credible you believe each source to be (1 = Most credible, to 10 = not credible): | |
__________________ | History class | __________________ |
__________________ | Family discussions (with parents or grandparents) | __________________ |
__________________ | Personal reading | __________________ |
__________________ | Church/Sunday School | __________________ |
__________________ | History textbooks (school books) | __________________ |
__________________ | Participation in historical or cultural events | __________________ |
__________________ | Television | __________________ |
__________________ | Newspapers | __________________ |
__________________ | Visits to historical sites | __________________ |
__________________ | Documentaries | __________________ |
__________________ | Movies with historical content | __________________ |
__________________ | Others:____________________ | __________________ |
Please tell us a bit about you.
Name of school | |
Number of years in school | |
Place of birth | |
Religious background | |
Age | |
Gender |
Anything you would like to add that I have not asked?
Thank you!
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Gross, M.H. (2015). Domesticating the Difficult Past: Polish Students Narrate the Second World War. In: Gross, Z., Stevick, E. (eds) As the Witnesses Fall Silent: 21st Century Holocaust Education in Curriculum, Policy and Practice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15419-0_9
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