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Eyewitness Accounts
Eyewitness accounts bring a reality to the past which those of us writing
about it many years later are never able to do. Your purpose will be to put
together a profile of the Holocaust experience based on the role of individuals
or groups who were a part of the events that occurred. The people you write
about will have been survivors who were either in hiding; refugees; survivors
of ghettos, labour, concentration or extermination camps; in the resistance;
and so on.
This may be the first time you have used the Internet for a specific research
project in History. Unlike with general Internet browsing, you are going to
focus on a restricted range of information and use specific sites. To help
you find your way around the sites, you will be expected to plan the research
by posing appropriate questions, such as "What kind of social background
did this person come from?", before you commence your research. In your
planning, you will be readying yourself to compile the eyewitness accounts
of the events together with your personalised narration.
The idea is to present your completed work in a concise but clear way. You
will need to keep a Learning Log of your research process that will show the
dates of your research, the resources (books or articles) and web-sites you
used, accompanied by a parent's initial. This log will be submitted together
with your research assignment. A sample format is set out below.
Learning Log
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PART OF TOPIC RESEARCHED |
SOURCE/WEB-SITE |
PARENT |
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No single web-site or source will have everything
you need to complete this task. Make sure you spread
your search around several sites. You will need to
search around inside sites to make the most of them.
For a comprehensive listing of major sites, see Major
Sites. Alternately, if you bring a brand new blank
disk to school your teacher may arrange to copy these
instructions and web-sites on to your disk which should
speed up your search. With your own disk you can then
enter the web-site addresses without entering them
manually. You could also give your teacher your e-mail
address and it will be sent home as an attachment
in Word 7.
You will be expected to write about 4 people and their eyewitness accounts.
Choose a mix of genders and backgrounds for the people. You will need to organise
the information about them to include the following details:
Biographical background: name, age, place of origin, occupation,
family members and details, and photo (if available).
Personal experience of events in village/town/city under
Nazi rule or occupation, including deportation, escape, etc.
Testimony: Individual experience of the Holocaust written
in their own words (you may wish to use your own words as links to their
testimony, so that you don't exceed the set page limit). This may include:
going into hiding, living in a ghetto, life in a camp, life with the resistance
etc.
The impact of the experience on their later lives and those
of their families.
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Of course, if you have the opportunity to speak with
a survivor in person, you may, with their permission,
wish to write down what they tell you. You may be
visiting the Sydney Jewish Museum
and have the opportunity to read personal testimonies
and to speak with and hear from survivors while you
are there. This presents an opportunity not to be
missed!
Approximately 1-2 pages per person will be enough. A final page of this project
will include your evaluation of your research experiences and the way it and
the eyewitness accounts you chose made an impact on you. The table below gives
you the structure of this part of the assignment:
| ACCOUNT 1 |
ACCOUNT 2 |
ACCOUNT 3 |
ACCOUNT 4 |
EVALUATION |
| Individual biographical background |
Individual biographical background |
Individual biographical background |
Individual biographical background |
Your view and summation. |
| Life under Nazi rule or occupation |
Life under Nazi rule or occupation |
Life under Nazi rule or occupation |
Life under Nazi rule or occupation |
Your view and summation. |
| Testimony in the words of the survivor |
Testimony in the words of the survivor |
Testimony in the words of the survivor |
Testimony in the words of the survivor |
Your view and summation. |
| Impact on the survivor and family |
Impact on the survivor and family |
Impact on the survivor and family |
Impact on the survivor and family |
Your view and summation. |
You will be asked to submit the project on paper. There is no compulsion
to have the work done via a word-processor, although it may suit some students
to submit it this way. It may be handwritten. After submission of the research
assignments, members of the class will put their individual efforts together
into a larger compilation, with as many different accounts as possible. Class
representatives will help to place the finished product on a word-processor
or database for everyone to use.
Non-Internet resources: books, serials etc. may be used to supplement your
research, but you should aim for a minimum of 50% to come from Internet sources.
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