Introduction to the Open File

Abstract

Sixty-five years after the liberation of Auschwitz, Holocaust education is at a critical juncture. Societies including Germany and Israel have moved through several discrete stages both in their relationships to the Holocaust, and in education about it. Those shifts will surely continue as the generation of survivors is progressively lost to the passage of time, taking with them our most powerful links to history, memory, and understanding. This special issue explores Holocaust education research, and locates it within our evolving understanding of the Holocaust itself, particularly in light of what is being learned within Central and Eastern Europe, where so many of the atrocities were committed. This introduction considers the potential of Holocaust education as well as its limitations, and the risks of its failure. It also considers the contexts in which Holocaust education takes place, and the meanings that are at work in those contexts. While many goals and visions animate Holocaust education, here we explore the notion of a culture of peace and remembrance. We close with a review of the contributions to this issue.

German Extermination Camps on WWII Reconnaissance Photographs. Orthorectification Process for Archival Aerial Images of Cultural Heritage Sites

“…A specific role in the genocide was played by a group of extermination camps: Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka II, which were established after the Wannsee conference in 1942. The three camps were part of the "Operation Reinhardt" framework and were also called "Operation Reinhardt camps" [2,3]. Extermination camps were designed specifically for the systematic killing of people, Jews mostly, who were delivered en masse on trains.…”