ספרות זיכרון השואה בהכשרת מורים – סיפורו של קורס בישראל ובגרמניה

The paper presents the story of a phenomenological study that accompanied a joint teaching-learning project involving students and a lecturer at Levinsky College of Education in Israel and students and a lecturer from Hildesheim University in Germany. In the study, we observed the reading processes of our students, who belong to the second and third post-Holocaust generations1 in both Israel and Germany, with regard to literary works written in Hebrew, German, and other languages by members of the same post-Holocaust generations. The research questions were as follows: (1) How did our students derive meaning from their experience of reading second- and third-generation post-Holocaust literature in the context of the seminar? (2) What can we learn from this experience with regard to teaching literature and teacher education specializing in literature? Our findings attest to the cardinal importance of interaction and dialogue in the teaching of Holocaust memory literature as a means of assuaging anxiety and helping the readers cope with the works and the topic. An analysis of the online dialogue between the Israeli and German students demonstrates the importance of the very existence of such a dialogue, the different places occupied by the culture of Holocaust commemoration for Israeli and German students, the difference between their conceptual worlds, and the entirely different understanding of the effect of the Holocaust on members of the second and third post-Holocaust generations in the two countries. The process indicates the need for and importance of memory studies – including Holocaust memory – in teacher education as a human ethos that necessitates an awareness of ethical reading and perspective-taking.