EDUCATION LISA PHILLIPS

This year, Victoria has a new State Curriculum, replacing the National Curriculum of the past. Changes to the curriculum include making study of the Holocaust an option at Year 10 History; it is thus no longer mandatory. Further, in Year 11, the VCE Unit 1 Modern History course now has 1939 as the ‘end year’ of the course, thus excluding the years of the Holocaust. Despite these curricular changes, teachers still value teaching about the Holocaust. At the Victorian English Teachers’ annual conference in December 2016, the Jewish Holocaust Centre (JHC) education team was buoyed by the number of teachers who are reintroducing studying the text Night by Elie Wiesel as part of the English curriculum. There are still many other schoolbased opportunities where studying the Holocaust is relevant, particularly in the subject titled ‘Civics and Citizenship’, and in the ‘Ethical’ and ‘Intercultural’ capabilities, taught in every year of secondary school. Our bookings indicate that teachers are keen to continue to bring their students to the JHC.

Behind the scenes we have been busily working on a number of projects including developing new ways to explore the museum; developing new activities to pilot for the Hide and Seek program; planning more professional development sessions; and developing the very important Custodians of Memory program. Each of these projects needs to consider collection of Holocaust survivors’ eyewitness accounts. To complement these accounts, the Memory Reconstruction project, conducted in 2015, represented survivor stories in the form of collages, and the Custodians of Memory project, undertaken by our guides in conjunction with the Centre’s Education Department, partnered guides with survivors to learn their stories and prepare resources so that these stories can be told to students and other museum visitors in the future. the redevelopment plans for the museum, so we have been working closely with Head of Collections Jayne Josem and the JHC Museum Design Committee.

We have put in place security and emergency plans to ensure our Centre operations are restored quickly in the event of an emergency. We are also updating a manual for volunteers, guides and staff members to provide all workers with an overview of the Centre and a brief description of staff roles.

We are delighted that Holocaust survivors Irma Hanner, together with Cesia and Abram Goldberg OAM, joined JHC staff and Board members to attend the opening of The Holocaust: Witnesses and Survivors, the new permanent exhibition at the Australian War Memorial. I am grateful to Curator Jayne Josem and Archivist Anna Hirsh for preparing the material for this important exhibition within tight timelines. This exciting initiative is featured elsewhere in this edition of Centre News.

In July 2016, I presented a paper on Hide and Seek: Stories of Survival at a conference at Loughborough University and the National Holocaust Centre in the UK focusing on teaching the Holocaust to primary-age students. The conference was a wonderful opportunity to gain international recognition for our work and achievements. It was also an amazing opportunity to learn from educators and academics working in Holocaust education, particularly the museum educators from Montreal, The Ghetto Fighters’ Museum in Israel and the National Holocaust Centre in Laxton, UK. I also had a number of positive meetings with educators at the Weiner Library, the Imperial War Museum, the Holocaust Education Institute and the Jewish Museum in London.

We are delighted to welcome back Anatie Livnat to the JHC education team. We have also welcomed a number of new guides – graduates of the Centre’s 2016 Holocaust course – into the JHC guiding group. We anticipate that 2017 will continue to be a busy and productive year.