Creating a youth ambassador: a critical study of a Swedish project on teaching and learning about the Holocaust

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on a project within the government-supported Swedish Committee Against Antisemitism program. To our knowledge, this is the first study to employ full-project interviews and participant observations to explore Swedish study trips to Holocaust memorial sites. It applies the educational concepts of qualification, socialization, and person-formation inspired by educational theorist Gert Biesta. Students acquired qualified concepts regarding the Holocaust's ‘what' and ‘why’ dimensions. However, findings indicate that attention should be paid to how external organizers risk narrowing the potentials of education about the Holocaust due to a lack of preexisting relations among students, and between educators and students.

KEYWORDS:

• Holocaust education
• teaching and learning about the Holocaust
• study trips
• qualification, socialization, person-formation
• teaching and learning

Introduction

With the increasing number of Swedish study trips to Holocaust memorial sites during the last two decades, about a quarter of today’s Swedish teenagers have visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau state museum in Poland, most as part of their schooling.¹ Notably, no curricular guidelines regulate the Swedish study trips, nor has any authorized institution or governing body outside school formed a standard program for them. Thus, local variations have developed, driven by dedicated teachers who lead the work with their own students, which could be understood as a grassroots movement.²

In 2014, the Swedish government assigned the Swedish Committee Against Antisemitism (SCAA), an NGO, the mission and economic resources to expand their educational program with study trips to Holocaust memorial sites. The government framed the decision with general democratic intentions connected to knowledge about the Holocaust and European integration.³ By then, the SCAA had the experience in educating teachers, since the beginning of the 1990s (https://skma.se/in-english/), and had commenced using study trips as a method included in some of their programs in 1999.⁴ Since 2007, programs for students that included study trips were part of the SCAAs educational repertoire.⁵ The government warranted the decision to support SCAA in 2014 and argued that earlier governmental economic contributions to SCAA’s educational efforts had led to ‘good results,’ and that the organization had a long experience with similar educational programs.⁶ Based on reported evaluations, in 2018, the government decided to prolong the financial support until 2020, a decision that was extended due to the pandemic until 2022.⁷

Additionally, The Living History Forum (FLH) state agency was commissioned to broaden and distribute educational materials regarding the study trips and spread it to different actors, including teachers that conducted study trips under their own authority with their students.⁸ The significance of these recent governmental initiatives should be viewed in the light of museums’ and NGOs’ potential to influence teaching and learning about the Holocaust’s (TLH) educational domain.⁹

Despite public expectations regarding the study trips’ potential for ‘vaccinating future generations against totalitarian ideologies’¹⁰ at the Swedish national level, and the growing volume of international research on study trips,¹¹ no research has been conducted on the Swedish study trips to Holocaust memorial sites, until recently. Teachers’ rationales and didactic strategies have been analyzed¹² separately from students’ perceptions.¹³ However, from an educational perspective, the study trips constitute a teaching and learning practice that is shaped through interplays between participating educators and students as the preparation, trip, and follow-up work unfolds.

Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine the SCAA program, a particular practice within Swedish TLH, that uses study trips as an educational method, and is shaped by educators from SCAA together with participating teachers and students. The study employs interviews combined with participant observations, as education was conducted throughout the project. This study focused on one SCAA project that included a three-day preparation seminar, a seven-day study trip, and a one-day follow up seminar. The analyzed material comprises extensive field notes from participant observations and transcribed interviews, and collected written material from SCAA and participating students.

Since this is the first study to examine Swedish study trips as an evolving educational practice in situ, it is explorative in character and was guided by the following research questions:

• RQ1. How are the Holocaust’s ‘what’ and ‘why’ dimensions presented through didactic content and strategies in the SCAA project, and how can students’ concepts of these dimensions be understood?

• RQ2. How do the educational settings and didactical forms used in the SCAA project match the project’s expressed goals and ambitions?

• RQ3. What expectations regarding students’ personal growth and development are expressed in the SCAA project by educators and school staff, and how can students’ expressions of personal change be understood?

TLH in Sweden and previous research

Study trips to Holocaust memorial sites are one of many educational practices within the larger TLH domain.¹⁴ According to a steadily growing volume of TLH research over the past two decades, the practice is characterized by a fundamental concept: TLH tends to be embedded in national discourses of memory and narratives.¹⁵ The international trend of framing education about the Holocaust with democracy and human rights education¹⁶ interplays with national domestications of certain conceptualizations, interpretations, and narratives, according to a systematic analysis of textbooks and curricula from a worldwide sample of countries.¹⁷ Even if Swedish textbooks are excluded from this analysis, no evidence suggests that Swedish TLH is an exception in this regard.

Turning to TLH as a practice in Sweden, it is crucial to observe the Swedish school system being highly decentralized in the sense that each teacher is entrusted to make significant decisions with respect to educational content and pedagogy. Regarding TLH, teaching about the Holocaust has been made mandatory since 2000; however, this applies solely in secondary school contexts.¹⁸ Notably, the national curricula only stipulate this requirement. Hence, no definition of the Holocaust is presented, nor any regulations on the particular didactical perspectives that should be applied or the number of hours to be devoted to the topic. The public authority, Skolverket, produces commentary material available for teachers; however, the webpage relating to TLH has been updated only recently, for example with links to International Holocaust Remember Alliance’s (IHRA) educational recommendations (https://www.skolverket.se/skolutveckling/inspiration-och-stod-i-arbetet/stod-i-arbetet/stod-for-undervisning-om-forintelsen). Additionally, Swedish teachers have been offered TLH-material produced by FLH state agency since its inception in 2003, and at least one university course for master students is devoted to TLH (https://www.uu.se/en/admissions/freestanding-courses/course-syllabus/?kpid=46883&lasar=22%2F23&typ=1).

These institutional initiatives are adhered to by teachers, and naturally, impact how they interpret the curricula as obligatory. However, partly due to the Swedish school system being so unregulated and partly to TLH being poorly researched, other than some general descriptions, a state-of-the-art explanation of the context is not possible to present. Compared to the national context where TLH research has been well developed and built on robust empirical data – for instance, the English context¹⁹ – Swedish TLH research has a long way to go.

Few studies have been conducted on Swedish TLH educational practices. A 2007 survey of 8000 teachers demonstrated that most considered the Holocaust to be an important subject with respect to its potential to raise moral questions in present times.²⁰ According to a study (carried out 2003–2004) that used interviews and classroom observations, Swedish teachers meet this potential through a joint objective to frame Holocaust knowledge within democratic values.²¹ Two recently conducted studies on educational trips to Holocaust memorial sites support the assertion that the democratic framing of Swedish TLH practices is still manifest. Both studies used critical discourse analysis (CDA) and demonstrated that democracy is at the core of the teachers’ discursive practice,²² as well as that of the students.²³ Although the relationship between public democratic discourse and Swedish TLH practices has not been empirically examined, there are reasons to believe that they interact: promoting democracy is an important tenet of Sweden’s cultural construction of national identity.²⁴ It is reasonable to assume that this contributes to how the Holocaust is framed in educational activities.

In addition to previous Swedish TLH research, prior studies on programs that include lengthy study trips to Holocaust memorial sites are important to the current study, particularly research focusing on programs for students arranged and lead by external organizations, not by the students’ own teachers, such as the SCAA program. Within an Israeli context, the tradition of these kinds of programs for upper secondary students dates to 1988.²⁵ A 2012 overview concluded that the programs inherited a potential ‘danger of bypassing cognitive and critical mechanisms,’²⁶ strengthening the sense of national identity, but weakening the attribution to universal values among students. In terms of educational outcomes, several studies have applied a cause–effect perspective on the Israeli study trips without demonstrating clear-cut results with respect to study trips being more effective than other methods, according to an IHRA research overview.²⁷

The identity formation function of study trips is emphasized by an ethnographic study that analyzes the Israeli programs as scripted national pilgrimages of students’ transition from children to ‘responsible members of society – witnesses.’²⁸ The overarching didactic strategy of students’ transition focused on Holocaust victims. The study asserts that this focus creates spatial dichotomies: the bus and hotel represent life and the goodness of present Israel while the memorial sites, including the Polish environment, represent past death and evil. The spatial dichotomies provide a resource that Israeli guides didactically use with respect to the narratives and ceremonies that lead students to a transition.²⁹

According to a study of young Jewish participants from Toronto, the programs’ identity formation function is also centered within the context of the Jewish diaspora.³⁰ The didactical strategy resembles that used within Israeli programs, where participants are invited by their leaders to step into history by embodying the victims’ perspective: ‘In the absence of Nazis, local Poles surrounding students become placeholders for the perpetrators and bystanders … and the landscape of Poland itself becomes threatening.’³¹ Thus, a situational dichotomy forms the strategy resource, which aims to let students appreciate present Israel as a safeguard for diaspora Jews. Students’ responses are highly emotional at the expense of cognitive processes.³² Another study that examined study trips for young Jewish people from Australia confirmed that the program ‘produce an affective connection and hence generate emotional identification. Deep learning, however, is less apparent.’³³

According to an ethnographic study of the Norwegian key arrangers’ Hvite Busser (the white buses) study trip, spatial dichotomies are created similar to those in the Israeli and Jewish diaspora programs.³⁴ Additionally, the study trips were analyzed as scripted pilgrimages with respect to students’ transition from children to members of an adult community, with a moral responsibility to bear witness to the Holocaust.³⁵ The didactical focus is on the victims’ suffering with an implicit obligation for students ‘to not grasp’³⁶ causal historical explanations of the Holocaust.

With respect to a strictly educational point of departure, a study on the United Kingdom program, Lessons from Auschwitz (LFA), demonstrated that students’ self-assessments showed they developed a deeper understanding of Holocaust history and the significance of personal citizenship.³⁷ Student application and selection procedures were similar to the SCAA program, where school staff from different schools were key actors in the process.³⁸ Additionally, the four-educational-steps approach resembles SCAA’s program.³⁹ However, since LFA conducted only a single-day visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau state museum, it differed from the SCAA program in that it was not an extended study trip to many different sites over several days.

Thus, previous research demonstrated four noteworthy features of TLH and study trips to Holocaust memorial sites that are relevant to this study. First, Swedish TLH is clearly framed by an intention to promote democracy, indicated by recently conducted research on study trips to Holocaust memorial sites. Second, research indicates that the practice of study trips to Holocaust memorial sites carries a risk of emotions shortcutting cognitive processes, and supplanting explanatory didactic approaches. Third, study trips tend to focus on the victims and their suffering. Fourth, from a cultural perspective, study trips can be viewed as pilgrimages for young people. As such, they offer spatial dichotomies and ritual passage as didactical resources.

SCAA, its educational approach, and the project in focus

SCAA was founded as an NGO in 1983 to monitor public debate and to report and challenge antisemitism (https://skma.se/in-english/). The organization, financed by donors, has since its inception steadily participated in public debates with the purpose of forming opinions (https://skma.se/nyhetsbrev/). Over the years, SCAA has developed collaborations with national and international partners and has recently been involved in producing the educational material called Eternal Echoes, together with partners in Lithuania, Romania, Poland, Hungary, and Austria. The educational material, financed by the European Commission, is based on testimonies of survivors of the Holocaust and is free of charge for teachers to use (https://skma.se/utbildning/undervisningsmaterial/eternal-echoes/). SCAA describes the objective of the material: ‘By teaching about the Holocaust, Eternal Echoes promotes democratic values’ (https://skma.se/utbildning/undervisningsmaterial/eternal-echoes/; author’s translation).

The material is used in SCAA’s educational programs, and the description of the intentions with the material corresponds to the intentions of SCAA programs that include study trips, as the one considered in this study. The didactical content of the program is generally outlined as aiming ‘to increase the knowledge of Nazi German crimes against Jews, Roma, and other groups’ (https://skma.se/utbildning/elevresor/; author’s translation). However, SCAA, more specifically, develops particular didactical goals and ambitions. Through tasks and conversations, SCAA wants to encourage students to reflect on ‘different actors: victims, perpetrators, heroes, rescuers, and bystanders’ (https://skma.se/utbildning/elevresor/; author’s translation, emphasis added). Further:

[T]o stimulate a discussion about the question of how one acts in different situations. What moral dilemmas do I face? And how should I act? The ambition is also to get the students to think about their own values, how they see themselves and others, and how they relate to the principle of equal value of all people. An important message is that it actually matters what you do or choose not to do. Before, during, and after the study trip to Poland, past and present are tied together through a thoughtful pedagogy. (https://skma.se/utbildning/elevresor/; author’s translation, emphasis added)

Thus, in SCAA’s words, the aims are devoted to a pedagogy of students’ active involvement throughout the educational program. This involvement is expressed as a means to encourage each student to be aware of their individual moral values, and to reflect on responsible acts in present times.

The study’s data-generating procedures were applied to one SCAA project within the government-supported program, conducted from May to December 2021. The project comprised three steps: preparation seminars, a study trip to Poland, and a follow-up seminar. Afterward, students were expected to disseminate their acquired knowledge to comrades at their school, with support from teachers who participated in the trip. The SCAA required no formal reports of these activities, and they were not a subject of this study.

The preparation step was a one-day webinar in May and a two-day seminar in September, weeks before the study trip, where lectures were held on antisemitism, Holocaust history, and the politics and propaganda of the Third Reich. Emphasis was on pre-war Jewish life and the centuries-long European tradition of antisemitism. With respect to historical characters as actors during the Holocaust, the focus was on victims’ testimonies. The other categories mentioned in the description of the program were not appreciated, except in some isolated cases. The seminars were held jointly by two SCAA educators, both of whom were to lead the forthcoming study trip.

The seven-day study trip included visits to the first Jewish settlement in Krakow, the former Jewish quarter Kazimierz, the former ghetto, and the former Płaszów concentration camp in Krakow. Additionally, students visited the Jewish cemetery in the village of Jordanów, the few remains of Jewish pre-war life, a Jewish mass grave, and the former SS school in the small town of Rabka. The study trip also included a two-day visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau state museum. According to SCAA, the trip’s overarching temporal structure was to visit sites that represented the long Jewish presence in Poland from the Middle Ages until the end of the Second World War in accordance with historical chronology. For practical and economic reasons, sites in the vicinity of Krakow were prioritized for the educational program in focus.

Students were guided by one of the two SCAA educators throughout the trip, except for two days in Auschwitz, where one of the museum’s guides led the group. Seminars, conducted by the other SCAA educator, were held in the evening where students were encouraged to write short comments in logbooks related to each day’s educational content. The evening seminars also included viewing and discussing the film Schindler’s List (1993).

The one-day follow-up seminar was held two months after the study trip. The educator who led the seminars during the study trip conducted the follow-up seminar without his colleague. Time was devoted to lectures on social media and representations of contemporary xenophobia. The seminar was the last step of SCAA’s educational program.

Swedish regions and municipalities apply to a particular SCAA project. Due to the pandemic, most SCAA projects were canceled or postponed which, for practical reasons in relation to the participating researcher’s time disposal to follow the project, made the project in focus the only option to generate data.

Two educators led the project through all steps. Students, 10 girls and 10 boys, were 16–18 years old and in the second or third grade of their upper secondary education. They applied to the extra-curricular SCAA project, which was open to all students at two vocational schools in the same municipality. Eight school staff members selected students from seven different school classes and accompanied students on the study trip. In total, two educators, 20 students from two schools and seven classes, and eight school staff members participated in the SCAA project.

Researcher’s affiliation with the project and data generation

Data were generated by one researcher who is also the author of this article. However, I was not part of the SCAA educational team, nor a member of the school staff, and I did not conduct any educational activities. The intention was to be viewed as a person who followed the SCAA project to conduct research within a domain that has not been adequately considered in a scientific investigation. Throughout the project I tried ‘to maintain a more or less marginal position, thereby providing access to participant perspectives, but at the same time minimizing the dangers of over-rapport and the bias that can result from this.’⁴⁰ Since the atmosphere was polite but somewhat fractioned between students from different schools and classes throughout the project, the group never developed to become a strong social unit. Thereby, my marginal position was not viewed as odd and could be maintained. My overall impression was of being accepted by the participants as a part of the group, and, in addition, as a researcher that explored educational aspects. Educators, school staff, and students became accustomed to me as a person who asked questions, and with whom they generously shared their time. I tried to phrase the questions in as open-ended a fashion as possible. Sometimes both educators and students shared that they did not know how to answer the questions, which I interpreted as an indication that the participants did not feel pressured to respond simply for the sake of it.

The study was based on participant observations and field interviews conducted throughout the project, semi-structured interviews, and students’ written material. Participant observations were documented as elaborated field notes. Field interviews and semi-structured interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim by the author.

Before the trip, and in connection with the preparation seminars, a total of 12 semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven students, four school staff members, and one educator. The interviews were structured by interview guides based on the research questions and previous studies. Furthermore, within a week after the study trip, seven interviews were conducted with five students, one school staff member, and one educator. In addition to the research questions, these semi-structured interviews were informed by the field notes from previous educational steps. In total, 19 interviews, each lasting between 30 and 60 min, were conducted and transcribed verbatim by the author.

The written material comprised reflections on three questions posed to the students by the author at the end of the project (Appendix). The students were informed that their reflections were part of the research project, and would not be read by members of the school staff or the SCAA educators. Additionally, the author had the students’ permission to read and copy extracts from students’ logbooks from each day of the study trip. Elaborated answers were rare, but a few extracts were selected and incorporated as texts in the study. All quotations in this article were translated into English by the author.

Study approval was granted by the Swedish Ethical Review Authority. The study was presented orally at the preparation seminar and participants were given an opportunity to ask questions. Additionally, each participant was provided with a written description of the study. All students, school staff members, and educators provided their individual written consent to participate in the study. All names are pseudonyms in this article as well as in the digitalized field notes and transcribed interviews.

Qualification, socialization, and person-formation as theoretical and analytical approaches

The point of theoretical departure for this study was inspired by Alice Pettigrew’s intention to view TLH within the framework of ordinary educational systems’ policies and practices.⁴¹ Pettigrew braced against educational research on current educational policy and practice, which underlines the tendency to socialize students into norms and values, but in practice leaves little room for students to cultivate their own moral maturity.⁴² She argues that this tendency reasonably applies also to TLH’s norm- and valued-laden educational domain. Thus, she suggests that educational theorist Gert Biesta’s critical work on how present educational tendencies of measurement influence educational practices could be fruitful when discussing TLH.⁴³

The study design was informed by a theoretical model developed by Katrin Van Poeck and Leif Östman within the norm- and value-laden domain of environment and sustainability education (ESE).⁴⁴ Van Poeck and Östman, inspired by Biesta,⁴⁵ assert that all education has three fundamental dimensions, qualification, socialization, and person-formation. They identify the educational dimension of qualification as not just developing certain skills (e.g. reading and knowing the history of the Second World War), but also ‘enhancing students’ cultural and political literacy,’⁴⁶ preparing them to function as citizens in late modern society. The qualification dimension mainly relates to questions about the educational content that is taught and learned; in this study, it is analytically connected to the first research question.

With respect to the socialization dimension, Van Poeck and Östman emphasize that education always has a socializing effect in the sense that knowledge is transmitting values that are culturally and historically situated. In some domains (e.g. ESE and TLH), ‘socialization is foregrounded and actively pursued by teachers, educational institutions or educational policies’⁴⁷ with the intention to pursue students’ ‘initiation into democratic values and practices.’⁴⁸ When analyzing the socialization dimension, questions are posed related to the process of values, attitudes, and norms transmission. This study mainly focuses on the socializing dimension with respect to the second research question, particularly in the analysis of the SCAA project’s term, youth ambassador.

The third educational dimension, person-formation, centers on student’s agency to individually relate to educational content and experiences. Since person-formation is conceptualized more broadly than Biesta’s concept of subjectification in the model,⁴⁹ it is fruitful to operationalize person-formation to answer the study’s third research question. The concept, connected to the tradition of ‘Bildung,’ points to ‘personal growth’ processes, ‘critical thinking’ development, and ‘moral judgment.’⁵⁰ Person-formation overlaps with socialization through students’ identification with socialization discourse, and is also connected to the process when students relate educational content to their individual life, thus ‘being and becoming a person.’⁵¹ The conceptualization of person-formation includes students’ dis-identification with existing socialization discourses, subjectification; two forms are distinguished. The first, subjectification as perspective shifting, emphasizes critical thinking through students’ willingness ‘to discuss and discover options’⁵² within prevailing discourses. The second, subjectification as dismantling, is existential in character and occurs when students ‘are struck by poignant experience’⁵³ that dismantles the whole discursive practice.

The analytical procedure draws on Braun and Clark (2006) and their clarification of reflexive thematic analysis (TA):

Reflexive TA is not about following procedures ‘correctly’ (or about ‘accurate’ and ‘reliable’ coding, or achieving consensus between coders), but about the researcher’s reflective and thoughtful engagement with their data and their reflexive and thoughtful engagement with the analytic process.⁵⁴

Braun and Clarke emphasize both the importance of the researchers’ active role throughout the analytical process and the awareness of the ways and extent to which the analytical process was theoretically informed.⁵⁵

The analysis of the SCAA project’s three educational dimensions was informed by epistemological claims linked to critical realism, where learning outcomes in terms of students’ conceptual understanding depend foremost on teaching characterized by past events presented as an interplay between historical context, social structures, and historical characters’ agency.⁵⁶ Thereby, the analysis recognizes SCAA’s intention to didactically appreciate different kinds of actors during the Holocaust.

In the first analytical phase, a preliminary analysis was conducted to distinguish how the theoretical model’s three dimensions could apply to the students’ interviews. This process resulted in generating different datasets of what students shared in relation to the model’s three dimensions. In other words, the datasets were thematically categorized by qualification, socialization, and person-formation. The teacher and educator interviews were similarly categorized. Some of the material was placed in a fourth theme labeled not relevant. It should be noted that this phase meant not only that the themes were theoretically generated, but also generated as ‘latent,’ not ‘semantic’ themes.⁵⁷ The field notes were then preliminarily analyzed with respect to educational situations in which the three datasets were respectively more conspicuous. Consequently, some of the extracts in the not relevant category were incorporated within the three other datasets.

The second phase carefully scrutinized the educators’ interviews and the collected written material to generate teaching themes relevant to the research questions. The subthemes of the three overarching themes (presented below) were modified by rereading students’ interviews and triangulating them with the field notes. The field notes contributed foremost to identifying didactic conditions for situations to which the themes were related.

The third phase involved the selection of dataset extracts to challenge the themes. This process led to the refinement of the subthemes’ wording. Additionally, four subthemes pertaining to interpreting students’ understanding of why the Holocaust happened were condensed to three.

The thematic analytical process was characterized by a recurring commute between the specific educational content and students’ responses to that content. However, the overarching analytical aim was to generate themes from the perspective of the entire project as an educational activity related to the three theoretical concepts developed by Van Poeck and Östman. Thus, in the following presentation of the analysis, the quotes are foremost displayed to illustrate the analysis of the material. Hence, the presentation of data reflects the material through the lens of these three concepts.

Presenting the data – the SCAA project viewed as qualification, socialization, and person-formation

The qualifying dimension permeated the project, which is why the first analytical section is the largest of the three main sections. The first main section is divided into two subsections, named The question of what and The question of why. This is followed by the second main section, an analysis of the socialization dimension. Finally, the person-formation dimension data are presented in the third main section.

Understanding the Holocaust: the qualification dimension

From the outset of the project, both the educators and students articulated the Holocaust as a historical process that poses extraordinary intellectual challenges for students to comprehend. In the pre-interviews, students emphasized that they expected the forthcoming study trip to extend their understanding. The educators underlined that although the study trip was a significant didactical tool, it was but one part of the educational project. In particular, SCAA emphasized the importance of the preparation seminars:

The preparations are not so much about the facts, because we believe that the teachers convey that. It is more about creating, not feeling, for the students, some kind of understanding of the scope of the Holocaust. Not just how many people died, but what did it mean for the society? What did it mean for the Jewish community? What does it mean for individuals, for individual families who have their lives broken? How could something like this happen? What was it, yes, what was it in society that made this possible?⁵⁸

The preparation seminars’ foremost intention was to contribute to students’ conceptual understanding of the Holocaust. Two overarching educational content themes could be generated from the questions in the quote, valid for the preparation seminars with the potential to provide students with qualified knowledge, not just historical facts. According to the field notes, these two themes were then elaborated on throughout the study trip. One theme was what the Holocaust was, and the other was why the Holocaust happened. The qualifying dimension analysis starts with how the former theme was didactically elaborated and how students’ understanding of that theme can be interpreted.

The question of what: to appreciate Jewish pre-war life and its remains

To comprehend the value of the lives affected and destroyed during the Holocaust, SCAA emphasized the importance of what Jewish traditions and life could be like. However, in students’ minds, the project was about visiting concentration and death camps. After the study trip, one student reflected on her expectations before the trip ‘The only thing I had in my head was that we should go to Auschwitz and Birkenau.'⁵⁹

The first two days were spent in Krakow, where the group visited the old town to illustrate the first Jewish settlements; they also visited the former Jewish quarter, Kazimierz, and the former Jewish ghetto. The guiding educator provided detailed historical facts connected to the sites and read and narrated testimonies. In the field interviews, students emphasized how the testimonies helped them to relate to Jewish life. According to one student ‘in the town one mostly walked around and ‘well, here they were.’ One has not taken it in.’⁶⁰ Students still thought ‘when it will finally be about Auschwitz. That is what one has longed for.’⁶¹

However, SCAA had specific intentions with respect to students’ ability to conceptualize Jewish pre-war life with the third day’s visit to the small town of Rabka, situated just over an hour by bus south of Krakow. During the Holocaust, a special SS school was set up in Rabka where recruits were trained in oppression and murder methods. Rabka’s small Jewish community and Jews from surrounding areas were murdered as part of the training.⁶² In the interview after the study trip, one educator commented on the visit:

Many build expectations for Auschwitz, they have read about Auschwitz. / … / Then Rabka comes from nowhere, they have never heard of it. In the middle of the forest. And there, things get serious. In one way. So, I usually say that Rabka, for many students according to my experience, perhaps is the most powerful site of them all.⁶³

The educator underlined the didactical weight of Rabka as an unknown site for students, in contrast to their perceptions of Auschwitz as the prime representation of the Holocaust.

According to the field notes, at the staircase that is today the only remains of the synagogue in Rabka, students, for the first time during a site visit, spontaneously engaged in the pedagogical activity. Most students explored the site by searching for signs of Jewish life remains. However, the pedagogical atmosphere among students was still cautious, and they did not openly express any personal reflections to the group, for example, on their moral or existential impressions. Nor were they given any specific task to encourage reflections on these issues. Instead, students’ conclusions were expressed in short field interviews on different occasions during the day:

After the Holocaust, there was no one left that could take care of the old cemetery.⁶⁴

The emptiness. A whole cultural history is missing here.⁶⁵

Furthermore, it is worth noting that moral conclusions included students themselves since they indicated present responsibility:

It feels like if we should have helped to keep after the cemetery. /---/ I mean, we who are not Jews.⁶⁶

It is important that we are here. It is like Eva says, as long as we tell the stories about them, they are here. If we do not tell their stories, we do the same thing as the Nazis.⁶⁷

We can help the Jews to get their history heard.⁶⁸

‘Emptiness’ is meaningful to express in relation to the concept of ‘what has been,’ and it is reasonable to conclude that, by contrast, the many hours spent in Krakow the days before informed students’ words with what had been in Rabka.

Thus, the analysis points to the fact that one didactic strategy first involved emphasizing educational content related to the subtheme to appreciate pre-war Jewish life. This was a precondition for students’ attribution of profound meaning to the second subtheme its remains. Additionally, a didactic strategy of unexpectedness was applied when visiting Rabka, to counter students’ concept of Auschwitz as the dominant representation of the Holocaust. This strategy was successful in the sense that students spontaneously brought up Rabka during the post-trip interviews as the most poignant place to visit per se. Above all, the analysis suggests that the strategies helped students conceptualize the Holocaust, not solely as a process of destruction, but also as a loss manifested as present material absence in small places other than death camps. Hence, students were morally engaged in relation to the educational content. This may have been challenging for students; however, another overarching theme, why the Holocaust happened, was more challenging.

The question of why: to appreciate antisemitism and the perpetrators’ agency

At the preparation seminar, considerable time was devoted to a lecture about antisemitism to frame the question of why the Holocaust happened. The lecture presented both the long European history of antisemitic expressions and a thorough examination of the concept itself. The lecture was followed by a presentation of how the Third Reich propaganda underlined antisemitic stereotypes. According to the educators, SCAA’s general experience of students’ scarce knowledge about antisemitism motivated its prominent position.⁶⁹ The analysis of students’ relation to antisemitism confirms SCAA’s experience:

Honestly, I did not know what antisemitism was. Last spring, when the word antisemitism appeared, I was just: ‘What is that?’ I did not know anything about it. /---/ What they told us at the preparation seminars. That it [antisemitism] went on since earlier. Since old times it came to the Second World War, that it was the Jews’ fault that there was an economic crisis.⁷⁰

The quoted student, interviewed after the study trip, not only noted his ignorance before the SCAA project, but he also deployed the knowledge as a resource to give a causal explanation for the persecution of Jews.

Aside from antisemitism, the educator prioritized focus on the tangible perpetrators in the project in relation to the why question:

To take down some basic psychological, or social psychological mechanisms, and explain them at a level that works / … / Because there is a question left growing inside them [the students]: ‘Why did people do like this?’ And we saw that, I should say, in the logbooks, we often see the huge question: ‘How could this happen?’ Or: ‘What made people able to do these things?’ And to enter that place and start scratching the surface and challenge the students a bit, I think that is very important.⁷¹

Most often, the emphasized question was raised by students in field interviews, notably not during the visits to the Auschwitz-Birkenau state museum or immediately afterward. Once again, the visit to Rabka turned out to be the most challenging for students’ conceptions; the event that the students chiefly related to the perpetrators was the visit to the former SS training school for guards in Rabka.

The educational content focusing on the perpetrator was outlined as follows: the guiding educator presented the school’s historical context, and then led the group to a ravine where the SS recruits were trained to shoot Jewish prisoners. Deliberately limiting graphic details, she told students about the shooting range’s function and then turned to perspectives on the perpetrators’ agency. She explicitly stated that no perpetrators who refused to shoot were killed, nor were their families punished. Additionally, she related an episode of mass killing executed by the German Reserve Police Battalion 101 during the Holocaust. Only a few of around 500 men refused to participate in the mass killing of around 1,500 Jews, although the men were offered other duties.⁷² Then, the educator, for the first and only occasion throughout the study trip’s many site visits, urged students to form small groups to discuss a question: Why did so few refrain from participating? The discussions were brief, given the challenging question, but also because students were unfamiliar with the didactical form at a site visit. The group answers were short and no discussion followed. Instead, the educator herself had to present peer pressure as a key factor to facilitate an understanding of how the perpetrators used their agency.

The analysis of students’ understanding, after the study trip, of how to explain the perpetrators’ actions generated three themes, the first of which was termed brainwashed Hitler-robots:

I think that most of the perpetrators, that is about propaganda. Many young SS-soldiers were brainwashed by the propaganda, as they [the educators] told us at the preparation seminars. /---/ How they [the SS-men] learned that in school. Those soldiers had learned it … from a young age. Of course, they hated the Jews. /---/ I have thought of that many times during the trip. That is why it happened. That is exactly what I think, it was an order. It came from Hitler; he gave the order to the SS-soldiers to do this.⁷³

The quoted student referred to what he learned at the preparation seminars about the long tradition of antisemitism. The quote also shows that students learned that propaganda effects are a matter of temporal endurance and the age of those exposed to it. However, the structuring role of antisemitic propaganda became dominant in how to understand causality. Students used the word ‘brainwashed’ and did not include the tangible perpetrators’ situational agency, presented by the educator in Rabka. Therefore, the potential to construct a multicausal explanation as an interplay between structures and agents was reduced. Hence, conceptions of Hitler’s absolute power displaced the tangible perpetrators’ agency within this theme.

Victimized perpetrators was the second generated theme:

Most of them [the perpetrators] grew up with, for example, Jews being in a certain way, they were hardly human, they were not worth anything. / … / They [the perpetrators] can also be victims in a way, even though they did this horrible thing. It feels like they may have been forced or they may have thought that they would be treated the same way. / … / I think it is as important to think of them as it is to think of the victims. In a way, I think, they also may have been victims.⁷⁴

As in the former quote, the structuring role of antisemitic propaganda was recognized. However, situational conditions were added to explain the tangible perpetrators’ actions; in the students’ views, they had no real choice to refrain from shooting because they acted out of fear for their own lives. According to the field notes, when the educator in Rabka stated that no perpetrators who refused to shoot were killed, it was the only time when this historical fact was mentioned throughout the project. Nor did any student ask her to elaborate on the statement. For some students, this single opportunity to process the information was clearly not enough. Thus, when trying to understand the causes for the Holocaust, students concluded that perpetrators became victims.

The third generated theme, peer pressure and conformity, centers the individual in relation to social dynamics:

Probably, it was almost none of the SS-soldiers who wanted to do this and thought that ‘this is kind of right.’ I do not think so. There is probably a lot of peer pressure and a fear, and you feel compelled when you see others do it, that ‘maybe this is right.’⁷⁵

The comment emphasizes understanding perpetrators as persons with subjective opinions. Fear is linked to perpetrators’ fear of not being part of the group rather than their fear of formal punishment. Within this theme, tangible perpetrators are not viewed as victims, and neither are their actions explained by a sadistic character. Instead, perpetrators’ deeds are understood as an interplay between subjects’ agency and social structures.

The analysis demonstrates that the educators’ overarching didactic strategy, to present antisemitism and national socialism propaganda as prominent educational content at the outset of the project, supported students to apply them as a framing phenomenon when reasoning about the perpetrators’ agency after the study trip. The analysis also shows that understanding grassroots social dynamics requires a complex intellectual process, indicated by the intensity of students’ intellectual struggle to understand the tangible perpetrators’ state of mind and the psychological processes connected to mass killing actions. Sometimes, all the themes lingered in one and the same student’s reasoning. Thus, SCAA’s intention to challenge students’ conceptions of ‘what made people able to do these things’⁷⁶ was appreciated by students.

Toward person-formation? The socialization dimension

At the preparation seminars, the didactical forms were set on transferring knowledge from the SCAA to students via lectures. Students questioned neither the content nor the didactical form. According to the field notes, the lecture was then maintained as the dominant form throughout all site visits during the study trip and constituted how the group related to the sites: either education was happening as a guided tour when students listened to the educator, or education was not happening. Hence, very few open group discussions occurred, and none were initiated by the students themselves. One of the participating teachers remarked:

If you think about it, if you planned teaching for a week, you would not have so much information without discussion. In the evenings, the discussions become a bit superficial, you have left the site.⁷⁷

With few exceptions, students’ personal reflections were not expressed in the logbooks, nor were they uttered in discussions during site visits or at the evening sessions, according to the field notes. The reflections quoted in this article were expressed as a result of intervention by the interviewer.

Two tenets of the educational settings may have restrained the development of an open pedagogical climate. First, that students came from different school classes may have hampered an open discussion, perhaps due to the students not being used to socializing with students outside their own class in an unfamiliar learning environment. Second, the educators’ brief previous acquaintance with the students may have been an obstacle to unfolding discussions. Therefore, the potential for students to actively engage in education was reduced, which most likely contributed to why norms and values embedded in the knowledge were not problematized. Educators’ references to students’ experiences were rare, and students themselves did not express any of their personal experiences to the group.

As the project unfolded, it became clear that transmitting and receiving large quantities of knowledge were given priority throughout the project, at the expense of unpacking the socializing norms and values connected to the knowledge. SCAA’s message to students was that the conveyed knowledge qualified them to take up a specific task as a youth ambassador. However, to be accepted as a participant, students had to possess certain abilities:

Above all, to strengthen young people and strengthen what is inside young people about justice and democracy, the equal value of all people and so on. /---/ And it should be students who want to learn about these issues. /---/ Our aim is not to change, but to strengthen the interest they already have.⁷⁸

From the educator’s perspective, the project’s purpose was not to socialize students into norms and values, since students’ adherence to these values was a prerequisite for participating in the project. Democracy and human rights were almost entirely neglected as elements of the educational content throughout the project. Therefore, opportunities to challenge students’ conceptions of democracy, or encourage students to express and discuss their conceptions, were not didactically nourished. Consequently, questions of values and moral dilemmas were not posed to students to unpack the underlying values of the conveyed knowledge about the Holocaust.

Instead, socialization concerned the process of becoming a youth ambassador, although the meaning of the concept was expressed in a general manner. The school staff interpreted SCAA’s term, youth ambassador, which had some bearing on how to prioritize applicants:

Being ambassadors, it has quite a lot to do with having generally good behavior. They are nice to friends; they already have a certain status. /---/ [T]hey are all interested in human rights and to be nice to friends.⁷⁹

Similar to the educators, the school staff, who interviewed some of the applicants before accepting them for the project, regarded students’ adherence to democratic values and interest in human rights as a prerequisite for participating. According to interviews with the school staff, one conspicuous aim for inviting SCAA to conduct the project was to counter neo-Nazi expressions that existed from time to time at the schools.⁸⁰ Thus, the school’s intention was to entrust students with a certain responsibility. This sheds light on why social skills were added, in terms of students’ ability to act as a positive role model, to the interpretation of what it meant to be a youth ambassador.

At the end of the follow-up seminar, as part of the research project (and not the SCAA project, which was made clear to the students), they were asked by the author to write about their interpretations of the term youth ambassador:

What I think is the main thing we should spread, is what is right or wrong when it comes to words that you just blurt out without thinking.⁸¹

It feels good to be able to tell other school classes what you have been through and what many during the Holocaust were involved in.⁸²

For me, this means that I, as an ambassador, must spread information and facts about the Holocaust … to people around me so that this will not happen again and will not be forgotten.⁸³

The analysis of student interpretations generated three themes. The first, protecting democratic values, expresses students’ responsibility to promote democratic values and prevent violations, as in the first comment. With respect to the school staff’s interpretation of a youth ambassador as a role model for other students, the theme harmonized the interpretations of the school staff and the students. As in the second comment, the willingness to act as a youth ambassador was connected to the experiences of the study trip. The third comment illustrates two themes that are relevant in relation to the socialization dimension of the knowledge conveyed and perceived. First, historical knowledge is a safeguard, a belief that historical knowledge can be applied to prevent history from repeating itself. Second, knowledge is memory, a conviction that historical knowledge is a prerequisite for, and at the core of memory.

Of note, when explicitly asked in the interviews afterward to elaborate on the three themes, students were unable to do so, although they connected qualified knowledge about the Holocaust to being qualified to protect democratic values. This sheds light on the SCAA project’s socialization dimension. First, the educators chose not to challenge students’ understanding of democratic values. Therefore, students were not likely to be more qualified to protect democratic values after the project than before, although students themselves interpreted the mission as protecting democratic values. However, the project’s emphasis on knowledge about the Holocaust was connected to the role of becoming an ambassador. Thus, students were socialized into a belief that knowledge about the Holocaust meant being able to defend democratic values. Second, the many opportunities in relation to educational content to pose moral and existential questions were not used. Markedly, the reason for focusing on the perpetrator was not made explicit. Therefore, the potential to pose questions or present reflection tasks that would provide students an opening to discuss the inherent values of national socialism was not used. This meant that students were implicitly socialized into a norm of rejecting rather than discussing the values of national socialism. Above all, the didactical efforts intended to strengthen something that was already supposed to be present. Thus, students were unable to elaborate on themes founded on values they already subscribed to from the beginning of the project.

At the follow-up seminar the last slide presented to students read:

Now you have knowledge that no one can take away from you! Remember that you can make a difference! You are unique – sent by the government on a mission! But above all, you are now also: Part of the SCAA-family!⁸⁴

Accompanied by applause, students then individually received their certificates for participating in the project, which concluded SCAA’s intervention.

Education or more than that? The person-formation dimension

Clearly, students’ personal engagement in relation to socialization values was not didactically focused on within the project. However, according to the analyzed material, the expectations of students’ personal growth as a consequence of participating were expressed by educators:

When we leave students after the education program, they should feel that they can make an impact, know about their role; when talking about democracy, there were some students now who said, which was interesting, actually: ‘Now my voice, I understand that my voice is important.’⁸⁵

In the quote, the educator commented on students’ individual engagement as citizens. Such an engagement is a consequence of individual students’ self-confidence and perception of being able to act, which the project aimed to encourage. Furthermore, the school staff members shared in pre-interviews specifically about the study trip’s social aspects as a means for students’ personal growth through the forthcoming SCAA project:

This trip and this social company can help the student grow, and gain self-confidence and self-esteem. /---/ That they are confident enough in themselves to step forward and contribute.⁸⁶

According to the quoted school staff member, sufficient self-confidence was not only what he wished that the students may strengthen, but it was also a prerequisite for individual students’ growth through the SCAA project. This eschews what the analysis showed about the school staff’s intent for participating students to be role models. However, the comment is connected to individual student’s personal growth and should be viewed in the light of the school staff’s pre-existing relationship with students, and their engagement in students’ future education and life prospects. Additionally, the school staff agreed with the importance of intellectual space for individuals to independently process the educational content.⁸⁷

Person-formation in terms of individual students identifying with socialization themes were common throughout the project. Since this study did not follow students in their daily life after the study trip, no observations or field interviews could identify any eventual person-formation events as a consequence of the study trip. Therefore, the analysis relies on the student’s own judgment of perceived personal change expressed in the interviews after the study trip, and written reflections on questions posed by the author at the end of the follow-up seminar. The analysis generated three themes, the first was termed life-long memory:

Now I have told for example my mother what I think and have thought of. I will even bring this with me to my children. /---/ [S]o, of course, I will take my children there so they can see what I got to see. /---/ It will stay with me all my life.⁸⁸

Some students planned to invite people close to them to share their experiences after the study trip.⁸⁹ This way of relating to personal change is existential, in terms of how the visited memorial sites are credited with conveying certain insights. However, overlooked by students, it is also an effect of students’ intention to experience a transformation, informed by the forthcoming moment of sharing. In the quote, the student refers to seeing and remembering the sites. Within this theme of person-formation, the transmission of memory in a concrete way, as ‘telling’ and ‘showing,’ is conspicuous.

The second theme, emancipation, starts with the individual student but turns to all humans:

It feels like I kind of feel stronger as a person, that is, I stand up for who I am, better now after the trip. I kind of feel like I want to, I think everyone should be allowed to be who they are. And that you should always be allowed to think what you think. And feel what you feel. You should kind of be free.⁹⁰

Within this theme, students articulated a sense of strength as persons, which is different in relation to who they were before the study trip. These students did not explicitly refer to the site visits. Instead, they attributed their change to the study trip. Whether they referred to the social company, the experience of being abroad, or insights from the conveyed knowledge was not clear. As in the quote, the interpretation of this change is articulated as identification with certain values of all humans’ right to freely express their identities. The theme also underlines that everyone should have the opportunity to go on a study trip such as the one conducted by SCAA.

The third theme, adding knowledge relates to person-formation in a distanced way. When asked about personal change, one student shared:

No, not really to be honest, because I had already before the trip shown respect and not joked about this. Because it was terrible, of course. But of course, after the trip, you have more opinions about this than you had before. But not like it changed me greatly, because I had heard a little about this before.⁹¹

The expression ‘to be honest’ indicates the student’s expectations of more profound personal changes, which he said he did not experience. The student commented that he acquired ‘more opinions,’ hence connecting the experiences to his own judgment. However, most reflections within this theme avoided a personal stance by using their acquisition of ‘more knowledge’⁹² when reflecting on personal changes.

In terms of subjectification as dismantling, the field notes showed no poignant moment that disrupted the discursive practice. Only one moment with this potential occurred in a field interview with three students. One student spoke about visits to Auschwitz: ‘it is their resting place. I think it is wrong that people go there all the time.’⁹³ However, her two friends immediately argued against this point, and she withdrew from the position. With respect to subjectification as perspective shifting, it was most present in relation to students’ reasoning about the tangible perpetrators. As mentioned earlier, this was because of the interviewer’s intervention, rather than a consequence of a persistent didactical strategy to encourage students to actively discuss how to understand the issue.

Conclusions and discussion

Clearly, the scope of the qualifying dimension largely framed the project. SCAA’s ambition meant intellectual challenges with respect to conceptual understandings of the ‘what’ and ‘why’ questions, and building on corroborated facts, which students appreciated and struggled with. Almost exclusively, Holocaust knowledge was intended to qualify students to become youth ambassadors, not to elaborate reasoning and self-reflection about democratic values and human rights, despite SCAA’s description of the program.

From the outset, the socialization values connected to the conveyed knowledge were not didactically addressed. Therefore, a seemingly secure foundation of presumed shared values was established between the participants. This was sufficient for the didactical strategies applied to conceptualize the question of what the Holocaust was.

However, in relation to the ‘why’ question’s aspect of the tangible perpetrators, the applied strategies were less fruitful. One important reason for this was that students never had to discuss the national socialism-distorted logic of moral values since not even students’ own moral values had to be expressed or discussed. Additionally, the educational settings may have been an obstacle; given the lack of previous relationships between the educators and students, and foremost between the students themselves, the pedagogical climate did not develop enough trust for students to express deviating opinions or doubts.

Consequently, person-formation, was not addressed purposely; nor was undermining students’ personal stances. Person-formation in terms of students’ identifying with socialization discourses, was an effect of each student’s own work since the educational settings and didactical forms did not encourage engaged discussions. For some students, person-formation processes were hardly triggered. For others, participating in the project including a study trip had profound meaning, as becoming a part of a larger community of memory connected to having been at Holocaust memorial sites. Reasonably, such person-formation strengthened students’ self-confidence with respect to their performance as ambassadors at their schools.

In this project, students were not required to achieve a qualified understanding of democracy, which would have risked bringing controversial issues to the surface. Whether this conclusion has bearing on all projects within the SCAA program was beyond the scope of this research.

Turning to the findings of this study, they are relevant for practitioners and further research, particularly on study trips as an educational method.

First, the educational value of visiting sites unknown to students should be considered by teachers and educators who focus on well-known Holocaust memorial sites during study trips. In this study, the unexpected meeting with unknown sites encouraged students to reconceptualize the Holocaust. The study indicates that the presentation of unknown sites offers a potential to move beyond students’ narrow connection between the Holocaust and death camps. However, exposing students to the unexpected is a critical moment that arguably should be didactically appreciated. What educational settings and didactical forms cherish the unexpected, particularly the potential to nourish person-formation?

Second, in contrast to the tendency to focus on victims during study trips, the SCAA project also focused on perpetrators. The educators let students encounter explanatory approaches related to antisemitism and sociopsychological mechanisms. In the study, knowledge about antisemitism turned out to be central to students’ explanations of the ‘why’ question, while sociopsychological mechanisms connected to the perpetrators were harder to grasp. In relation to previous research, the findings point to fundamental aspects of study trips as an educational method: How to address the ‘why’ question at atrocity sites? If tangible perpetrators are focused, why and how could it be done?

Third, as shown in previous study trips research, the SCAA project created spatial dichotomies as a resource for didactical strategies. However, spatial dichotomies were primarily connected to education versus free time, not to values of good or evil. Thereby, the projects’ knowledge-centered intentions became emphasized. However, few moral stances and emotions were expressed by students. Thus, how can knowledge be kept at the center of teaching and learning while allowing moral perspectives and emotions to contribute?

Fourth, previous research demonstrates the significance of Swedish TLH democratic framing.⁹⁴ According to the theoretical point of departure for this study, education is never norm- and value-neutral. Thus, socialization and person-formation processes were occurring in the project whether or not they were consciously deployed by the educators. The project was linked to creating youth ambassadors, and framing the SCAA program with democracy discourse. This provides students the opportunity of being socialized into a democratic community. Thus, one might ask: what about the students who did not apply to the project?

The question warrants why it would be fruitful for future research to focus on the tension between the democratic framing of TLH practice and exclusion mechanisms with respect to program applicant selection processes. This is relevant for TLH research beyond the Swedish context and beyond the practice of study trips. Educational programs offered to students by museums and NGOs as part of their ordinary schooling are certainly not only about effectively transmitting knowledge. With respect to current educational policies’ awarding knowledge that could be comparably easy to measure with surveys,⁹⁵ there are incentives for prioritizing the qualifying dimension of education. However, a prerequisite for smooth intervention is that participating students’ commitment to democracy is clear from the outset, so that knowledge could be transmitted without controversy. This means that students who are well-adapted to ordinary educational systems are likely to be selected for external programs. Thus, future research could shed light on the unintended consequences of democratically framed programs.

This study indicates that research on these programs should consider how external organizers risk to overlook the socialization and person-formation dimensions. If the high expectations of TLH practices, based on the assumption that the Holocaust as a historical event inherits certain potentials to pose existential and moral questions to students, the socialization and person-formation dimensions of education should be attended to, without opting out of the value of corroborated knowledge.

Finally, the study points to a dilemma within TLH practices that is salient for study trips. SCAA’s programs, as do other organizations’ programs, involve educators who have expertise but no pre-existing relationships with students. Students’ teachers have precisely these relationships, but no expertise. Since the programs’ educators cannot have pre-existing relationships, but the teachers can develop expertise, there is an argument for further developing teachers’ expertise and experience with complex educational methods, such as study trips to Holocaust memorial sites.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author received financial support from Stiftelsen Natur och Kultur under grant number [802000-3813] for the research, and authorship for this manuscript.

Notes on contributors

Ola Flennegård

Ola Flennegård, author of the first report (2018), and of the first scientific studies (2021) on Swedish study trips to Holocaust memorial sites. Currently a PhD-student and teacher at the Segerstedt Institute, Gothenburg University (https://www.gu.se/en/segerstedt-Institute/about-us/staff).

Notes

1 Flennegård, Besöksmål Auschwitz, 24–5.

2 Ibid., 7.

3 Regeringskansliet, 2014.

4 Interview with “Eva,” educator.

5 Ibid.

6 Regeringskansliet, “Medel till Svenska kommittén mot Antisemitism,” author’s translation.

7 Regeringskansliet, “Ansökan från Svenska kommittén mot antisemitism;” Interview with “Eva,” educator.

8 Regeringskansliet, “Ansökan från Svenska kommittén mot antisemitism.”

9 Davies and Rubinstein-Avila, “Holocaust Education,” 156–8. The term teaching and learning about the Holocaust (TLH) will henceforth be used instead of the established term Holocaust education, because it is “refocusing attention to pedagogy.” Pearce, “Challenges, Issues and Controversies,” 7.

10 Riksdagen, “Anslag för skolresor till Auschwitz.”

11 Österberg, “Visits and Study Trips to Holocaust-Related Memorial Sites and Museums.”

12 Flennegård and Mattsson, “Teaching at Holocaust Memorial Sites.”

13 Flennegård and Mattsson, “Democratic Pilgrimage.”

14 Österberg, “Visits and Study Trips to Holocaust-Related Memorial Sites and Museums,” 247.

15 Eckmann and Stevick, “General Conclusions,” 287.

16 Bromley and Russell, “The Holocaust as History and Human Rights,” 168.

17 Carrier and Messinger, The International Status of Education About the Holocaust, 13–14.

18 Skolverket, Grundskolan. Kursplaner och betygskriterier, 77.

19 Foster et al., What Do Students Know; Pettigrew et al., Teaching About the Holocaust.

20 Lange, A Survey of Teachers’ Experiences and Perceptions, 95.

21 Wibaeus, “Att undervisa om det ofattbara,” 250.

22 Flennegård and Mattsson, “Teaching at Holocaust memorial sites,” 55.

23 Flennegård and Mattsson, “Democratic Pilgrimage,” 14.

24 Harding, “Nationalising Culture,” 359–60.

25 Feldman, Above the Death Pits, Beneath the Flag, 58.

26 Ben-Peretz and Shachar, “The Role of Experiential Learning in Holocaust Education,” 19–21.

27 Österberg, “Visits and Study Trips to Holocaust-Related Memorial Sites and Museums,” 260–1.

28 Feldman, Above the Death Pits, Beneath the Flag, 255.

29 Ibid., 77–92.

30 Fanjoy, “Learning in the ‘Land of Ashes’.”

31 Ibid., 238.

32 Ibid., 147–53.

33 Alba, “‘Here There Is No Why’ – So Why Do We Come Here?” 134.

34 Kverndokk, “Pilegrim, turist og elev,” 165–7.

35 Ibid., 265.

36 Kverndokk, “Resan till ondskan,” 79, author’s translation; emphasis in original.

37 Cowan and Maitles, “We Saw Inhumanity Close Up,” 180–1.

38 Ibid., 172, 181.

39 Ibid., 164.

40 Hammersley and Atkinson, Ethnography: Principles in Practice, 93.

41 Pettigrew, “Why Teach or Learn About the Holocaust?”

42 Ibid., 269.

43 Ibid., 282.

44 Van Poeck and Östman, “Sustainable Development Teaching.”

45 Biesta, Good Education in an Age of Measurement.

46 Van Poeck and Östman, “Sustainable Development Teaching,” 60.

47 Ibid., 61.

48 Ibid., 61.

49 Ibid., 62–5.

50 Ibid., 62.

51 Håkansson, Östman and Van Poeck, “The Political Tendency in Environmental and Sustainability,” 103.

52 Ibid., 104.

53 Ibid.

54 Braun and Clarke, “Reflecting on Reflexive Thematic Analysis,” 594.

55 Braun and Clarke, “Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology,” 83–4; “Reflecting on Reflexive Thematic Analysis,” 592.

56 Danermark, Ekström and Karlsson, Att förklara samhället, 131–3.

57 Braun and Clarke, “Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology,” 84–5.

58 Extract from interview with “Eva,” educator.

59 Extract from interview with “Ellen,” student.

60 Extract from field interview with “Inez,” student.

61 Ibid.

62 The Yad Vashem Encyclopedia of the Ghettos During the Holocaust, entry: Rabka, 627–8.

63 Extract from interview with “Erik,” educator.

64 Extract from field interview with “Wiktor,” student.

65 Extract from field interview with “Ludvig,” student.

66 Extract from field interview with “Ellen,” student.

67 Extract from field interview with “Engla,” student.

68 Extract from field interview with “Mira,” student.

69 Interview with “Eva,” educator.

70 Extract from interview with “Valter,” student.

71 Extract from interview with “Erik,” educator, emphasis added.

72 Browning, Ordinary Men, 72–4.

73 Extract from interview with “Valter,” student.

74 Extract from interview with “Julia,” student.

75 Extract from interview with “Anton,” student.

76 Extract from interview with “Erik,” educator.

77 Extract from field interview with “Marta,” school staff.

78 Extract from interview “Eva,” educator, emphasis added.

79 Extract from interview with “Daniella,” school staff.

80 Interview with “Hans,” school staff.

81 Extract from written answer by “Meja,” student.

82 Extract from written answer by “Anton,” student.

83 Extract from written answer by “Tove,” student.

84 Extract from field notes, SCAA-slide.

85 Extract from interview with “Erik,” educator.

86 Extracts from interview with “Rune,” school staff, emphasis added.

87 Interviews with “Hans”; “Elvira,” school staff.

88 Extract from interview with “Ellen,” student.

89 Extract from field interviews with “Ingrid”; “Engla,” students.

90 Extract from interview with “Julia,” student.

91 Extract from interview with “Valter,” student, emphasise added.

92 Extract from written answer by “Ludvig,” student.

93 Extract from field interview with “Julia,” “Ellen,” “Tove,” students.

94 Flennegård and Mattsson, “Democratic Pilgrimage,” 14; Flennegård and Mattsson, “Teaching at Holocaust Memorial Sites,” 55; Wibaeus, “Att undervisa om det ofattbara,” 250.

95 Biesta, Good Education in An Age of Measurement, 19–23.

Appendix. Follow-up questions about the SCAA project

The following questions are asked for research purposes. Your answers are treated in the same way as all other data in the research project.

1. It has been said that through the SCAA project you become a kind of ambassador. How do you interpret this? What does it mean to you?

2. During the SCAA project, many have spoken about the importance of disseminating the content of the project. How do you interpret that? What do you think should be disseminated and why?

3. Has the education you have been exposed to affected you as a person in any way? If so, how?