International Educational Conference Post-conference publication | Page 57

It allows people to learn and access information in a different way while they still have the opportunity to choose to put the phone or the tablet down and experience it in both ways through walking, through seeing, through talking to somebody that they are there with,

to ask them questions, and also having the chance to listen or read in places that they feel moved to do so. So, I think that the hybrid nature of place and optional technology is for me potentially really powerful. - Dr. Jennifer Rich

 

For Dr. Maria Zalewska, remembrance goes hand in hand with forgetting. People have

a tendency to forget quickly, and it is often said that oral history fades within just three generations. Of course, it is somewhat different when it comes to the Holocaust, but it truly compels us to consider memory as a project. It demands commitment, planning, budgeting, and structure, as nobody simply remembers, especially when it comes to Holocaust remembrance. We must ask why and who is responsible for remembering.

When we are thinking about visiting the site, we are thinking about individuals and their experiences; we are shifting the conversation from the institutional framework and the responsibility of remembering to how people are remembering. They make a choice to come here and visit, but what happens after their visit? Again, going back to that notion of media literacy, the way they visit the site is often still mediated. They walk with their cell phones, and they take selfies. I once wrote an article called Selfies in Auschwitz. I was driven to write that article by that moralizing impulse to say, “Oh my gosh, this is so wrong!"

Dr. Maria Zalewska, photo: Press Office