4 . In one of your books , Auschwitz Explained to My Child ( 1999 ), you explain how the questions your daughter put to you were the same ones you asked yourself , but in other terms , questions that endeavour to explain how the Jewish genocide was possible . The world of education does the vital job of passing on the history and memory of the Shoah to new generations . In your opinion , what are the biggest difficulties these new generations face and what tools can they rely on to overcome them ?
In this short book published in 1999 , which is still used and has been translated into some twenty languages , I gave a history lesson intended for thirdyear students in conversational format . My daughter Mathilde gave her input ; her rereading made it possible to elucidate what teenagers found difficult to understand . I also grouped together my students ’
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4 . Can we “ explain ” to a child what remains , in part , enigmatic ? How do you get a young girl to understand today that the Nazis spent so much energy going to the four corners of Europe and exterminating millions of men , women and children , simply because they were Jews ? | Seuil , 1999 questions ( I taught for twenty years in schools and secondary schools before joining the CNRS [ French National Centre for Scientific Research ]). Teachers today face the same challenges – teaching history – in very different situations . The first element is obviously the passage of time . Students will no longer touch the number tattooed on the forearm of an Auschwitz survivor . Young people today have grandparents born after the Second World War , and what it was is no longer passed on in families . Taking the case of France , in particular the Paris region , many students come from non-European geographical areas that were not affected by the Second World War , or barely so . Lastly , the virtuous years , those that go from the fall of communism to the attack on the Twin Towers are behind us . In those years , the idea of a worldwide victory of democracy and human rights was widespread and the teaching of the history of the Shoah was an
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5 . “ We knew . The world had heard about it . But so far none of us had seen it . It ’ s like we ’ ve finally stepped inside the very folds of this evil heart .” | instrument . Since then , other subjects have come into the field of history and memory , notably slavery and colonisation , with a new lexicon ( the emergence of words such as “ racialised ”, “ decolonial ”, “ cancel culture ” and , just recently , “ woke ”).
INTERVIEW
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