Themes
Narrative
The guided tour of the Mauthausen Memorial confronts the visitor with the question, how was it possible to murder one hundred thousand people in the midst of society, in a civilian environment. This question has developed into a major focus of the site's visit. The explicit underlying assumption of the tour's Narrative is that both perpetrators and victims were recruited from society, and without society's interest and active support the concentration camps would not exist. The guided tour's course is divided into three themes which coincide with the memorial's topography. The tour begins with the camp's environments, exposing its integration into society; it continues by looking into the camps staff, the SS, and closes with victims.
Interactive Sequences
The average time budgeted at a memorial site (ca. two hours), combined with the Mauthausen Memorial's size and its complex history allows for an average of some ten minutes for each of the tour's stations, or sequences. This demands an exceptionally well structured methodology. The educational challenge is in creating a setting which enables a discussion within the group on the meaning of the historical facts for us, the individuals standing today at this site. Standing with a group at one of the guided tour's stations is intended to unfold a compact workshop of some ten minutes. The use of source materials, the narrating of a context, the observation of the site and the posing of questions are the structural elements of such a workshop, such an interactive sequence.
Material
Historical source material plays an important role in narrating history. In order to help the visitor understand the historical reality source materials, texts or photographs are used throughout the guided tour. The texts are personal accounts, describing a scene or a situation in or around the concentration camp which the author witnessed. In so doing the author opens a small window into the past, a snapshot, enabling us to view the memorial's grounds with different eyes. A similar role is played by, e.g., an aerial photo taken by ally planes in March 1945. Having the historical source in one's hands reduces the participants' dependence on the guide as a source of knowledge and understanding. Historical material can be and should be interpreted. Visitors' unmediated ownership of a historical source puts him/her in a better position to think independently and negotiate its interpretation and meaning. Thus having it at ones disposal supports individual contending and interpretation of source material and through it interpreting history (and thus responsibility and empowerment of the individual participating).
Support
The educational work at memorial sites lacks norms and standardization. Whereas a school teacher, or a tourist guide, has to receive standardized formal education, guides at memorial sites do not. In the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights publication Human rights education at Holocaust memorial sites across the European Union: An overview of practices, based on an extensive research of memorials across Europe, the following statement appears (page 12): "…the success of visits to memorial sites and museums (is) linked primarily to the quality of the educational approach and the competence of the staff of the particular institution". The support for guides needs to address questions such as how do we learn from history? How do we combine between history and the dilemmas and needs of society today? How can we learn from atrocities and draw positive values out of them? How can we learn from traumatic events and draw positive values from them? How can we engender civic education through a visit to a memorial site? How can we teach educational staff to empower their students? What sorts of structures engender interaction among participants? What sort of structures engender reflection, and how can they be implemented?
Evaluation
Evaluating the impact of education is a complex matter. Assessing the level of knowledge, e.g. when did WW II begin, is relatively simple. Evaluating the integration of knowledge and the meanings students draw from information is much more difficult to assess. Better insight into the experience of visitors and the impact the visit did or did not have on them is needed. The current project thus aims to develop systematic evaluation, which will enable memorials to get a better insight into the experiences of visitors. The objective is to develop a simple and non-expensive tool relatively easy to implement, so that it may be applied by the memorial staff with a relatively humble investment.