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21 Teaching through Words, Teaching through Silence Education after (and about) Auschwitz Reinhold Boschki Remembrance and education are closely related concepts. In some sense they are synonymous. If people have learned something they remember what others have told them or what they have read. After a process of learning students remember facts and stories, recollections of former events, tales of the past and his­ tori­ cal incidents. In short, students have learned at least some aspects of “tradition,” meaning teachings and tales that have been passed down for centuries or even longer. In an ideal world learners bring what they remember in close contact with their own life experience or make it part of their life-­ world and identity. In this light Elie Wie­ sel’s words, work, and message devoted to memory have had a tremendous educational impact. The book Night1 is the cornerstone of an opus magnum that—­ like an ellipse—­ has two foci: (1) the remembrance of the Shoah and (2) humanistic values for today’s world and for the future. The scope of his work thus encompasses both past and future. These two dimensions are central for any education, because young people must learn things that come from earlier times (language, writings , literature, his­ tori­ cal events, any form of tradition, art, music) in order to understand themselves and the world in the present and to be prepared for the future. In the remainder of this contribution I shall explore Wie­ sel’s writings in order to highlight aspects that are of educational relevance. Education as the Author’s Obsession The main argument for the educational relevance of Wie­ sel’s writings is the author’s self-­interpretation. He identifies himself as a teacher.2 The motif of the teacher is omnipresent in his work—­concerning himself as a witness, concerning fig­ures in his novels, or the rabbis and rebbes in talmudic and hasidic tradition that he reinterprets in the 243 244 | Reinhold Boschki shadow of the Shoah. In his chapter “Learning and Teaching” in the sec­ ond volume of his autobiography, Wie­ sel quotes the Talmud: “To quote a Talmudic sage (Rabbi Hanina, according to the Tractate of Taanit, or Rabbi Yehuda Ha-­ Nasi, according to the Tractate of Malkot): I have learned a great deal from my masters, but I have learned much more from my colleagues, and above all I have learned from my pupils.”3 Not only in his position as a university teacher does Wie­ sel address young people. Youth is linked to remembrance and education. In an interview he emphasizes: The two are the same: Education occurs through remembrance, and remembrance through education. Education implies remembrance. Without memory we could not study Goethe, Shakespeare, or Plato. Only while remembering Moses, Isaiah, or­ Buddha can I learn from them. I believe in remembrance more than anything else. I have more trust in education than in the work of politics or in the organized religions . I believe in young people, who are committing themselves, and who in Germany are confronting their past.4 The Leitmotif of the Witness The main educational emphasis is connected with Wie­sel’s concept of a witness. Whether willing or unwilling, the witness has a pedagogical role: “A witness is a link. A link between the event and the other person who has not participated in it. A witness is a link between past and present, between man and man, and man and God.”5 The motif of the witness can be found in his novels, essays, and religious writings.6 Indeed, the whole Jewish religious tradition shows the dominant role of witnesses. Wie­ sel understands the main biblical characters, the talmudic rabbis, and the hasidic masters as witnesses who teach us about human behavior and the relationship to God. Concerning the witnesses of the Shoah, the main question in Wie­ sel’s work is: How can the “message” of remembrance be transmitted? Is there a “message” at all? And is it at all possible to teach about the Holocaust? Could someone who has not been in that “Kingdom of Night” ever understand the testimony of the witnesses? Wie­ sel writes, “What he [the witness] hopes to transmit can never be transmitted. All he can possibly hope to achieve is to communicate the impossibility of communication.”7 Wie­ sel’s narrative strategy in confronting this “negative hermeneutics” of the Shoah is to use the leitmotif of silence. Mute characters, silent messengers, and communications without words are...

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