Echoes and Reflections Today

Welcome to Echoes and Reflections Today, a quarterly e-newsletter to keep educators informed about new materials and new ideas for use with Echoes and Reflections.   

Strategies for Utilizing the Echoes and Reflections Biographic Profiles

The eyewitness testimony excerpts that are woven into each lesson generally represent only a single experience or moment within a larger life story and a broader historical context. By utilizing the featured eyewitnesses’ Biographic Profiles, teachers can simultaneously broaden students’ understanding of witnesses’ lives and the times in which they lived. 

The Biographic Profiles have many potential classroom applications. 

• After viewing a testimony excerpt, have students view the corresponding profile online—complete with interactive links—or provide it as a handout. Ask students to use the dates and events contained in the biography to create a witness timeline to show where life and history intersected.
• Assign a student or group of students the profile of an interviewee whose testimony will be shown in class the next day or in the near future. Instead of  the teacher introducing the interviewee before showing the clip, students can introduce the individual to the class.
• Provide a variety of biographies to students so they can examine a range of experiences that transpired around a fixed historical event or common experience. How does Anton Mason’s experience following liberation compare to that of David Abrams and Malka Baran?
• Ask students to map individual journeys during the Holocaust to see where these journeys may have intersected or diverged. For example, have students demonstrate how England became a war-time destination for John Graham, Margaret Lambert, Esther Clifford, and Henry Laurant.

Utilizing the Biographic Profiles in such ways not only meets several state and national standards, but also gives students a unique opportunity to see how lives both influence and are influenced by the times in which they are lived.

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For more information visit the Echoes and Reflections Web site or send us an email.

Echoes and Reflections is a joint project of ADL, the USC Shoah Foundation Institute, and Yad Vashem.