These essays and articles were written for an in-class assignment on the Significance of Artefacts in the Understanding of the Holocaust.

Students had to:

  • Describe in detail two artefacts from the Vancouver Holocaust Education Center (VHEC) that in their opinion are significant for understanding the Holocaust.
  • Give information about the objects chosen including how they were made, who made them and how they were used.
    • What did they cost?
    • What do we know about the role of the artefacts in people’s lives?
    • What do the two artefacts chosen symbolize?
  • Place the two artefacts within a specific context of the Holocaust and explain if their meaning has changed over time and how.
  • Connect artefacts to relevant sections of the readings.
  • Include how an artefact can become a sustainable object of ‘cultural heritage’ and thus a so-called cultural asset in understanding the Holocaust.

Students interested in participating in this website project gave permission for their work to be published under the open copyright license on this site.

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Thank You

The OER Application Rapid Innovation Grant awarded to me helped me and my students who are partners in this project make available their scholarship as part of an open education resource. Through this project, I wanted to convey to students that their scholarship is viewed as important and that they can share their research with others in society.

I wish to thank the Vancouver Holocaust Education Center (VHEC) for allowing us to use their collection of artefacts for research purposes.

I am also very grateful for all the support given to me by the OER team including Erin Fields (Open Education and Scholarly Communications Librarian) at UBC Library and Will Engle (Strategist, Open Education Initiatives) at CTLT. I also wish to thank the UBC Library for making available the material required for the course on Library Course Online Reserves (LOCR). Special thanks to Keith Bunnell, Reference and Collections Librarian, Humanities & Social Sciences Division at Koerner Library for his support.