{"id":63,"date":"2021-12-08T13:52:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-08T18:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/interview-micheal-sturm\/"},"modified":"2021-12-10T11:52:46","modified_gmt":"2021-12-10T16:52:46","slug":"interview-micheal-sturm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/interview-micheal-sturm\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Micheal Sturm (1950s Education)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"entry-content-asset\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Sturm Interview Highlights\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/5RD-tFmV-ws?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Micheal Sturm, a retired Dalton math teacher, was born in 1943 in Frankfurt Germany. He came of age in the decade immediately following the end of the Holocaust, and affirmed that the subject was swept under the rug, ignored in both the classroom and in his personal life. Born into a religious Christian family that was not politically active, he attended a boarding school in the 1950s. Sturm says he never interacted with any Jewish people while he was growing up in Germany, and there was not a single Jewish student at his boarding school. He explains that the<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201colder generation, my parents age, did not want to talk about the Holocaust.\u201d<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/endnotes\/\">8<\/a> While some of the \u201cyounger ones my age [would] discuss among themselves,\u201d there were no formal conversations taking place. Sturm remarks simply that \u201cit was not discussed openly.\u201d When I ask him whether he had any recollection whatsoever of discussions of that period, he explains that he \u201csensed guilt\u201d but that \u201cthe word [Holocaust]\u201d was never uttered.<a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/endnotes\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/endnotes\/\">9<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The repression that Sturm discusses is reinforced by the secondary literature about Germany in the decades following the end of the war. According to Bodo von Borries, a culture of repression was pervasive in Germany in the 1950s. Outlining the evolution in German Holocaust textbooks throughout the 20th century, von Borries returns to the textbook that he learned from in the 50s. He describes \u201cthe total inability to learn, the complete suppression of guilt and, at the same time, the feeling of being insulted and the expression of national disappointment. Both overtly and obliquely, only one thing was mourned: the defeat of Germany.\u201d<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/endnotes\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/endnotes\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">10<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> In other words, textbooks were presenting a narrative about Germany losing the war, but they were not discussing the Holocaust. In fact, \u201ceven in the late 1970s, Jews were not mentioned as a group of people especially threatened after the Nazi invasion of the USSR; rather, \u201canti-Jewish measures and anti- semitic persecutions were omitted in favor of detailed information about anti-socialist and anti-humanitarian acts.\u201d<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/endnotes\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/endnotes\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">11<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The story of the Jewish genocide simply did not appear in textbooks even as late as the 1970s.\u00a0<\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Despite the silence around the Holocaust that characterized Sturm\u2019s youth, he does have one essential memory about his grandmother telling him how she hid Jewish families in her basement during the war. Sturm recounts, \u201cthis was the only vivid thing I remember.\u201d Other than this conversation, though, \u201cpeople were totally embarrassed\u201d by the events of the Holocaust and not willing to revisit the recent and painful past.<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/endnotes\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">12<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Later in the interview, I ask Sturm how he dealt with the shortcomings of his Holocaust education, and he explains that even to this day, whenever this part of German history is referenced, he feels very empty. He explains that he never felt complicit or accountable, but he did feel upset that these things were not \u201cemphasized in any curriculum.\u201d Indeed, \u201cIn West Germany during the first postwar decades&#8230;history books were written by Nazi-era teachers, and the urge to repress the past was widespread.\u201d<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/endnotes\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/endnotes\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">13<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> If the same people who committed the atrocious crimes of the Holocaust were also teaching about it in the decades following the War, how could Holocaust curriculum begin the work of reconciliation? Of course, it did not. Since Nazis wrote the majority of the post-war curriculum particularly in West Germany, they had a \u201cgeneral neglect of the Holocaust and a tendency to absolve the German people as a whole of responsibility.\u201d<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/endnotes\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/endnotes\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">14<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Thus a number of factors, including a generation of adults and educators who, for various reasons, were not prepared to take responsibility for the crimes of their nation, led to an educational and cultural vacuum that lasted through the 1950s and beyond.\u00a0<\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Sturm\u2019s eyes, the value of contemporary Holocaust education is that it helps people become tolerant, giving them greater \u201cunderstanding and aware[ness] of Jewish contributions to society.\u201d Sturm, a fan of classical music, shares that 95% of the famous German composers he listens to are Jewish. In fact, he believes that \u201cJews have contributed \u2026 an immeasurable amount \u2026 to German culture.\u201d He states that it\u2019s vital to celebrate their legacy, adding that \u201cit would be insane to not cherish\u201d Jewish artists\u2019 achievements.<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/endnotes\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/endnotes\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">15<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Sturm believes that Holocaust education must be reformed and made into a primary part of students\u2019 history curriculum. At the same time, he believes that the national mandate to study the Holocaust in Germany can be off-putting because of its compulsory nature. He would like to see the country find a new way to make Holocaust education accessible and engaging. Lastly, he asserts that the United Nations needs a greater proportion of individuals who understand the importance of Holocaust education to advocate for it.<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/endnotes\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/endnotes\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">16<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Rather than standing as a singular or unique narrative, Sturm\u2019s account of his education characterizes the experiences of most members of his generation in Germany. The pervasive repression and silence that he describes was present throughout the nation, which was, at the time, more concerned with mourning its own loss in the war than acknowledging the millions of murders that took place under the Nazi regime. Therefore, historian Stephen Pagaard asserts, \u201cit is difficult indeed to find individuals educated in the 1950s, 1960s, or early 1970s who can recall these subjects being taught at all, let alone with care.\u201d<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/endnotes\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/endnotes\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">17<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Overall, Sturm&#8217;s account reflects the research that shows that, in the years immediately following the Holocaust, there was no national dialogue and no formalized curriculum. As a result, shame and silence prevailed.<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/endnotes\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/endnotes\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">18<\/span><\/a> \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My full interview with Micheal Sturm can be found here: <strong><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/lNu_D8nrMAU\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/youtu.be\/lNu_D8nrMAU<\/a><\/strong> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Micheal Sturm, a retired Dalton math teacher, was born in 1943 in Frankfurt Germany. He came of age in the decade immediately following the end of the Holocaust, and affirmed that the subject was swept under the rug, ignored in &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/interview-micheal-sturm\/\">Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3275,"featured_media":62,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3275"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dalton.org\/capstone-germany-holocaust-education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}