Educational activities at the Massuah Institute – Security service

Security services

Massuah Institute, established as a memorial to members of the Zionist youth movements in the Holocaust and uprising, holds workshops and field trips that place experiential and value emphasis on important issues in the Holocaust and their significance for our lives and identity today, for commanders and units of the Israel Defense Forces and the other security services. Massuah’s dialogue with soldiers and commanders focuses on three dimensions: values that build the individual, the society, and the nation.

Format

The workshop at Massuah is produced jointly with the unit’s staff in accordance with the areas of interest of the unit / the course / the command staff. The format of activity is four to eight hours, including guided visits to permanent exhibitions and multimedia centers, lectures, workshops, and discussions. A Holocaust survivor’s testimony or viewing of a testimony film can be worked in.

Contents

1. “Leadership Dilemmas in the Holocaust”– examining models of Jewish leadership during the Holocaust: dilemmas faced by Judenrat, doctors, educators, and rabbis (Responsa). The “Six Million Accusers – the State of Israel v. Adolf Eichmann” exhibition investigates the Holocaust as reflected through witnesses who took the stand at the trial and artifacts entered into evidence. Its main features are a multiscreen presentation and an interactive multimedia system based on 150 videotaped testimonies and hundreds of photographs and documents.
2. “Between Propaganda and Terror – the Image of the Perpetrators of the Holocaust”– How do ordinary people become mass murderers? Analysis of the biographies of SS commanders and discussion of experiments in social psychology that examine the difference between social influence and compliance with authority. The Milgram experiment and Zimbardo’s research, which looked into the mechanisms that allowed ordinary people to transform into mass murderers, are discussed. “Beware: Propaganda – Antisemitism in Nazi ideology and propaganda.”
3. “Israel at Seventy: How Israeli Society Remembers the Holocaust” – “Six Million Accusers…”:The Eichmann trial as a watershed in Israeli society’s attitude toward Holocaust survivors, “Youth Aliyah – the Formation of Israeli Identity”, the image of Holocaust survivors in Israeli cinema, changes in the concept of “heroism” in the Israeli discourse – between history and memory: “You Are the Next Rememberers.”
4. “The Hate Industry – Antisemitism and Racism in the Past Hundred Years”– The purpose of this new exhibition is to examine critically the mechanisms of propaganda and incitement in their historical and contemporary contexts: from Nazi German propaganda posters to incitement on social media today. Metamorphoses of the “international Jewish conspiracy” myth from the beginning of the twentieth century to the 9/11 disaster and terror attacks in Europe today are discussed and incitement on the Web and in social media are given a behind-the-scenes look.