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Citation: 

Sheftel, Anna, and Stacey Zembrzycki. "’Questions are More Important than Answers’: Creating Collaborative Workshop Spaces with Holocaust Survivor-Educators in Montreal." In Beyond Testimony and Trauma: Oral History in the Aftermath of Mass Violence, edited by Steven High, 212-34. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2015.

Abstract/Summary: 

Sheftel and Zembrycki worked collaboratively with Holocaust survivor-speakers (who work at the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre) in a series of workshops in 2009 that occurred after they had been interviewed for the Montreal Life Stories Project. The workshops focused on what survivor-speakers had learned from their process of going to Quebec high schools and telling their stories. They discuss topics such as “Conditions of speaking,” “Speaking to related topics,” and can there be a “best practice?” Finding a way to conduct individual interviews while also leading collective workshops was deemed to be “invaluable… we laughed together while discussing their difficult stories.” The authors conclude: “By balancing our priorities, being flexible in our approaches, and creating spaces for diverse exchanges, we learned far more than we could have if we had stuck to a more structured methodology.”

Source/Credit: 
Shannon Leggett