Each student is responsible for identifying a survivor testimony in the VHA and to write a 15-page paper that contextualizes that survivor’s story, with particular emphasis on his or her encounter with the machinery of destruction in German-occupied Europe. During the course, students are responsible for a considerable amount of secondary-source reading, an oral presentation, and a transcript of 20 minutes of testimony of their choosing. Professor Seipp taught the seminar, using the VHA in the classroom for the first time and offers three challenges that could be helpful to others planning to teach a similar course.

1. First, students come to class with a range of images and ideas about the Holocaust but generally with little specific background on the subject. Professor Seipp affirms that “if the VHA is to be used as a teaching and research tool for historians, it has to be balanced with a firm grounding in the specific circumstances of the Final Solution.” This means teaching a course on the Holocaust while trying to teach the practicalities of historical writing. The exercise that worked well for him was to have students provide maps that show the physical location and route of their survivor throughout the testimony. It helped to orient the students and to remind them that these survivors came from a specific place and time.
2. Second, he notes, “There is the problem of teaching oral history. Turning students loose on testimonies, without providing any kind of orientation to the field of oral history or an understanding of the challenges of working with oral sources, invites problem.” In designing the syllabus, developing a course that one could teach the craft of research and writing—with enough background on the Holocaust so that students could approach the subject on its own terms and a primer on oral history could be a daunting task and difficult to accomplish. Seipp admits that this approach did not work. Instead, he recommends spending more time helping students to understand the way stories are told and different ways to approach these testimonies, which aids them in becoming critical thinkers and writers.
3. Third, Seipp asserts, “closely related to the second problem is a generational dilemma. Many traditional college students today, unlike most of their instructors, never had a living relative with adult memories of the Second World War. The war, and with it the Holocaust, is passing from living memory very quickly.” Therefore, he cautions, when students are asked to watch and think critically about these testimonies, what we really are asking them to do is to evaluate the words of people who are older than their grandparents. This sets up a critical barrier that prevents some students from being able to evaluate these testimonies as historical documents. On several occasions, students discover that their survivor recalled the liberation of their camp on a date that contradicted what the student found in the
   secondary literature. Therefore students have to be reassured that pointing out inconsistencies in oral history testimony is not the same as questioning the veracity and honesty of an elderly survivor.