Berättelser som förändrar liv : Elevers berättande om Förintelsen och Förintelsens Mahnmale

This essay is written as a master’s thesis for history education and pedagogy at the University of Dalarna. The aim of the essay is to explore how students’ storytelling about the Holocaust is influenced by the visit at the ”Mahnmal”(~’place to remind and admonish’) of Sachsenhausen. To answer this question, four students in their final year of upper secondary school in Sweden have been interviewed before and after a school trip to the former concentration camp. The smaller stories and story-segments which emerged during interviews were summarized as larger stories and mainly analyzed with the help of four questions, stemming from Arthur W. Frank’s socio-narratology. It is difficult to draw general conclusions, due to the individual nature of storytelling. There are, however, some general trends to be found in the adoption of certain descriptions, a closer relationship between storytellers and their historically informed stories, as well as a change in role-taking affiliated with visits at Holocaust Memorial sites.