Passport for life

Abstract

For Tal Yaar-Waisel, finding her great-grandmother's passport was a shocking experience. The 'Deutsches Reich' passport, stamped with the Nazi seal, allowed Karoline Bloch (Dr Yaar-Waisel's great-grandmother) to leave Vienna just two days before Kristallnacht, 9 November 1938, saving her life and enabling her to join her daughter's family in Nesher, in Mandatory Palestine. This study intertwines Karoline's story, history, research and experimental pedagogy. The personal story of Karoline Bloch, a Holocaust survivor from Vienna, is discussed against the background of the persecution of Austrian Jews and the destruction of their community. Her passport reflects her personal suffering and salvation, and is discussed in relation to immigration policies at the time. From the research point of view, the study deals with geomedia as working tools that can be used to widen the interdisciplinary dimensions of passports. The authors used the passport as the basis for inquiry-based teaching of the broader historical subject. The combination of a personal story, historical background, and facilitating students to work as geomedia researchers, asking questions and finding answers, generated the students' interest and rendered them capable of thinking about the meaning of the subject for themselves.