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Whitman College French
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Patrick Henry The Holocaust in France Date Awarded: Travel grant to France awarded in summer,1998. a summer stipend for 2001 to revise and complete the project. Other Participants: Description of Project: This is a video recreation, using X-Media Engine, of Vichy France, on the one hand, and the courageous, non-violent rescuers of Jews on the other. Project Goals and Objectives: To depict the reality of Vichy France and the attempts of individual French people to thwart the aims of Vichy France by sheltering targets of Nazi hatred. To this end, I assembled clips from documentaries, Vichy propaganda films, films and news broadcasts from French television. These video representations supplement texts by Elie Wiesel, Charlotte Delbos and the famous Protestant minister Andre Trocme that my students read. Process: To create this template, I watched approximately 100 hours of film, chose clips and assembled them on X-Media Engine with the help of Piers Barry, a student who had been trained at Middlebury College the previous summer. Outcomes: Sample: clip from "Weapons of the Spirit" with Pierre Sauvage I have used these materials for the past three years in my French 247, "French Civilization through Literature" class taught in the fall during the four days when we study twentieth-century French culture. The video presentation is always used to supplement and explain literary readings. The student response has been very enthusiastic. Many students say this was their favorite part of the course and that they could not have understood the extent of France's collaboration with the Nazis if they had not seen the clips. I myself learned from this project that computerized lessons can be used effectively to teach culture as well as language. The computer allows you to assemble and keep varied materials in one convenient place. The original project sparked my further interest in the rescuers of Jews in the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon.
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