Tag: WW2

meanwhile, elsewhere…

by YorkClio, posted in Resources

If you haven’t yet found it, here’s a wonderful resource crowd-sourced from history teachers across the country. Richard Kennett (@kenradical) had the great idea to use KS3 homework time to get kids to find out what was going on somewhere else at the same time as the events they were studying in class. A brilliantly simple way to get breadth into a jam-packed curriculum. Will Bailey-Watson (@mrwbw) then suggested a crowd-source of these and has acted as co-ordinator and editor. The results are being posted on the website ‘meanwhile, elsewhere..’ and are free for everyone to use.

 

Madeleine Blaess’ diary: York woman in Nazi occupied Paris

by YorkClio, posted in News, Resources

This is a developing project. Madeleine Blaess was born in France, but grew up in Acomb and went to the Bar Convent School (now All Saints). She was trapped in Paris during the Nazi occupation and wrote a diary recording everyday life under occupation. She managed not to be interned, by pretending to be French. Two of her friends were murdered in Auschwitz. After the war she was an academic in Medieval French Literature at the University of Sheffield. The diary was revealed among her papers, which she left to the university when she died in 2013.  This was left to the University of Sheffield at her death.

The University of Sheffield are working on these papers and the diary is shortly to be publisned open access at White Rose University Press (which itself is something YorkClio folk should know about!) There is also a 35 minute film on its way.

This promises to be a fantastic way for York History and French teachers to connect a local story to a much bigger story that is commonly taught. We hope to develop the connection with this project further.