‘We too find it difficult’: A consideration of site-based Holocaust education as emotional labour

Among the growing body of literature concerning teaching and learning about the Holocaust, very little research has explored the experiences of teachers from an emotional perspective. This study considers the emotion work done by educators who are teaching about the Holocaust at the site of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Through the lens of ‘emotional labour’, the study explores how the educators articulate their emotion work, and how they manage their emotions in situ. The findings reveal a complex interplay of emotion work and self-preservation that results in educators variously altering the extent to which they are ‘present’ and how they choose to withdraw themselves emotionally from certain exhibits or spaces at the museum. The study also reveals the benefits of the informal emotional support network that exists between the educators, as well as the various routines they adopt to help them manage their emotion work. It is argued that the findings of this paper highlight a need for further research into how teachers teach about emotionally difficult histories such as this, in similar and more diverse contexts.