Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
their experiences up to the present were riveting and powerful. One survivor,
Abraham, described his family in his youth, the schools he attended in
Germany, the positions he held, and the gradual change in atmosphere as the
Nazi party gained power. He told me how he lost half his family in the ghetto
before the remainder even reached the camps. His stories about the strategies
for survival in the camp were frightening. He survived the camp because the
Nazis let him live as long as he went down into the pits filled with dead bod-
ies to pick the gold teeth from the corpses. He remembered the cold day the
Nazis lined him up next to his brother and arbitrarily shot his brother and left
him alive. We even discussed how some prisoners from a once high-status
social class still felt superior to others in the camps. Svie was another
Holocaust survivor. He described a young man who rebelled in the camps.
Seeing a rifle standing by the corner of the building where they were to be
gassed, the young man ran naked and shivering from the line to grab the rifle.
He aimed it at the guards and pulled the trigger, but it was empty: The guards
had tricked him. They told the young man that others would have to pay for his
disobedience and then shot 30 men, women, and children in front of him
before herding him back in line to be gassed. The stories of physical and psy-
chological terror the survivors had experienced in the past—and the guilt that
many still felt simply for surviving when so many had died—were over-
whelming. These stories were valuable not only as historical records but also
as keys to helping me understand the behavior, moods, fears, and values they
displayed each day at work on the kibbutz.
The dropout program study also provided rich life histories. Many of the
students shared their lives with me in great detail. One young woman told me
that her mother repeatedly stole her boyfriends from her and left her out in the
cold at night to fend for herself; a young man described seeing his best friend
shoot at the police and seeing his friend shot in the neck by them in return.
These graphic life histories helped explain how these individuals viewed the
world—why some had dropped out of school, why they were periodically late
for the new program, and why they needed so many counselors in the program.
Furthermore, the life history of a secretary in one of the dropout programs—
a perfect picture of a white, middle-class young woman—explained why she
was in conflict with predominantly black lower-socioeconomic-class children.
The life history approach is usually rewarding for both key actor and ethnog-
rapher. However, it is exceedingly time-consuming. Approximations of this
approach, including expressive autobiographical interviewing, are particularly
valuable contributions to a study with resource limitations and time constraints.
In many cases, an abbreviated or focused life history is sufficient. The expres-
sive autobiographical interview consists of a highly abbreviated chronological
autobiography, interrupted at critical points with questions of concern to the
