In history teaching and learning there is an educational tension. Should the past be understood from its own premises as a cognitive historical thinking act, or should we embrace aspects of students’ feelings and reactions in the present when interpreting the past? The aim of the article is to explore the concept of historical empathy by using the metaphor go visiting from Hannah Arendt, and with historical feature film as the educational arena. The article has an exploratory theoretical approach and with special focus on students’ meaning making. Therefore, empirical interview material in the form of students’ voices is used as critical dialogue partner to the theoretical perspective. The concept historical empathy is further explored through students’ experiences of historical feature films, and with help from the concept of in-between and the visiting metaphor in Arendt’s philosophy. A conclusion is that personal experiences in students’ life worlds need to have their place in historical meaning making and need to be in balance with the understanding of history that is required from a curriculum perspective. The point is not to dismiss these personal reactions and the historical meaning-making they entail. Arendt’s visiting metaphor makes it possible to embrace and nurture the inevitable tension in history education – how to handle the relation between past and present.