Stage 1: The Holocaust
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"The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything."
-Albert Einstein
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Gallery Walk: Jewish Life before the War
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The purpose of this Gallery Walk is to showcase the photographic work of Roman Vishniac who documented Jewish life before the Second World War. The reason I find this unit important is to showcase the richness of Jewish life before the Holocaust to paint an even greater sense of loss of people, community, and Jewish life in an entire geographical region over the course of the upcoming decade. The students task is to travel around the room - like a museum - to evaluate Jewish life before the war and writing reflections on the feelings that the images elicit.
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Germany before the Rise of Adolf Hitler:
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Gallery Walk: Nazi Propaganda
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In our discussion of Hitler's rise to power, students will read an excerpt from "Mein Kampf". After this, we will go back to the "Pyramid of Hate" that we studied (above) and question what stage of the pyramid Germany had reached by the time Hitler writes "Mein Kampf" and then again evaluate what level of the pyramid is reached when Adolf Hitler takes power. These Yad Vashem videos are quick looks into concentration camps and Nazi ideology. They're quick ways to get key definitions down.
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Milton Mayer: "No Time to Think"
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This is one of my favorite readings in our Holocaust unit because of its depth. Just like many of my students, I have always questioned how an entire German society just went along, supported and even committed acts of murder and prejudice against the Jews. At the beginning of our unit we study the Weimar constitution and are able to draw analogies between this German document and many of the key government documents of liberal, democratic nations around the world. So what happened? Reading the words of Milton Mayer - a German college professor - speak about how the gradual change happened alongside the caution that educated individuals took to speak up until they realized they couldn't even do that. What this reading does is bring a human aspect to the history. Can all Germans be guilty? So much of myself wanted to (as a young person) to punish all Germans but is that fair? Mayer writes about the complexity. You empathize for his situation and simultaneously know the reality of what his words meant for countless individuals - Jews and gypsies and homosexuals and everyone who suffered the ultimate fate in Hitler's Germany.
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Psychology of Genocidal Behavior
This is why we use Facing History. It is not about studying just the facts of the Holocaust or just reading the diaries of Jewish individuals who suffered through this moment. We are also studying humanity. Here we listen to a psychologist explain what makes people make the decisions that they do and how, ultimately, a nation can bring itself to commit genocide against a part of its population.
There is one important element to understand as the teacher and make sure that you actively frame with your students. Talking about what leads to genocide is not being apologetic or provide reasons for this genocide. There is no excuse. There is no understanding. There is nothing we can say to reason with the guilt that Germany deserves for this history, however, we also study history to learn about the elements that we need to be cautious about for the future. To understand how to prevent history from preventing itself, then we bring psychology into the mix. We aim to understand - not excuse - human behavior. |
Discussing Hard History
There isn't anything "easy" about discussing the Holocaust but when students begin this journey many of them have preconceived notions of the historic details of this time period. For this it is imperative that our classroom needs to be a space in which every individuals' thoughts and feelings are accepted and respected.
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The Diaries of Young People during the Holocaust:
A beautiful, sunny day has risen. The streets are closed off by Lithuanians. The streets are turbulent. Jewish workers are permitted to enter. A ghetto is being created for Vilna Jews." 
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It was important to me that our study of the Holocaust wasn't just about facts. Instead it is about the story of the individuals who lived through this ordeal. That is why I chose the majority of our study to revolve around diaries. In particular, we are looking at the diaries of young people whose many ideas or actions resonate with my students who are the same age.
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Gallery Walk: The Lodz Ghetto
The surprising photographs that emerged from the Lodz Ghetto help students get a feeling for what life was like within the ghetto walls. For myself - as I'm sure it was for my students as well - the images are eerie as we know the fate of so many of the individuals within the photos.
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Concentration Camps
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“Both evil and goodness evolve. Heroes are not born; their evolution often begins with small steps. People learn by doing, change as a result of their own actions. Very often rescuers agreed to hide a person or family, expecting this to be for a short time. But once people begin to help, their concern for the welfare of those they helped increases. They begin to see themselves as caring people. Some rescuers would take in more people to hide, or if they succeeded to move people to a safer place, they looked for more opportunities to help. What sometimes began as limited commitment often became intense involvement.”
Ervin Staub, a psychologist and a Holocaust survivor who was born in Hungary |
In pairs students are tasked with creating an oral presentation (the visual is up to them) to tell the class the story of one of the Righteous among the Nations. Each pair is assigned one of the following individuals: Regina Rotenberg Wolbrom, Teresa Zabinski, Chiune Sugihara, Georg Duckwitz, Moshe Beyski, Rauol Wallenberg, Hiram Bingham and Selahattin Ulkumen.
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America during the Holocaust
America and the Holocaust: Deceit and Indifference
The question of what America was doing during the Holocaust is something that has always resonated with me but has been overlooked by many units of study on the Holocaust. We naturally focus so much on what was happening in Europe that we don't stop to discuss what is happening in other areas of the world. Who can or will step up to do something in reaction to what is happening in Europe? To study this we use the case of the St Louis and the documentary above.
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Stage 2: Memory and Legacy
“Should such memorials be literal or abstract? Should they honor the dead or disturb the very possibility of honor in atrocity? Should they be monumental, or instead disavow the monumental image, itself so associated with Nazism? Preserve memories or challenge as pretense the notion that memories ever exist outside the process of constructing them?” - Martha Minow
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Questions to Consider:
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Stage 3: Judgment
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The Nuremberg Trials:
"Defendant Oskar Gröning, a former SS member, at a courtroom in Lüneburg, Germany, April 21, 2015. Gröning, age 93, was found guilty of aiding in the murder of 300,000 Jews at Auschwitz and sentenced to four years in prison."
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Click the photo above to watch Professor Steve Cohen discuss judgment of the Holocaust.
Click the photo above to watch Eleanor Roosevelt's work with Displaced Persons camps following WWII
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