Day 2: Additional Resources

Additional resources discussed during Day 2 class session.

Books:
Browning, Christopher R. Ordinary Men.
Hilberg, Raul. Destruction of the European Jews.
Jaffe, Nina. "A Bird in the Hand," While Standing on One Foot.
Kurzem, Mark. The Mascot.
Spiegelman, Art. MetaMaus.

Readers' Theater:
Shear, Susan Prinz. No Way Out: Readers' Theatre.

Videos:
Ambulans (The Ambulance) (Alden Films, c1961)
Democrat and the Dictator (Paramount, c1991)
The Devil's Arithmetic (Showtime, c1999)
Frontline: The Longest Hatred: A Revealing History of Anti-Semitism (WGBH, c2004)
Music Box (Lions Gate, c2003)
Sophie Scholl - The Final Days (Zeitgeist, c2004)
The World At War: Genocide (A&E, c1995, 2004))

Website:
Ambulans (The Ambulance) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc1d1eDcUlk

Kristallnacht

Website: http://educate.intel.com/workspace/teacher/projectlisting.aspx?LID=en&tid=se
Intel Visual Ranking Activity:

Project Description: Pre-Kristallnacht Events:
Kristallnacht (Nov. 9-10, 1938) was a crucial turning point in Germany regarding Nazi policy toward Jews. It may be considered as the beginning of what is now called the Holocaust. Hitler came into power in 1933 with a plan to expand Germany's rule and to annihilate the world's Jews. Events leading up to Kristallnacht were ripe with new laws which regulated Jewish life and persecuted Jews in Germany, quickly stripping them of their freedom.

Prompt: Why was there no widespread civil protest about the events of Kristallnacht? Rank the following events, which preceded Kristallnacht, from most important to least important as to their impact on setting the stage for Kristallnacht.

Aryanization of Jewish property
Boycott of Jewish shops
Burning of books
Enabling Act
Jewish passports marked with J
Name changes to Israel and Sarah
Nazi Party declared only legal party
Nuremberg Laws
Polish Jews deported from Germany

DVD: Kristallnacht: The Night of Shattered Glass: Remembering 70 Years Later (Beachwood, Ohio, c2008)

Kindertransport

On the eve of WWII, as millions of Jews were seeking refuge from Nazi persecution, country after country turned their backs - all except Great Britain who opened their doors to an unspecified number of Jewish children in danger. Their parents were left to embark on a different journey - one that took many of them to concentration camps. Most of these children never saw their parents again.

DVD: My Knees Were Jumping: Remembering the Kindertransports (On loan from the Leibovitz Special Collection).

Invasion of Poland

Invasion of Poland:
On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. The Polish army was defeated within weeks of the invasion.

Website: http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/gallery_fi.php?ModuleId=10005070

Before WWII, Polish Jewry numbered 3.3 million, whereas post-war numbers totaled 240,000, a figure which had fallen to 9,000 after 1970. A total of 5.5 million people were murdered in camps in Poland: of these 4 million were of Jewish origin, 3 million being Polish Jews.

Essential Questions
How did Poland's national consciousness, stemming from a history of foreign suppression and intervention, make it susceptible to anti-Semitic influences from neighboring countries? In the study of national histories, how important are the actions of government officials compared to actions of "the people"?

ActionT4

Action T4 was the name used after World War II for Nazi Germany's Eugenics-based euthanasia program during which physicians killed thousands of people who were considered "incurably sick, by critical medical examination." The program officially ran from September 1939 until August 1941, but it continued unofficially until the end of the Nazi regime in 1945.

Book: T4: A Novel by Ann Clare LeZotte (c2008)

A Book By Me

A Book By Me began as a Holocaust children's book project designed to preserve the stories of Quad City area Holocaust survivors, WWII veterans, and Righteous Gentiles. These nonfiction stories are written by secondary students for readers of all ages.

Visit Deb Bowen's website at http://abookbyme.com/default.aspx
and learn more about other student writing projects and the Quad Cities Three Esthers Mobile Holocaust Museum.

Warsaw Ghetto

[A section of the wall that separated the Warsaw ghetto from the rest of the city. 1940-41. Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz.]

Essential Question: How is the community impacted when groups are targets of discrimination?

Book: Courage and Resistance: Remembering the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising by Barbara Steiner

Einsatzgruppen

When Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, mobile killing units, known as Einsatzgruppen, began moving from town to town, rounding up Jews for extermination. In 2004, Father Patrick Desbois traveled across Ukraine to locate the estimated 2,500 sites of mass killings of Jews during the Holocaust. He was motivated by the memory of his own grandfather, a French soldier who was deported to the Ukraine by the Nazis.

The Holocaust by Bullets by Father Patrick DesBois
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1df0D5nI5E
Podcast: http://www.ushmm.org/media/audio/antisemitism/20071108.mp3

Wannsee Conference

On Jan. 20, 1942, fifteen officials, comprised of mid-ranking SS commanders and government ministers, attended a conference at Wannsee on the outskirts of Berlin. The meeting was organized by SS Major Eichmann under the direction of Chief of Security Reinhard Heydrich. The subject was the organization and coordination of the "final solution."

DVD:
Conspiracy (HBO Home Video, 96 min.)
The Wannsee Conference (EO International, 52 min.)

Resistance

[Captured Jews during the uprising are led to the deportation center. May 1943. National Archives.]

Essential Questions:
What is resistance during the Holocaust? What does it mean to be a bystander, a perpetrator, a victim, a rescuer? How do individuals and groups define their universe of obligation? What are the consequences of this definition and for whom?

DVD: Life in a Jar (The Irena Sendler Story)
Website: http://www.irenasendler.org/

Legacy & Importance of Memory

[One of the milk cans of Oyneg Shabbos] Historian Dr. Emanuel Ringelblum led a group called Oyneg Shabbos which hid secret archives in three milk cans inside the Warsaw Ghetto. They collected written works by children as documentation of young lives. See "What we see in the street" by Yaffa Bergman, age 14. http://www.mjhnyc.org/ringelblum/essay.htm

Essential Questions:
There are many eye-witness accounts to the events of the Holocaust. Despite efforts to inform the public about atrocities that occurred during this chapter of history, why are there people who continue to deny that it ever happened? How does a nation come to terms with its historical past?

Website: Porcelain Unicorn http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRMcPJrWm-g