Transcript USHMM Guidelines for Teaching about the Holocaust

The Holocaust:
Literary Considerations
Adapted from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Curriculum
Prior Knowledge
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What prior knowledge do you have?
Which texts have you read?
Which movies have you seen?
What have you already studied?
Disclaimer
• Please note that this is not a history
lesson; merely a short overview followed
by literary considerations.
I <3
Ms. Pino’s
class
Holocaust Literature in Context Death marches
Germany
surrenders
Liberation of
Camps
Germany invades Poland
Warsaw ghetto established
Voyage of the St. Louis
Invasion of USSR
Einsatzgruppen massacres
Hitler in power
Boycott
Antisemitic laws
Kristallnacht
Evian Conference
Nuremberg Laws
German Jews
expelled from
public schools
Deportations to
killing centers
German Jews
must wear
the yellow
star
Deportations from
Hungary
Warsaw ghetto
uprising
1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945
1942-44
1925-42
1937 - 45
1941-43
1944-45
How does this pertain to English?
• Survivors, as primary
sources, are eyewitnesses of this period
in time. As they pass
on, their written works
become their voice.
• Consider the motive
behind the diaries and
letters that were
carefully hidden.
– The victims wanted their
stories to be known.
• In History you learn the
facts; in English the
stories. Through
reading, you experience
the world.
This milk can, filled to the brim with diaries and letters, was
carefully buried so that the truth could eventually be heard.
Book Burning:
The First Step to Public Persuasion and Ignorance
“Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings."
Heinrich Heine
Basic Overview: The Holocaust
• The Holocaust refers to a specific genocidal event
in twentieth-century history: the state-sponsored,
systematic persecution and annihilation of
European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its
collaborators between 1933 and 1945.
– Be careful with terms like “The Germans”; they did not act alone.
The time period known as “The Holocaust” is
offensive to some people because he word holocaust
refers to a sacrifice by fire- sometimes offensive to
people because it implies the Jews were sacrificed for
the greater good. What do you think?
Basic Overview: continued
Jews were the primary victims— 6
million were murdered; Gypsies,
the handicapped, and Poles were
also targeted for destruction or
decimation for racial, ethnic, or
national reasons.
Millions more, including homosexuals,
Jehovah’s Witnesses, Soviet
prisoners of war, and political
dissidents, also suffered grievous
oppression and death under Nazi
tyranny.
Photo montage of victims
USHMM Washington D.C.
Systematic
• Ghettos: Sections of the city to segregate
prior to transition
• Concentration Camps: holding camps
• Labor camps: prisoners were put to work
• Death camps: only one purpose for these
• Trains transported “purposefully”
The Ghettos
Sections of cities were first gated
off to segregate Jews. These
became ghettos. Some people
were transported into ghettos.
These were very condensed
living quarters. Basic living
necessitates such as food and
running water were limited. This
quickly led to the spread of
diseases such as Typhoid.
Concentration Camps
• These holding camps served two main
purposes: to demoralize and dehumanize.
• Prisoners were immediately separated
from their families and then stripped of
their belongings, clothing, and hair.
• There is great value in having a sense of
self and a purpose. What happens when
those two things are stripped from you?
– Eliminates the desire to escape and rebel.
• Where do you go if you are convinced
you have nowhere to go?
• Freedom is only desirable if you have a
will and purpose to be free.
Belongings were sorted and recycled.
Piles of shoes that belonged to prisoners who were murdered upon
arrival, were recycled. Auschwitz 1945
Hair was used to make bomb fuses, felt, thread, rope and mattress stuffing.
Labor Camps
• Prisoners were forced to engage in
strenuous penal labor and production to
aid the war.
Death Camps
• Purpose: to complete the final step in The
Final Solution
The Centrality of Auschwitz
• Auschwitz was a death
camp. It is also the only
camp that tattooed ID #’s
on the arms of victims.
• The amount of planning it
took to simply transport
people- never mind
murder them and recycle
their belongings- required
a system.
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Many people claim they didn’t do
anything to stop the killing because
they “didn’t know”. Historian Raul
Hilberg points out that over 1 million
Germans must have known about the
death camps, just by virtue of their
association with the railroads.
Avoid simple assumptions
to complex history.
“I would have left!”
“I would have killed someone!”
The power of propaganda and
bandwagon persuasion…
Resistance Occurred
Portrait of Jewish partisans (Bedzin ghetto, Poland 1942).
Jewish resistance occurred in many forms and many places,
including armed revolts in the death camps.
Why didn’t they just leave?
• The Evian Conference sent a
message to the Jews that even if
they could get out of Germany,
most countries didn’t want to
take on massive immigration
during lean economic times.
• How has the cartoonist labeled
the man in the middle? What
The Evian Conference. Political cartoon
does this imply about the tenor of
entitled, "Will the Evian Conference guide the times?
him to freedom?“, published in July 1938,
The New York Times
Some people immigrated successfully
The voyage of the St. Louis, May – June 1939
• Just because it happened
does not mean it was
inevitable
–Conscious choices were made
A teacher points out the
salient features of a student's
profile during a lesson in
racial instruction. Teaching
this subject became
mandatory in 1934.
Consider this:
A greater percentage of
teachers joined the Nazi
party than did any other
profession.
Job security?
French police round up foreign Jews, 1941
• The Nazis found willing
collaborators in many
occupied territories. They
couldn’t have pulled it off by
themselves.
– A member of the Lithuanian
auxiliary police, who has just
returned from taking part in the
mass execution of the local
Jewish population in the Rase
Forest, auctions off their
personal property in the central
market of Utena.
Lithuanians, July 1941
Denmark, October 1943: The Danish did many things to help the Jews escape and
survive. In this picture, a crowd gathers around a Danish Nazi and a Jew he has
apprehended. Danish police later helped the Jewish man to escape.
Avoid comparisons of
pain
•Don’t jump to conclusions about other people’s
pain, i.e. “The Holocaust was the most difficult
period of time.”
•Pain is an abstract and relative concept. It is
by no means a contest: our goal is simply to
widen our knowledge and experience through
literature.
Levels of suffering? Injustice causes suffering,
period.
Rwanda
American slavery
Trail of Tears
Armenia
A group of Gypsy
prisoners congregate
in the Rivesaltes
internment camp.
The Roma experience
came closest to that of
the Jews. Persecuted as
an inferior race,
between 25 – 50 % of
their prewar population
murdered by the Nazis,
by members of the
Einsatzgruppen and in
concentration and
death camps.
Roma, 1939 - 1942
Don’t be fooled by
stereotypical descriptions
Which students do you think are Jewish?
(all of them)
Important Terms
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Genocide- the systematic and planned extermination of an entire nation, race, or
ethnic group
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Annihilation- total destruction
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Holocaust- the state-sponsored systematic persecution of European Jews by Nazi
Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945
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Commemoration- honoring the memory of or serving as a memorial
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Totalitarianism- total control of the country by the government
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Fascism- a system of government that is marked by stringent social and economic
control, a strong centralized government usually headed by a dictator
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Pogrom- government-organized attacks on Jewish neighborhoods
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Anti-Semitism- ill-feeling or hatred toward Jews
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Stereotype- commonly held popular belief about specific social groups or types of
individuals
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Racism- hatred of a person or group because of race or ethnic background
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Bigotry- obstinately or intolerantly devoted to opinions, prejudices, and animosity
about a group of people
Prejudice- a preconceived opinion or judgment
What do these terms have in
common?
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Kristallnacht
The Final Solution
Aryan
The Jewish Question
Resettlement
Euthanasia
Treated appropriately
Kristallnacht
Final Solution
Aryan
Jewish question
Resettlement
Euthanasia
• These are all the perpetrators’ terms. We have
to qualify them when we use them --- with “finger
quotes” or with a disclaimer --- “What the Nazis
called “resettlement in the East.” Even though
Kristallnacht has become widely accepted, it is
the Nazi term that focuses on the broken shop
windows of the Jewish merchants, and so it
implies that the violence of November 9, 1938,
simply set the economy right. Even when we use
the term “Jew,” we have to remember that the
Nazis did the defining based upon the
grandparents’ religion.