Holocaust Timeline

Teacher ’s Handbook HOLOCAUST TIMELINE and TEACHER’S HANDBOOK

The Holocaust Timeline Wallchart The Timeline Wallchart is designed to give a linear overview of the Nazi Holocaust in Europe, 1933–1945. It also prompts us to consider the consequences of the Holocaust and its relevance in our world today. It is accompanied by a teacher’s handbook. The pages of the Timeline take the form of a concertina-book in two sections of ten panels each. These can be opened out and attached to the wall, or stretched out on the classroom floor or across desks, thus giving a visual impression of the timeframe of the Holocaust. Apart from the first two introductory pages, ‘Before the Holocaust’ and ‘1933 –1945 The Holocaust’, each page represents a single year which may be studied separately or as part of the whole. Each bullet-point on the individual pages may serve as a single lesson-topic, and may be researched further on its own or as part of the study of one particular year.

The Teacher’s Handbook The Handbook has suggestions for lessons, individual or classroom activities, special topics/lesson extenders, resource material, images, suggestions for projects, questions and answers, and extracts from personal diaries. All of the material should impart knowledge, develop skills, prompt reflection, and consider attitudes. Teachers are urged to develop further lessons on particular topics and to encourage their students to research and find out more. Suggested readings, DVDs and websites are also included. Studying the Holocaust is interdisciplinary; there is a lot of overlap. Teachers and students from disparate areas will find connections, whether they are studying History, Religion, CSPE (Citizenship), English, Art, Drama, Human Rights, Sociology, Anthropology, Law, Media Studies, or other subjects.

Age appropriate Although suggested age suitability is given beside most lesson plans, teachers are encouraged to use their own discretion in considering whether their students are mature enough to engage with certain subjects and to what degree they should do so. Older students (17 years) can address any of the topics, but some subjects, such as the killing process in the death camps and the activities of the Einsatzgruppen , are NOT recommended for younger students. The Holocaust Timeline and Teacher’s Handbook are designed to encourage students to: ■ Explore their own attitudes and consider their own experiences about prejudice and bigotry as well as tolerance, respect and integration ■ Examine their roles and responsibilities regarding ethnic, racial and religious bias ■ Think critically about attitudes and acts of prejudice, discrimination, violence and genocide ■ Learn that violence and genocide begin with attitudes of hate and bigotry ■ Reflect on the consequences of the Holocaust and their relevance in our world today • Images from the Wallchart and Teacher’s Handbook can be accessed on the HETI website: hetireland.org/programmes/holocaust-education-resources/holocaust-timeline-wallchart-teachers-handbook/

This Teacher’s Handbook is also available in Irish. Please contact the HETI office if you would like to receive one. Tá leagan Gaeilge den lámhleabhar múinteora seo ar fáil. Má tá cóip uait, ní mór dul i dteagmháil le hoifig IOUÉ.

For further information, please contact: Holocaust Education Trust Ireland, Clifton House, Lower Fitzwilliam Street, Dublin 2, Ireland. Tel: + 353 1 6690593 Email: [email protected] www.hetireland.org

© Lynn Jackson and Margaret Quinn 2009. Revised and updated: Lynn Jackson 2017, Holocaust Education Trust Ireland. Produced with support from the Teacher Education Section, Department of Education and Skills, Ireland. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means without permission in writing.

2 CONTENTS

Systematic Persecution ...... 4 Map showing Jewish communities before the Holocaust ...... 5 Humiliation ...... 6 Identification ...... 8 Segregation/Ghettos ...... 10 Concentration ...... 12 Annihilation ...... 14 Pyramid of Hate ...... 18

PERSONAL STORIES ...... 19

SPECIAL TOPICS and LESSON EXTENDERS ...... 31 Kristallnacht ...... 32 Kindertransports ...... 33 Wannsee Conference ...... 34 Righteous Among the Nations ...... 35

MIND MAPPING, QUOTATIONS, IMAGES ...... 37 Mind Map ...... 38 Quotations ...... 40 Images ...... 41 Reflection ...... 47

PROJECTS ...... 48 Commemoration ...... 49 Pile of Shoes ...... 50 Pool of Tears ...... 51

QUESTIONS and ANSWERS ...... 53

GLOSSARY ...... 55

BOOKLIST, DVDS and WEBSITES, REFERENCES ...... 57 Booklist ...... 57 DVDs and Websites ...... 57 References ...... 58

3 SYSTEMATIC PERSECUTION

Humiliation

Identification

Segregation

Concentration

Annihilation

4 Map showing Jewish communities before the Holocaust

Map of Jewish communities before the Nazis came to power Yad Vashem

The map • Look at the map of Europe • Is the country you come from on the map? • Was your country involved in World War II, or was your country neutral? • Were there any Jews living in your country? • If so, what happened to them?

The Timeline • Pick out a year on the Holocaust Timeline • What was happening in Germany during that year? • What was happening elsewhere in Europe during that year? • What was happening in your country during that year?

5 HUMILIATION

HUMILIATION IN THE STREETS Once when school had a half-holiday, Inge and I arranged As I walked to school I could not believe what I saw. From that we would both bring our new ice-skates with us and every single window from the eighth or ninth floor, go to the outdoor ice-rink after morning school. But when enormous flags were hanging, slashes of red with a white we got to the entrance of the rink, we were confronted by circle and black swastika …’Hey Jew,’ I heard somebody a large notice: ‘DOGS AND JEWS NOT PERMITTED’. calling. I turned around. How could he know I was a Jew? Hannele, age 11, Germany Maybe the boy, who was about my age, saw the fear and terror in my eyes. ‘Hey Jew’, he repeated. ‘Carry my books.’ I Now however, in front of every theatre is posted: ‘BY refused. Immediately an SS soldier appeared. ‘Do what you ORDER OF THE GERMANS, ENTRANCE TO JEWS IS are told,’ he ordered. ‘We’ll teach you obedience, you Jew.’ FORBIDDEN’. Even so I went to see the film Jud Suss. Hanna D, age 12, Lodz, Poland What I saw there made my blood boil. I was red in the face when I came out. I realised then the wicked From the time that Hitler came to power, I would say that objectives of these people – how they want to inject the there was not a day that I walked to or from school without a poison of antisemitism into the blood of the gentiles. sense of fear in the pit of my stomach. Moshe F, age 15, Belgium Susan, age 12, Germany

HUMILIATION IN THE CAMPS First of all, we had to strip off all our clothes. The clothes Within a very short time you were reduced to an absolute were thrown to the side and the shoes to another pile, the nobody – your hair was shaved, a number tattooed on papers and valuables to still another pile, and then we your arm, and your clothes taken away. You lost all sense had to walk into the next room completely undressed. of identity, or dignity for that matter. Here we were given our number. The Lager Führer (SS Anita Lasker-Walfisch, age 17, Auschwitz, 1942 officer in charge of barracks) said to us : ‘From now on you are all numbers. You have no identity. You have no name. At Auschwitz, every last remnant of respect and dignity You have no place or origin. All you have is a number. was squeezed out of us. In our loose, insect-ridden Except for that number you have nothing.’ clothing and with our hair cropped or shaved, we felt Jacob, age 17, Poland completely dehumanised. Gina Turgel, Krakow

BOOK BURNING Jewish religious books as well as books by Jewish authors and books about Jews were condemned and burnt in public bonfires. Other books written by writers considered by Hitler and the Nazis to be ‘degenerate’ or ‘un-German’ were also thrown into the fires and burnt. These public book burnings took place in Berlin and other university towns throughout Germany, where some of the finest works of German literature, history, philosophy, science and art were destroyed. ‘Students followed with whole armfuls of books while schoolboys screamed their condemnation of this and that author and, as each name was mentioned, the crowd booed and hissed. Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, Brecht, Marx, Engels, Heine, Helen Keller, Upton Sinclair, Jack London and Stefan Zweig, were condemned to the flames.’ Lilian Mowrer

6 HUMILIATION

Jews were humiliated at every turn and increasingly excluded from German society. Jews were taunted and spat upon. Jews were forbidden in public places: cafés, cinemas, restaurants, ice rinks, swimming pools, public transport and municipal parks. Jewish children were jeered in schools and persecution increased every day. Jews suffered humiliation and degradation in the ghettos, concentration camps, labour camps and death camps.

Lesson plan Religious Jewish man being humiliated Age appropriate: 12 years and over • Look at the image of the Jewish man being humiliated in the street. Discuss • Discuss the notices on the Timeline Wall Chart that forbid Jews access to public places and services and gradually from all areas of German society • Discuss the image of the children being humiliated in class • Read some of the diary entries and discuss Reconstructed still photograph from the US • Discuss the impact of the boycott on Jewish shops and businesses documentary The March of Time. On the blackboard is • Discuss the impact of book burning written ‘The Jew is our worst enemy’ Individual activities • Write a list of the public restrictions imposed on Jewish people by the Nazis • Think about what some of the children wrote in their diaries Classroom activities • Children being humiliated in class. Discuss with the students how

they might feel in such a situation. Look at the Star of David on the Burning of 20,000 books in Berlin on the night of blackboard, the boys with their heads lowered. What purpose did 10 May 1933 this classroom treatment of Jewish students serve for young Germans? Message on the board: The Jew is our worst enemy • Draw up a list of things members of the class may or may not do: what they may touch, where they may stand or sit, what they may use and so on. Gradually include more and more restrictions. Ask the students to write a diary about their feelings during this activity

Jews forced to scrub the pavement with nailbrushes Reflection ■ How do students feel about restrictive rules being imposed upon them? ■ What would happen if they defied them? ■ What could they do to change them? ■ Are rules and regulations good? ■ Do we need them in society? ■ How do we decide the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ rules? Park bench ‘not for Jews’ Hulton archive, Getty Images Find out more: www.ushmm.org www.iwm.org.uk

Consider: HUMILIATION, DISCRIMINATION and HUMAN DIGNITY 7 IDENTIFICATION

Star of David image, USHMM

Dear Diary, Today an order was issued that from now on Jews have to wear a yellow star-shaped patch. The order tells exactly how big the star patch must be sewn on every outer garment, jacket, or coat…I met some yellow-starred people. They were so gloomy, walking with their heads lowered.

Eva, age 13, Hungary

We got sympathetic looks from people on their way We were forced to wear a ‘badge of shame’ on the to work. You could see by their faces how sorry left side of our outer clothing. This badge was the they were they couldn’t offer us a lift: the gaudy Star of David on which the word ‘JEW’ was written. yellow star spoke for itself. Moshe, age 16 Anna, age 13, Germany–Holland

Now there were to be stars sewn on our clothes to All Jews in Hungary were ordered to sew a yellow show who we were. The stars were printed on Star of David on their outer garments to distinguish coarse yellow cloth – a garish yellow – with the them and separate them. This humiliation agitated Star of David outlined in thick black lines; the word me greatly…I was the only Jew in my class, and it is ‘Jew’ had been printed in mock-Hebrew type. It’s easy to imagine that it was not with a quiet heart barbaric, I won’t wear them. I won’t go out on the that I went to school on the day I first wore the street, wearing a thing like that. yellow badge. Rosemarie, age 14, Austria–Holland Moshe, age 17

I am a Jew I am a Jew and will be a Jew forever. I am proud of my people, Even if I should die from hunger, never will I submit. how dignified they are. I will always fight for my people, on my honour. Even though I am suppressed, I will never be ashamed of them, I will always come back to life. I give my word. Franta Bass

8 IDENTIFICATION

As well as Jews, the Nazis also persecuted other groups of people whom they considered ‘unfit to live’ or ‘inferior.’ These included people with disabilities, Roma and Sinti (‘Gypsies’), Poles, Slavs, people of mixed heritage and other ethnic minorities. Homosexuals were targeted, as were Christian opponents including Jehovah’s Witnesses, political opponents who did not agree with Nazi ideology, Communists, trade unionists and other dissidents. From 1938, German regulations required that Jewish women and girls include the middle name ‘Sara’ on all official documents. Jewish men and boys had to add the name ‘Israel.’ The letter ‘J’ (standing for Jude , or ‘Jew’ in German) was stamped in red on the passports of Jews who were also German nationals. Passport issued to Inge Lesson plan Frankel with red letter ‘J’ Age appropriate: 11 years and over and ‘Sara’ clearly marked • Discuss the introduction of identifying marks, which the Nazis forced the Jews to wear, first in Germany and gradually throughout all Nazi-controlled lands • Read some of the diary entries from children and young people and discuss • In the concentration camps, different categories of prisoners were identified by different coloured triangles or badges, which they had to wear on their prison clothing: Jehovah’s Witnesses wore purple, homosexuals wore pink, Roma and Sinti (‘Gypsies’) wore black triangles. Look at the picture entitled ‘Badges of Hate’ on page 43 of the Handbook and discuss Individual activities • Think about what some of the children wrote in their diaries… • How would you feel if you were forbidden entry to a place because of your ethnicity? • What must it be like to be prohibited from participating in the society in which you live? Classroom activities • Discuss the Nazis’ ‘yellow star’ rule. Does such a measure encourage or discourage tolerance and integration? Hanna Lehrer from • Think about what some of the children wrote in their diaries: Munich wearing the Star of David – she Walking with their heads lowered...To distinguish them and was deported to separate them...This humiliation...badge of shame... Riga where she was murdered Reflection Why do you think the Nazis forced Jews to wear yellow stars? ■ What effect did the yellow star have on Jewish people? ■ Why were shops marked with Stars of David? ■ If you, or someone you knew, were forced to wear an ■ identifying mark or badge, would you agree with the rule? If not, how would you prevent its enforcement? What is the psychological effect of ‘labelling’ a person? Today, many Jews wear a Star of David pendant that identifies ■ them as Jews. Why isn’t this considered a ‘badge of shame’?

Fami ly photo, Budapest 1944 Find out more: www.thoughtco.com/g00/history-of-the-yellow-star-1779682?i10c.referrer Consider: IDENTIFICATION, STIGMATISATION, DISCRIMINATION, HUMAN RIGHTS and HUMAN DIGNITY 9 SEGREGATION/GHETTOS

A new law was passed…All the Jews must move into I feel as if I am in a box. There is no air to breathe. the ghetto…One morning German and Lithuanian Wherever you go you encounter a gate that hems you soldiers and police banged loudly on our door and the in… I feel that I have been robbed, my freedom is doors of all the Jewish houses and shouted ‘Get out! being robbed from me, my home, and the familiar Get out! You have 15 minutes to gather what you Vilna streets I love so much. I have been cut off from want to take with you…’ all that is dear and precious to me. Sima, age 17, Poland Yitskhok, age 15, Vilna, Lithuania

People started to talk about the ghetto. I had no idea I have learned here to appreciate ordinary things. what it meant. I had never even heard the word. After Things that, if we had them when we were still free, we a few weeks it became clear. didn’t notice at all. Like riding a bus or train, or Liliana, age 13, Poland walking free along the road to the water, or going to buy ice cream. Such an ordinary thing and it’s out of our reach. Charlotte V, age 14, Czechoslovakia

Wooden pedestrian bridge over Chłodna Street, Warsaw, used by Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, 1942

10 SEGREGATION/GHETTOS

More than 1,300 ghettos were established in countries occupied by the Germans, and it is estimated that more than a million Jews died in them. The purpose of the ghettos was to separate Jews from the rest of the population so that they could be easily “managed” and transported. Ghettos were created in cities and large towns, close to railways, and often near killing sites or death camps. Many ghettos were walled in or fenced off, and Jews who left them without permission were often severely punished and sometimes shot. The brutality, harsh living conditions, starvation rations and disease added to the death toll. The inhabitants of the ghettos, who came from all walks of life, soon realised that the ghetto served as a place to destroy them physically and psychologically, and that their eventual fate would be death. Although there are heroic stories of resistance, most of them failed. In the end, all the ghettos created by the Nazis were razed and most of their populations murdered. There were few survivors. Thousands of Roma and Sinti people, homosexuals and political prisoners were also Entrance to the Lodz Ghetto: the sign reads ‘Jewish residential incarcerated in some of the ghettos, and they ultimately met the same fate as the Jews. district, entry forbidden’ Lesson plan Individual activities Age appropriate: 13 years and over • Describe what ghettos were like in Nazi-occupied Europe • Read a story about life in the ghettos during • Explain where ghettos were established and why World War II • Apart from Jewish people, who else was • Write an essay from the point of view of a ghetto dweller incarcerated in the ghettos? • Describe the restrictions and hardships of living • Explain what happened to the ghettos and the in the ghettos people in them • What happened in the Warsaw Ghetto? • Discuss different forms of resistance in the ghettos • Why was the Terezín Ghetto unusual?

Classroom activities Note to the teacher: This activity can only be carried out with the full co-operation and understanding of all the students in the class and should not be enacted for more than half a day. It can work very well in a controlled and co- operative way but if any student is uncomfortable about it or is at all uneasy, do not do it. In some classes, it is enough to consider the effects of segregation, isolation and the feelings of vulnerability without enacting them. • Mark out a section of the classroom. Call it the ghetto . Ask for volunteers to ‘live’ in the ghetto. Ask them to make badges to show that they belong to that ghetto • Carry on with the day’s lessons. Include or exclude the ghetto students • How does everyone feel about this activity? Those inside the ghetto and those outside? Open a class discussion about ghettos, restrictions, clandestine activities Reflection Why was it important for Jews in the ghettos and camps to continue to study and practice their religion? ■ Describe the fears, hopes and dreams of young people living in the ghettos ■ How would you feel if you learned you could no longer associate with your friend or visit him or her in the ■ area of town where he or she lived? What could you do to change the rules? How would you go about it? ■ What would be the best way to prevent rules of segregation ever being formulated? What would be the best way ■ to prevent ghettos, even those that develop organically, from becoming acceptable in our society today?

Consider: SEGREGATION, ACCEPTANCE, TOLERANCE and INTEGRATION

11 CONCENTRATION

Auschwitz women’s barracks: these nine shelves were the sleeping Men’s barracks at liberation, Buchenwald, USHMM quarters of 50–60 inmates at a time

When the children all over the world have their own We all looked alike. For the first time, I experienced a rooms, we have bunks 70 x 30 cm. They have their world with no class distinction. Rich, poor, young, old, freedom; we live like chained dogs. shared the same fate as in no way before. I hardly Pner Jiri Zappner, age 14, Terezín recognised my father. The constant calling of names was ever present. One could not recognise another. We were put into block no. 20; a long wooden hut like all Friends would pass you by. It was a nightmare. the blocks in this camp. Here we found the same two-tier Mel, age 15, Czechoslovakia racks that we had gotten to know in the earlier camps. Miriam, age 15, Poland

Every morning we’d get up at 4.00 am; stand in line till 6.30 or 7.00 while we were counted, and got our black coffee and a piece of bread. Then we went out to work until evening when we came back and had to stand in line again to be counted… After four weeks we went out to work, digging. I don’t know what we were digging. We just dug. Bertha, age 12, Czechoslovakia

Roll call ( Appell ). Prisoners are identified by coloured triangles and numbers on their chests instead of by their names. At most camps the day began and ended with roll calls Inmates at forced labour in the Mauthausen concentration camp which sometimes lasted for hours, even in freezing rain or snow. Mauthausen, Austria, 1942 Buchenwald, Germany, 1942 –1943, USHMM National Archives, Washington DC

12 CONCENTRATION

Hundreds of concentration camps were established by the Nazis, where they imprisoned Jews, Roma, POWs, political and religious opponents, homosexuals and others they considered ‘enemies of the state.’ A great number of prisoners in concentration camps died from brutality, starvation, cold, disease and forced labour.

Lesson plan Age appropriate: 15 years and over • Outline the Nazis’ thinking behind the establishment of concentration camps, and describe how they became part of the ‘process’ of dealing with Jews (and others). Describe how the Nazis let the local population know about concentration camps Some concentration camps Individual activities • After World War II, many people in Germany BERGEN-BELSEN in northern Germany, said they never knew what was going on – transformed from a prisoner-exchange camp to a they didn’t know what was happening to the concentration camp in March 1944. Most of the Jews. Do you think this is true? prisoners were starved to death but poor sanitary • Support your answer with some evidence conditions and epidemics bolstered the death toll. Liberated by the British in April 1945. Classroom activities • BUCHENWALD in central Germany, established Debate whether or not the local people knew in July 1937. One of the largest on German soil, about concentration camps and their activities with more than 130 labour sub-camps. It initially • Discuss the result of the debate held political prisoners, and eventually Jews and • There were four different types of camp: others were incarcerated there. More than 65,000 transit camps, concentration camps, labour out of approximately 250,000 prisoners perished in camps and death camps. Divide the class into Buchenwald. Liberated by the Americans in 1945. four groups. Ask each group to find out about , near Munich in Germany, was the first one type of camp. Report findings to the class DACHAU concentration camp, established in March 1933. At Reflection first Dachau held only political prisoners, but over time more groups were imprisoned there. The Holocaust has been described as the ■ ‘systematic’ or ‘industrialised’ destruction of MAUTHAUSEN , near Linz in Austria, opened in the Jewish people of Europe. In what way August 1938. Many political prisoners were held does the establishment and running of there and in its sub-camps as slave labourers. concentration camps and death camps Thousands were murdered by being pushed from support this notion? 300-foot cliffs into stone quarries. RAVENSBRÜCK , originally a concentration camp for women, opened in 1939. It is estimated that during its existence, 120,000 prisoners were incarcerated there, including Jews, political prisoners, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Roma.

Find out more: www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005263 www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005475

Consider: DEGRADATION, HUMAN RIGHTS and HUMAN DIGNITY 13 ANNIHILATION

The door of the boxcar was pushed open, and suddenly we What could this place be? Where in the world is this? were blinded by the light of day. We had been in total The cries were heard. ‘Birkenau, Birkenau’, we were darkness for how long? A day...two...three...a lifetime. There told, ‘Auschwitz-Birkenau’, voices were proclaiming to were screams outside: ‘Raus! Raus!’ Shots were being fired. one another. We soon discovered we were in Poland, Dogs were barking. People were pushing toward the doors but none of us ever heard of Birkenau or Auschwitz- in panic, trampling each other in their haste. Birkenau. Anna H., age 12, Poland Mel, age 15, Czechoslovakia

I suddenly noticed people in pyjamas, standing I constantly had those last words echoing in my ears: submissively, silently, at the side. ‘Go on, Kerkale, maybe you will survive. At least from Jack, age 15, Greece our large family, maybe you, my daughter. There should be someone to tell the tale…’ Now, with Looking up at the guards, I kept asking myself: Why renewed strength, it was my mission to continue to are they doing this to us? We never harmed anyone. struggle for my life, to survive no matter what. What will become of our family? Will I ever see my Miriam, age 15, Poland mother, my sister and my brother again? David B., age 13, Poland I ask you not to forget the deceased. I beg and implore you to avenge our blood, to take vengeance upon the He gave the order: ‘Men to the left! Women to the ruthless criminals whose cruel hand has deprived us of right!’ Eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, our very lives. I ask you to build a memorial in our without emotion. Eight short simple worlds. Yet that names, a monument reaching up to the heavens, that was the moment when I parted from my mother. the entire world might see. Not a monument of Elie, age 15, Transylvania marble or stone, but one of good deeds, for I believe with full and perfect faith that only such a monument As for the children themselves, those of 12 or 13 who can promise you and your children a better future. could pass for being older were urged: ‘Say you’re 18 or Only thus can we be sure that the evil that overturned 19, don’t let them send you off with the other kids.’ Most the world and turned our lives into Hell will never were too dazed to obey. return. Kitty, age 14, Poland Donia, age 15, 1945

And so quietly, feet dragging with weariness and fear, I didn’t wait for the next command but immediately the women trudged away and my mother and sisters tossed my little girl into the pit and then fell in after disappeared from sight. I turned my head trying to her. A second later, bodies started falling on top of me. dismiss the picture of the smoking chimneys and the Then it grew quiet. Fifteen minutes later, there was no fires below them, but the vision did not leave. It more shooting. Then I heard arguing. became worse inside me when I realised that at that Elena crawled out of the pit. She carried her daughter away very moment my mother, Etu, Magda, Angel and my and hid her in the basement of a brick factory. She and her playmate, Caren, might be in there, consumed by the daughter survived. flames. I looked up. I could barely see the sky. The Elena Efimovna, Babi Yar, September 1941 picture became real. I screamed… Mel, age 15, Czechoslovakia

Reflection The Holocaust did not begin with gas chambers and crematoria – it began with whispers, taunts, humiliation, discrimination, segregation, restrictions. It began with attitudes. Open a discussion about attitudes and prejudice ■ What changes in people’s attitudes might prevent such events happening in the future? ■ Do you believe Donia’s vision that a monument of good deeds will help prevent such atrocities from ■ happening in the future?

Find out more: www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005145 Consider: DEGRADATION, HUMAN RIGHTS, HUMAN DIGNITY, RIGHTS & RESPONSIBILITIES 14 ANNIHILATION Age appropriate: 16 years and over

T4 EUTHANASIA PROGRAMME (named after the headquarters of the operation at Tiergartenstrasse 4, Berlin) Adolf Hitler initiated this programme in 1939 to murder people with disabilities, the terminally ill and elderly people. The Nazis referred to the victims as ‘burdensome lives’ and ‘useless eaters’, and to people with disabilities as ‘life unworthy of life’. Although the T4 programme was officially discontinued in 1941 due to public outcry, it continued clandestinely throughout the war. More than 300,000 people with disabilities were murdered in the T4 Euthanasia Programme.

EINSATZGRUPPEN In June 1941 Nazi Germany invaded Russia and the eastern territories in Operation Barbarossa. The army was closely followed by special killing squads called Einsatzgruppen . These killing squads murdered more than two million Jewish people in face-to-face killing, as well as other victims that included Roma, Communists and dissidents on ethnic or ideological grounds. Einsatzgruppen comprised soldiers, SS, police, local collaborators, volunteers and others. They continued to operate in rural areas in parallel to the murders taking place in the death camps.

OPERATION REINHARD Named after Reinhard Heydrich, Operation Reinhard was the construction of three death camps or killing centres at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka which operated between March 1942 and July 1943. They were established as an efficient method of ‘disposing’ of Jews in a way that did not cause the killers too much psychological trauma such as had been reported by the Einsatzgruppen on the eastern front. 1,700,000 Jewish people were gassed in these death camps. These killing centres were dismantled on completion of their ‘task’ and all evidence of their existence was destroyed. Forests and farmlands were planted on the sites and memorials have since been erected.

DEATH CAMPS/ KILLING CENTRES There were six death camps, all in Nazi-occupied Poland. Their specific purpose was to systematically murder Jews and other victims by poison gas. Four of the death camps were established for this purpose and were dismantled on completion of their ‘function’: Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka. Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau were originally established as POW, slave labour and concentration camps and ultimately also became death camps. Auschwitz- Birkenau was the largest death camp in the entire Nazi camp system where approximately 1.4 million people were murdered. 90% of them were Jews. Although revolts took place in most of the camps, they were unsuccessful.

Lesson plan • Describe the Einsatzgruppen. Where and how did they operate? • Describe the death camps. Where and how did they operate?

Individual activities • Write a description of Jews being rounded up and marched through the village to the outlying cemetery, forest or ravine • Write as an observer or a victim

Classroom activities • Who were the people who made up the Einsatzgruppen ? • What happened to them if they did not shoot the Jews or the other victims? • How efficient were the Nazis’ methods of mass murder? • What led to the establishment of death camps/killing centres? • What must be in place for such a programme of mass killing to work successfully?

15 ANNIHILATION

Einsatzgruppen in action, Dubossari, 1941

LIST of DEATH CAMPS

AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU located 37 miles west of Krakow – the largest Nazi camp. Established as a concentration camp in 1940, it became a killing centre in 1942. 1.4 million people were murdered there; 90% of them were Jews.

BELZEC in eastern Poland, where 555,000 Jews were murdered between March and December 1942.

CHELMNO in western Poland, the first killing centre where victims were murdered by poison gas. Approximately 150,000 Jews, 5,000 Roma and several hundred Poles and Soviet POWs were killed there between December 1941 and March 1943, and

Map of the death camps in Nazi-occupied Poland later between April and August 1944. MAJDANEK near Lublin in eastern Poland existed as a concentration and slave-labour camp for Soviet POWs and Poles from April 1943 to July 1944. Thousands perished from brutality, starvation, maltreatment and shooting. It became a killing centre where it is estimated 78,000 people were murdered; 59,000 of them were Jews.

SOBIBOR in eastern Poland, where at least 200,000 Jewish people were murdered between May 1942 and November 1943.

TREBLINKA about 50 miles northeast of Warsaw, where up to 850,000 Jews and at least 2,000 Roma were murdered between July 1942 and November Entrance to Auschwitz with ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ inscribed across the 1943. gateway, ‘work makes you free’ or ‘work liberates’

Consider: VICTIMS, BYSTANDERS and PERPETRATORS

16 ANNIHILATION Age appropriate: 16 years and over

DEATH MARCHES As the Allies were closing in, the Nazis wanted to remove all traces of their murderous deeds in the concentration and death camps. They forced prisoners out of the camps on foot to march back towards Germany. These were known as Death Marches. Thousands of prisoners, already weakened by malnutrition, hard labour and ill treatment, perished on these marches.

The men’s march from Auschwitz-Birkenau to Gross Rosen On 18 January 1945, some 3,000 prisoners dressed in flimsy striped clothing were force-marched in heavy snow out of Birkenau in Poland. The marchers alleviated their thirst by eating snow; they slept out in the open. After covering 59 kilometres on foot, they were placed aboard open freight cars. Many froze to death on the way. When the train stopped, the prisoners continued on foot. Several hundred men escaped into the forest; many were shot. During the ten days of the march, the prisoners received food only four times. After a further trek of 368 kilometres, those still alive reached Gross Rosen concentration camp in Germany. On the last day of the war, the few survivors were liberated by the Soviet army. They had covered a total of 498 kilometres on foot.

DEATH MARCHES What were they? ■ Why were they organised? ■ What happened to the people on them? ■

Inmates from Dachau during a Death March along Nördliche Münchner Street in Grünwald, Germany, 29 April 1945

Find out more: www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005162

17 PYRAMID OF HATE

©2000 Anti-Defamation League

Find out more: www.adl.org/sites/default/files/documents/assets/pdf/education-outreach/Pyramid-of-Hate.pdf

18 Personal Stories

19 PERSONAL STORIES

The Holocaust is a vast subject. As educators, we are encouraged to concentrate on the individual stories, on the particular, in order to contemplate the enormity of the catastrophe in general.

By focusing on the incalculable numbers of victims, the piles of spectacles and mountains of shoes or hair, we are in danger of losing sight of the individual person. Each pair of shoes belonged to one person, and each person belonged to someone else – a brother, sister, parent or grandparent, a son, daughter, niece, nephew, a cousin or a friend. The story of one person allows us to consider the human tragedy that was the Holocaust. There are millions of individual stories.

In 1939, between nine and twelve million Jewish people lived in what became Nazi- occupied Europe. By 1945, six million had perished in the Holocaust. Millions of other victims were also murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.

Read these personal stories. Research the stories of other victims and other survivors, and discover what happened to them and their families. Encourage your students to find out more .

20 Personal Stories

Esther Reiss, Lodz

Esther Reiss was born Esther Yoskovitz in 1923 in Lodz. Her Esther and her sister Itka remained in Lodz until the parents Jizchak (b.1880) and Channa (b.1890) Yoskovitz liquidation of the ghetto in August 1944. They worked in the married in 1917. Esther had four siblings: Falek (b.1918), production of clothing for the Wehrmacht. During the Itka (b.1921), Rywa (b.1927) and Berek (b.1929). Their father liquidation of the ghetto, they were taken to Bergen-Belsen via worked in the textiles industry. This middle-class family Auschwitz in August 1944. Here they had to carry out gruelling spoke Polish, Yiddish and German. work as forced labourers for the company Hochtief in the sub- camp at Hambu ḧ ren as well as in a salt-mining factory. After The family had to move to the ghetto at the beginning of being moved back to Bergen-Belsen, Itka died there shortly 1940. The chronic lack of food led to the death of Esther’s before the liberation of the camp on 1 April 1945. father Jizchak in January 1942 and her brother Falek six months later. Esther is the only survivor of the Yoskovitz family. She emigrated to Palestine in 1945, married Jakob Reiss and Her youngest siblings Rywa and Berek and her mother were started a family in Jerusalem. deported to the death camp at Chelmno in September 1942, where they were murdered.

Esther’s mother Channa Yoskovitz, 1917 Esther (front left) with comrades on their way to Palestine in late 1945

Esther’s father Jizchak Yoskovitz, 1917 Esther’s first identity card in Jerusalem, May 1946

Story reproduced by kind permission of the Memorial and Educational Site House of the Wannsee Conference, Berlin. Esther Reiss. © 21 Personal Stories

Alexandre Halaunbrenner, Paris

Alexandre Halaunbrenner was born in October 1931 in Paris as November 1942 – succeeded in getting his family out of Gurs the second of five children. His parents Jacob (b.1902) and Itta- in August 1943. Put under ‘house arrest’, they went to live Rosa (b.1904) Halaunbrenner married in 1928 in the Ukrainian with him in Lyon. Alexandre’s father and his brother Léo n town of Drohobycz, which at the time belonged to Poland. Their were arrested there on 24 October 1943 by a Gestapo first son Léon was born there in 1929. In 1931, the family moved commando led by Klaus Barbie, the head of the Gestapo in to Paris, where they lived in the Jewish quarter. Jacob Lyon. They were ordered to reveal the location of Jacob Halaunbrenner was a baker. As they were born in France, Halaunbrenner’s nephew, who worked for the Resistance Alexandre and his younger sisters Mina (b.1935), Claudine (b.1939) and had fled, but they did not know where he was. The next and Monique (b.1941) held French citizenship. The children grew day, the rest of the family escaped being picked up by the up bilingual, speaking Yiddish at home and French at school. Gestapo, again only by chance. Their father, who had been badly tortured for weeks, was shot dead on 24 November Even after the German occupation of the north of France in 1943, and 14-year-old Léo n was deported to Auschwitz on 17 June 1940 the family initially stayed in Paris. In July 1942 – December 1943 and murdered. directly after the regulation obliging Jews to wear the Star of David had been introduced in France – their father fled to In order to save herself and her children, Alexandre’s mother the unoccupied south of the country. The family planned to gave her daughters Mina and Claudine to a children’s home join him at a later stage. On 16 July, Itta-Rosa Halaunbrenner in Izieu, and she handed Monique, who was not quite two and her five children escaped the first major raid on Jews in years old, to a crèche. She went into hiding with Alexandre Paris, but only by chance. At the beginning of October, Jacob in Lyon. Claudine and Mina were arrested in Izieu during the Halaunbrenner managed to get his family into the raid on 6 April 1944. On 30 June 1944, they were deported unoccupied zone after paying someone to help them escape. from Drancy to Auschwitz, where they were murdered. However, they were picked up by French police for ‘illegally crossing the border’ and detained in the camps at Nexon and Alexandre Halaunbrenner survived, along with his mother Rivesaltes and, from the end of November 1942, at Gurs. and his sister Monique. In 1972 Itta-Rosa campaigned in Bolivia for the extradition of Klaus Barbie to France. In 1987 After negotiating with the French authorities, their father – Itta-Rosa, Alexandre and Monique served as witnesses at the who had been made to carry out forced labour since trial of Barbie in Lyon.

Alexandre (right) with his sister Mina and Alexandre (10), Claudine (3), Léon (13), Paris, before October 1942 brother Léon, about 1938

Itta-Rosa Halaunbrenner with her daughters Mina (7) and Monique (8 months), Paris, before Jacob Halaunbrenner (1902–1943) October 1942 was shot by the Gestapo in Lyon

Story reproduced by kind permission of the Memorial and Educational Site House of the Wannsee Conference, Berlin. Alexandre Halaunbrenner. © 22 Personal Stories

Eugenia Tabaczynska, Kłodawa/Warsaw

Eugenia Tabaczynska was born in May 1925 in Kłodawa, Poniatowa labour camp in September 1943. Her brother Poland. She was the youngest of three children. Her parents Mietek was killed during the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Eugenia Naftali and Rozalia Tabaczynski were corn traders in managed to hide along with 25 work colleagues in a secretly Kłodawa. From 1936 to 1939, Eugenia lived with an uncle in dug shelter in the company grounds. On 30 April 1943, the Warsaw in order to attend grammar school. In November group were able to flee the ghetto after bribing a German 1940 her family also fled to Warsaw, where all Jews were soldier. The Polish Christian Aleksander Pawlowski rescued forced to move into the ghetto shortly afterwards. Eugenia and seven other Jews by offering them board and lodging. In 1944, Eugenia assumed a false identity as a Eugenia went to a clandestine school in the ghetto and was Christian using forged papers and signed up for labour service able to take her exams in 1942. All of her family members for the Germans. She was thereby assigned to the Reich found work within the ghetto in various departments of the Labour Service in Brieg in Upper Silesia in summer 1944. She German company Schultz & Co. and were thus spared from was liberated there by Soviet troops in February 1945. the German ‘evacuation operations’ until 1943. The only survivor of her family, she emigrated to the USA in Eugenia’s parents were deported to Trawniki in 1943 and later 1947, where she married. murdered. Her brother Pawel and his wife Bela died at the

Eugenia Tabaczynska as a schoolgirl in Kłodawa Eugenia (front left) and members of the extended Hanka Tabaczynska family at Kłodawa station, saying goodbye to her cousin Hanka Tabaczynski as she left for Palestine

Eugenia (second from left) with her parents Rozalia (third from left) and Naftali Tabaczynski Eugenia with her mother Rozalia and her brothers (fifth from left) and friends at the spa town of Truskawiec Mietek and Pavel on holiday

Story reproduced by kind permission of the Memorial and Educational Site House of the Wannsee Conference, Berlin. © USHMM Washington DC.

23 Personal Stories

Alfred Silberstein, Berlin

Alfred Silberstein was born in November 1927 and his older (the arrest of all Jewish forced labourers still living in the sister Hansi in December 1924. His father Berthold (b.1885, German Reich on 27 February 1943). Hansi was deported to a frontline soldier in the First World War) and mother Käthe Auschwitz on 2 March 1943 and Alfred on 4 March 1943; (b.1893) opened a draper’s and fashion shop in the Steglitz their parents were deported to Theresienstadt on 17 March district of Berlin following their marriage in 1924. 1943, and from there to Auschwitz in October 1944, where they were murdered. In January 1945, Hansi was taken from From 1935, the children attended Jewish schools. During the Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen, where she was liberated. Alfred ‘Kristallnacht’ pogrom (‘Night of the Broken Glass’) on 9–10 was forced to take part in the death march from Auschwitz November 1938 the windows of their parents’ shop were smashed to the Mittelbau-Dora camp in Thuringia, which he managed in. Their father was taken to the Sachsenhausen concentration to flee at the beginning of April 1945. He worked as a camp. He returned home a broken man in early December 1938. supervisor in the administration of the Displaced Persons The shop was ‘Aryanised’ and the family had to move to a ‘Jewish Camp in Berlin-Schlachtensee for surviving Jewish victims of house’ the same month. Both the parents and their teenage NS persecution who were now homeless. In 1946 he served children had to work as forced labourers. Alfred ended up in the as a witness at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. SS labour camp at the street Am Großen Wannsee and also had to work in the garden and kitchen of the SD-guesthouse. In 1948, Alfred emigrated to join relatives in New Zealand, where he was reunited with his sister. Both started families The entire family was deported during the ‘Fabrikaktion’ in New Zealand.

Alfred (right) with his sister Hansi and parents Käthe and Berthold Silberstein The Silberstein family at the same location in August in the Lichterfelde district of Berlin in 1937 1940 – imprisonment, expropriation and forced labour had clearly left their mark on all family members

Alfred Silberstein as guard in the Displaced Persons ‘Victim of Fascism’ passport of the Berlin government for Alfred Silberstein, Camp in the Schlachtensee district of Berlin, 1948 September 1946

Story reproduced by kind permission of the Memorial and Educational Site House of the Wannsee Conference, Berlin. © Jewish Museum Berlin.

24 Personal Stories

Ettie Steinberg, Ireland

Ettie Steinberg is the only Irish-born Jew to be murdered in family through the British Home Office in Belfast. The visas Auschwitz-Birkenau. Esther, or Ettie, Steinberg was one of a were sent immediately to Toulouse but they arrived too late. family of seven children who were reared in Raymond Ettie and her family had been rounded up the day before Street, South Circular Road, Dublin. Originally from and sent to the camp at Drancy, outside Paris. They were Czechoslovakia, her family had come to Ireland from transported to Auschwitz and to their immediate death. London in 1926. She was a beautiful girl, tall and slim with wonderful hands. ‘She was a fantastic dressmaker and Ettie wrote a final postcard to her family in Ireland and embroiderer,’ recalled her sister-in-law, also Ettie. In 1937, at managed to throw it out of the train window. the age of twenty-two, Ettie Steinberg married a twenty-four- Extraordinarily, a passer-by found it and posted it. It passed year-old goldsmith from Antwerp, Vogtjeck Gluck. the censors and found its way to Dublin. The postcard was coded with Hebrew terms and read, ‘Uncle Lechem we did The couple moved to Belgium, where their son Leon was not find but we found Uncle Tisha B’Av’. Ettie’s family born. When the Germans invaded the Low Countries, Ettie understood her tragic message very well. Lechem is the and her family went into hiding. By a strange irony, the Hebrew word for bread, and Tisha B’Av is a Jewish fast day Steinbergs in Dublin had secured visas for Ettie and her commemorating the destruction of the Jewish temple.

Ettie Steinberg Vogtjeck Gluck © Conan Kennedy © Conan Kennedy

Leon Gluck in 1940 Ettie Steinberg on her wedding day, Greenville Hall Synagogue, © Conan Kennedy Dublin, 1937 © Irish Jewish Museum

25 Personal Stories

Inge Radford, Vienna

Inge Radford (née Frankel) was born in Vienna in 1932, one of ten children. She lost six members of her immediate family in the Holocaust: her mother and five brothers, Sigmund, Kurt, Walter, Herbert, and Fritz. Inge wrote her story for the Holocaust Memorial Day commemorative booklet in 2009.

‘In 1942 my widowed mother and five brothers, Sigmund, Kurt, Walter, Herbert and Fritz, were deported from Vienna to Minsk in the former USSR. From evidence given in the post-war Criminal Trials we know what they, with thousands of other Austrian Jews, endured before they were finally shot or gassed. I am grateful for this opportunity to remember, Inside of passport issued to Inge Frankel by the Reich, publicly and in print, their suffering when they were initially Vienna 1939 incarcerated in the Minsk ghetto and then transferred to the labour/death camp in the village of Maly Trostinec. ‘That we five grew into relatively unscarred and useful citizens was due to many people – Jewish and non-Jewish – ‘This camp was built by Soviet prisoners-of-war and Jewish whose aim, whether acting from religious or humanitarian slave labour. Conditions for the prisoners were extremely motives, was to minimise the trauma of family separation harsh, and their treatment was brutal. They were housed in and loss for us and for hundreds of other Refugee Children. damp barracks and slept on straw in three-tiered bunks People such as the Danish branch of the Women’s made from thick, unshaved planks with no bedding or International League for Peace and Freedom arranged for 25 mattresses. The camp staff were free to beat, shoot or hang Viennese boys to be looked after and trained by Danish any prisoner on their own authority alone. A subterranean farming families. Regional Committees were also set up all bunker was built with a Nazi tank standing above it. Those over the UK to raise money and find accommodation for who were to be killed next day were held in the bunker. others. My sister lived happily with a Yorkshire Baptist family until she joined our older sister in America. Again, a local ‘Murder at Maly Trostinec was committed mainly by Voluntary Committee set up in Sevenoaks, Kent – the shooting prisoners in the forests surrounding the village. epitome of “middle England” – raised money to bring me Before they were killed, the victims had to undress and hand and five other children out of Europe, and to guarantee the over their possessions, then march in their underwear to the £50 per child asked for by the British Government who had 60m long and 3m deep pits where they were shot by the SS. arranged the mechanics of our escape. To cover the shots and the screams, music was played from a gramophone, amplified by a loudspeaker. ‘Homes and hearts were opened to us. Many children, like myself, stayed with our “adopting” family through school, ‘Maly Trostinec had no permanent gas chambers, but a university, marriage and parenthood. For me, these new, further contribution to the Nazis’ “Final Solution for the kind and loving relationships blurred the picture of a small, Jewish Problem” was made by the use of mobile gas vans. In smiling woman surrounded by several boys all waving as the May 1943, 500 victims were murdered every day in the gas train pulled out of Vienna station. Even so, during sleep there vans, which went daily to and from Minsk and Maly have always been chinks in the protective layer of Trostinec. Five of my family acquiescence and acceptance that mask the bewilderment were spared the unspeakable and hurt which are allowed to surface only in dreams. High- ordeal of ghetto living, roofed buildings like Victorian railway stations, journeys, imprisonment and violent chase and escape, frightening darkness and reassuring light death. At 16 my eldest sister, are recurring symbols. A red ball, smoked cheese sandwiches, Elli, went to live with relatives and a little brown cardboard case accompanied me on the in the USA. My 13- and 14- journey across Europe. Small wonder that in waking life I still year-old brothers, Ernst and treasure (and share with anyone in the family undertaking a Erich, went to live on farms in potentially difficult journey), the Miraculous Medal of the Denmark, and my 9-year old- Virgin given to me by the nuns who looked after me.’ sister, Rose, and I aged 7, came to England (separately Inge Radford lived her final years in Millisle in Northern and unbeknown to each Ireland, by coincidence the same village that offered Passport issued to Inge Frankel other for several years) under temporary refuge to Kindertransport children who arrived in with ‘J’ for Jew the auspices of the Jewish Northern Ireland through Britain. Inge passed away in her clearly stamped on it in red Children’s Refugee Organisation. beloved Co. Down in March 2016, aged 84 years.

26 Personal Stories Tomi Reichental, Slovakia

concentration camp. I was there from November 1944 until the liberation of the camp in April 1945.

‘What I witnessed as a nine-year-old boy is impossible to describe. The starvation, the cruelty of the camp guards, the cold and disease. People, who were just skin and bone and looked like living skeletons, were walking around very slowly, some of them dropping where they fell, never to get up again. They were dying in their hundreds, their emaciated bodies left where they fell or Tomi aged six Tomi Reichental today thrown into heaps. In front of our barracks there were piles of decomposing corpses. For many prisoners in Bergen-Belsen, the Tomi Reichental was born in 1935 in Piestany, Slovakia. In conditions were too much to bear and they threw themselves on November 1944 he was captured and deported to Bergen- the barbed wire at night to be shot and put an end to their Belsen concentration camp along with his mother, brother, misery. We found their corpses there in the mornings. grandmother, aunt and cousin. Tomi was just nine years old when the camp was liberated. Thirty-five members of Tomi’s ‘I lost 35 members of my family in the Holocaust.’ family were murdered in the Holocaust. Since his retirement, Tomi has dedicated much of his time to ‘I was captured with my mother, grandmother, aunt, brother, and telling his story to young people throughout Ireland. He cousin. We were herded into a cattle car and from that moment works closely with Holocaust Education Trust Ireland in onwards, we were treated worse than animals. There was no coordinating a senior schools’ programme, Hearing a privacy or hygiene, the stench and conditions were unbearable. Holocaust survivor speak ..., sharing his personal experiences of the Holocaust with pupils and university students. Tomi ‘Eventually, after seven nights the cattle train stopped. The addresses hundreds of students every year, and HETI is doors were opened and we were greeted by shouts from the SS indebted to him for his commitment to Holocaust education with guns at the ready, and the barking of their Alsatian dogs and awareness. – we had arrived at our destination – Bergen-Belsen

Zoltan Zinn-Collis, Slovakia

‘I was only four or five at the time as no one is sure of my exact ‘As I reared my own children and grandchildren, I realised date of birth. I was found by Han in Bergen-Belsen with my there is a void in our family. There were no grandparents, sister Edit. Dr Bob Collis was one of the volunteer doctors with aunts, uncles or cousins while I was growing up – they the British Red Cross who helped treat me for tuberculosis and perished in the Holocaust – and my children and other diseases. Eventually, Bob brought us back with him to grandchildren are missing them too. It is on such family Ireland and reared us as part of his own family. I took the occasions that we become acutely aware of the sense of loss, Collis name as part of my own. the absence of close family and distant relatives.’

Zoltan married Joan and lived in Athy, Co. Kildare, Ireland. They had four daughters, three grandchildren and two great- grandchildren. Edit lived in Wicklow, Ireland. Zoltan’s biography, Final Witness: My Journey from the Holocaust to Ireland , by Zoltan Zinn-Collis with Alicia McAuley, was published in Dublin in 2006.

Zoltan died in Ireland in December 2012, and his sister, Edit, died three weeks later. Zoltan as a child Zoltan, shortly before his death in 2012

27 Personal Stories Suzi Diamond, Hungary

I was born Suzi Molnar in Hungary, in 1942. We were a small family comprising my mother Gisela, my father Sandor, my brother Terry, and myself.

In 1944 Adolf Eichmann oversaw the round-up and deportation of more than 430,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where most of them perished in the gas chambers. During those months, the Gestapo came for my mother, brother and me. Terry aged about five years Suzi aged about two years

We were forced on to one of the last transports to leave Hungary in September 1944. We were deported first to Ravensbrück and then to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where we remained until liberation in 1945. My mother died of TB soon after the British arrived. Bob Collis brought us back with him to Ireland, and eventually arranged for Terry and me to be adopted by a Jewish couple in Dublin, Elsie and Willie Samuels. Terry and I were very young children and had been told that we were the only two members of our family to have survived the Holocaust. In time, we both married and reared our own children. My brother passed away in 2007 – which makes me deeply aware of how fast the clock is ticking for all of us who are Holocaust survivors. The Belsen children arriving in Dublin Airport, 1947. L–R Terry, Edit, Suzi (held by Dr Bob Collis), Evelyn and Zoltan (held by nurse and Recently my story changed... stewardess)

In Spring 2015, Holocaust Education Trust Ireland was contacted by someone in Hungary called Sandor Molnar, who thought he might be related to me. Over the course of emails and exchanges of photographs and documents, it transpires that he is indeed a relation – he is my first cousin! He is named after my father and he has filled in a few details about my family which I had not previously known. I have learned that my father was one of four brothers who lived in the small town of Karcag about 100 miles from Suzi meeting her cousin Sandor Grave of Suzi’s grandfather Budapest, where they ran a timber business. My new cousin, in Budapest, June 2015 who was born after the war, is the son of the youngest brother, Andor, who survived the Holocaust along with another brother, Lazlo. My father and the fourth brother, Béla, perished in a Russian labour camp in 1943. Last June I visited Karcag and saw my grandfather’s house, the Jewish cemetery where my grandparents are buried and the synagogue where all my family prayed. 778 Jews lived in Karcag before the war; 461 of them were murdered in the Suzi’s grandfather’s house Holocaust. There is a memorial scroll on the synagogue wall recording the Jews from Karcag who perished in the Holocaust. My family is listed on it, but now the scroll has to be corrected because my brother and I survived! I am gradually being introduced to new first cousins and their children living in Hungary and in the United States. This is all very new information for me to absorb as a new and emotional chapter in my personal story is beginning to unfold... Synagogue in Karcag, built in Scroll on synagogue wall January 2016 the late 19th century

28 Personal Stories Jan Kaminski, Poland

Jan Kaminski was born Chaim-Srul Zybner in 1932, the second eldest of a Jewish family of two boys and two girls. They lived with their parents in the small rural town of Bilgoraj in eastern Poland.

Under Operation Reinhard, Nazi forces ‘liquidated’ Bilgoraj on 3 and 9 November 1942, dispatching almost the entire Jewish population of 5,000 – which had been incarcerated in an exposed ghetto situated in the market square – to the nearby death camp of Belzec. Chaim found himself separated from his family during the liquidation and fled to Jan Kaminski aged c.12 years Jan Kaminski in 2014 the relative safety of the thick woods that surrounded the town. From then onwards, he adopted a non-Jewish identity and became Jan Kaminski, a name he would retain for the Dutch embassy, he completed his education. He passed his greater part of his life. GCE exams and through the Catholic agency Veritas he obtained a scholarship in 1954 to study in Ireland at Cork Working on small farms for food and shelter, Jan would University. He successfully completed entrance exams and move on whenever he felt vulnerable or that anyone transferred to Trinity College, Dublin, where he studied suspected his Jewish origins. He was captured and deported Economics and Politics. When he graduated at the end of the with other children to be ‘Germanised’ until he was rescued 1950s, he was granted an Irish passport. by Polish Underground forces. Jan was ‘adopted’ by a tailor’s family and apprenticed to that trade. In 1943, while he was In 1965 Jan married an Irish woman, Margaret (Breach), and attending a summer camp, a group of boys discovered that began his long and varied business career in the computer Jan was Jewish and reported him. While awaiting his education and tourism industries. He and Margaret had three inevitable fate, he found himself momentarily alone, and children, Orla, Jadwiga and Jas. It was only about 25 years ago once again fled to the woods. that Jan revealed his original Jewish identity to his family.

Yet again Jan found himself seeking shelter where he could, After World War II it was revealed that the once flourishing doing odd jobs on farms and living on his wits. By 1944 he Jewish communities of Poland had been utterly destroyed. had made his way to Lublin, into which Russian forces were Jan’s entire family had been wiped away: his parents, Mindla advancing. Spotting a unit of Polish soldiers attached to the and Szulim, his sisters, Chana-Matla and Rywka, and baby Russian army, Jan became the ‘mascot’ of the 21st Artillery brother, whose name is not recorded, were all gone. Today, Regiment of the Polish army. Later he joined another unit on there is a modest project of Jewish revival taking place in its way to Murnau in south-eastern Germany, where the Jan’s home town of Bilgoraj, but so far no further traces of United Nations had set up a school in the camp, and where his direct family have been found. Jan began his education at the age of 15. Jan lives in Dublin and remains keenly aware of his Polish Jan ultimately arrived in Britain, where he learned English, and Jewish roots. He retired in 2006. He is surrounded by his and with the support of Zofia Sarnowska, manager of the children and grandchildren and is still active in the Polish Polish YMCA in Sloane Square, and of van Karnebeek of the community.

Main square, Bilgoraj, 1930

29 Personal Stories Geoffrey Phillips, Germany

Kristallnacht had an instant impact on world public opinion. Within a week, a deputation that included Chief Rabbi Hertz of Great Britain and Chaim Weitzmann, later president of Israel, persuaded the British government to allow Jewish child refugees into Britain. The first Kindertransport train left Berlin via Holland in December 1938. The children arrived in London’s Liverpool Street Station, where they were met by their volunteer foster parents or representatives of hostels and boarding schools. Over the next ten months, almost 10,000 Jewish children aged between two and Geoffrey Phillips in 1938, Geoffrey Phillips in 2008, eighteen years arrived in Britain via the Kindertransports. aged 13 aged 83 They came from Germany, Austria, Poland and Czechoslovakia. Each child clutched a small suitcase holding their most cherished possessions. Most of the children never on one of the Kindertransport trains; both of Geoffrey’s saw their parents again. Some Kindertransport children parents perished in the Holocaust. He grew up and lived in found refuge in Northern Ireland on a farm in Millisle in England, where he married Phyllis, and they later came to County Down, where over 200 children aged between three Ireland, where they raised their three sons. Geoffrey was and eighteen years were able to stay and work before ardently proud of his Jewishness, about which he was very moving on after the war. knowledgeable and well informed. Although he seldom spoke of his childhood experiences, Geoffrey was very Geoffrey Phillips escaped from Germany as a thirteen-year- mindful of being a living witness to this tragic page in the old boy when his parents managed to secure a place for him history of the Jewish people. He passed away in August 2011.

Kindertransport children arriving in Britain, summer 1939

Was the Holocaust different in different countries? Age appropriate: 16 years and over

In some respects, the Holocaust experience was different in western and eastern Europe.

Find out about: The Holocaust in France, Belgium, Holland and Norway. The Holocaust in Poland, Slovakia, the Soviet Union and Hungary.

Find out more: www.ushmm.org www.iwm.org.uk

30 SPECIAL TOPICS & LESSON EXTENDERS

31 Special Topics & Lesson Extenders

KRISTALLNACHT – November Pogrom, 9 November 1938 (The Night of Broken Glass) This event was a turning point in the development of Nazi measures against the Jewish people of Germany and Austria. Germany had expelled German Jews of Polish heritage, some of whom had been living in Germany for generations, to the Polish border, where they lingered in very poor conditions, not wanted by either country. On receipt of a letter from his sister describing the suffering she and their parents were experiencing, Herschel Grynszpan, who was studying in Paris, entered the German embassy and shot a German diplomat, Ernst vom Rath. This was the spark the Nazis had been waiting for to unleash pogroms against the Jews of Germany and Austria. On the night of 9/10 November 1938, the state-sponsored pogrom known as Kristallnacht erupted against the Jews of Germany and Austria. Hitler Youth, bolstered by the SA and locals, unleashed a night of terror, violence and destruction. Synagogues and schools were wrecked and set ablaze; Jewish businesses and homes had their windows smashed leaving the streets strewn with glass. Jewish cemeteries were desecrated. Over a thousand Jews were beaten to death or committed suicide out of despair, some 35,000 Jewish men were thrown into concentration camps. After the destruction, the Jewish communities were fined one billion Reichsmarks to pay for the damage! For many Jews, it became clear that they had to leave. With their property and bank accounts confiscated, and no longer able to find employment, Jews were forced to sell their businesses and properties at far below their market value. Offices were set up to speed Jewish emigration. After years of official harassment of Jews in Nazi Germany, the state – sanctioned violence of Kristallnacht marked the acceleration of Jewish persecution that would ultimately culminate in the Holocaust.

Lesson plan Age appropriate: 12 years and over Describe the events of Kristallnacht • Kristallnacht resulted in huge damage to Jewish property, the murder and terrorising of Jewish people, and the incarceration of thousands of Jewish men. The Jewish communities were made to pay for the damage • Thousands of Jews fled Germany and Austria • 10,000 Jewish children from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland found refuge in Britain via special trains called Kindertransports

Individual activities • Write an essay or a poem conveying the personal fear and general destruction of the event called Kristallnacht

Classroom activities • Discuss ways to commemorate Kristallnacht • In which countries is it particularly remembered? Burning synagogue in Euskirchen, Germany, Reflection on the afternoon of 10 November 1938, USHMM ■ What should we do in our countries today if we witness a riot directed against one group of people? ■ What could we do? Find out more: www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005201

32 Special Topics & Lesson Extenders KINDERTRANSPORTS

Following Kristallnacht, the British government agreed to accept 10,000 Jewish children, aged between 3 and 17 years, from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland, offering them refuge from Nazi persecution. Jewish and Christian organisations worked together to raise funds and find accommodation for the children. Private homes, boarding schools, farms, hostels, castles and many more places were found. Temporary visas were issued and a £50 bond was raised for each child to finance Nicholas Winton their eventual return home. The 10,000 children travelled to Britain on special trains called Kindertransports, which operated from 1 December Nicholas Winton saved the 1938 until the outbreak of World War II on 1 September 1939. The lives of 669 Czech children by arranging for them to Kindertransport trains crossed into the Netherlands and Belgium, and come to Britain on eight from there the children continued to Britain by ship. Each child had their Kindertransport trains. name and the name of the family or place they were going to on a card Although the children around their neck. All of the children carried a small suitcase, a favourite survived, most of their toy and a small bag of provisions from home. families perished in the Holocaust. Nicholas Winton The outbreak of war forced the Kindertransports to cease. The last died in 2015, aged 106 years. train left Germany on 1 September 1939. The last transport ship left the Netherlands on 14 May 1940, the day that Holland surrendered to Germany.

Most of the Kindertransport children who arrived in Britain survived the war but the majority of them never saw their families again – they perished in the Holocaust.

Classroom activities • Show the class some photos of Kindertransport children and tell a story about one of them

Reflection ■ How do you think the parents of the Kindertransport children felt when they brought them to the train stations? ■ How do you think you would feel if your parents insisted you take a train to a foreign country where you did not know the language or anyone living there?

Helga Kreiner arriving in Britain off a Kindertransport train, 22 December 1938 Yad Vashem

Find out more: www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005260

33 Special Topics & Lesson Extenders

WANNSEE CONFERENCE

The Wannsee Conference took place on 20 January 1942, attended by fifteen German government and Nazi officials. They had gathered to discuss Hitler’s ‘Final solution to the Jewish Question’. The total elimination of the Jewish people had already been decided upon. At the Wannsee Conference, Reinhard Heydrich sought approval for the implementation of the mechanisms and infrastructures required to carry out Hitler’s plans. Adolf Eichmann presented the delegates with a list of Jews living in each European country whom the Nazis intended to murder. The delegates debated at length who was Jewish according to bloodline considerations. It took them Villa on Lake Wannsee where the conference was held less than two hours to discuss the issues and to offer Heydrich their full support – to murder the Jewish people of Europe by poison gas.

Lesson plan Age appropriate: 15 years and over • Describe what took place at Wannsee on 20 January 1942 • Who called the meeting? • Who attended the meeting? • What was the purpose of holding the meeting? • What were the main concerns of the delegates?

Individual activities • Look at the list presented at the Wannsee Conference • Is your country on the list? • Were there any Jewish people living in your country? • What happened to them?

Classroom activities • Watch the DVD Conspiracy • Ask the class to discuss the protocols of the Wannsee meeting List presented to the W • What was curious about the language used by the delegates? annsee Conference setting ou the t number of Jews in each count • Discuss how they reached agreement without using clear ry terms to describe what they intended to do • Discuss why Heydrich believed he needed to have the meeting in the first place

Reflection ■ Why do you think the delegates at the Wannsee Conference used euphemisms such as ‘evacuation’ and ‘resettlement’ for the murder of the Jews? ■ Why were the delegates so concerned about the legality of what they were planning to do? ■ Are all laws acceptable because they are legally or correctly drawn up? Find out more: www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005477

Consider: LAW, RIGHTS & RESPONSIBILITIES

34 Special Topics & Lesson Extenders

RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS

‘...For he who saves one life is regarded as if he has saved the world entire...’ (The Talmud, TB Sanhedrin 4:5)

Righteous Among The Nations are non-Jewish people who have been recognised by Yad Vashem (the Holocaust Memorial and Remembrance Authority in Israel) for risking their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. Every year, the number of Righteous Among the Nations increases as their stories are revealed by people they saved during the Holocaust. These righteous people put their own lives and their families’ lives at risk to save Jews from the Nazis. They were individuals, groups, organisations and diplomats who did what they felt was right to assist their fellow humans. The Talmudic quotation, which is included in the Yad Vashem citation of the award, should be treated literally: not only those Jews who have been personally saved by the Righteous owe them their lives, but all of their descendants too. Mary Elmes (Ireland) Mary Elmes, an Irishwoman from Cork and a scholar of Trinity College Irena Sendler Dublin, found herself in Vichy France during the war. Having worked Irena Sendler was a young Polish with the Quakers during the Spanish Civil War, Mary joined hundreds of Catholic woman who joined refugees who fled over the Pyrenees into France in 1939. When France Zegota , the Council for Aid to Jews fell in 1940 thousands of Jews fled south and were incarcerated in the in Occupied Poland. This Rivesaltes transit camp, whence they were deported to Auschwitz and underground network forged other Nazi camps in 1942. Mary and her colleagues organised ‘children’s colonies’ and succeeded in saving a great number of Jewish children from the Nazis. thousands of documents to help Jewish people acquire a safe Magda & André Trocmé of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, (France) ‘Aryan’ identity. Irena was From December 1940 to September 1944, the inhabitants of the personally responsible for saving French village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon and the surrounding villages 2,500 young Jewish children by provided refuge for an estimated 5,000 people; some 3,000 were Jews smuggling them out of the Warsaw fleeing the Vichy authorities and the Germans. Led by Pastor André ghetto and finding them Polish Trocmé, his wife Magda, and his assistant, Pastor Edouard Theis, the foster families. She kept meticulous residents of these villages offered shelter in private homes, hotels, farms and schools. They forged identification and ration cards for the refugees, and in some records of the children’s birth cases guided them across the border to neutral Switzerland. names and the families she gave them to. Most of their parents Oskar Schindler (Germany) perished in the Holocaust. Oskar Schindler was a German industrialist and member of the Nazi Party who saved the lives of some 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and ammunitions factory in Krakow. His German and Nazi connections helped Schindler protect his Jewish workers from deportation and certain death. As time went on, Schindler had to give Nazi officials ever larger bribes and gifts of luxury items obtainable only on the black market to keep his workers safe. By July 1944, Germany was losing the war; Schindler convinced SS commandant Amon Go ẗh to allow him to move his factory to Brünnlitz in the Sudetenland, thus sparing his workers from almost certain death in the gas chambers. Schindler continued to bribe SS officials to prevent the execution of his workers until the end of World War II, by which time he had spent his entire fortune.

Raoul Wallenberg (Swedish diplomat in Budapest) Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish diplomat and banker who travelled to Budapest in 1944 at the request of the War Refugee Board and Hungarian Jewish organisations. By the time he arrived, almost half a million Jews had already been deported to Auschwitz. He immediately set about issuing Swedish certificates of protection, which were granted to Jews with any sort of Swedish link. As the political situation changed in Hungary, Wallenberg found refuge for 33,000 Jews in houses flying the flags of neutral countries. In November 1944, he accompanied Jews on a forced march to the Austrian border, distributing food, clothing and medicine. When the Red Army liberated Hungary, Wallenberg was taken as a prisoner to the USSR, where his fate remains an unsolved mystery to this day. Lesson plan Classroom activities • Discuss the Talmudic quotation

Find out more: hetireland.org/programmes/holocaust-education-resources/hmd-publications/ yadvashem.org/righteous

Consider: CHOICES, FREEDOM, RIGHTS & RESPONSIBILITIES

35 Special Topics & Lesson Extenders

RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS

Although there were collaborators and committed Nazis in most countries during the war years, some countries acted collectively, as a nation, to save their Jewish communities from deportation and probable annihilation.

The rescue of Denmark’s Jewish population

The German occupation of Denmark began in April 1940. Eager of Denmark. Word reached the Chief Rabbi, Marcus Melchior, on to cultivate good relations with a population they regarded as 29 September, the day before the Jewish New Year. He warned his ‘fellow Aryans’, the Nazi occupiers allowed the Danish congregation to immediately go into hiding with their families. government a lot of freedom in running its own domestic affairs. The Danish–German Agreement of 1940 stipulated that The Nazis acted on 1 October. Danish police refused to co- Denmark’s 7,500 Jews were not to be deported. But in August operate. German special units knocked on Jewish doors but 1943, the Danish government resigned rather than yield to new found hardly anyone at home. Jews had left their homes by German demands. Three and a half years of relatively benign train, by car and on foot, finding refuge in private homes, occupation came to an end when the Nazis proclaimed a state hospitals, and churches. The rescue operation involved of emergency. Reich plenipotentiary Werner Best drew up plans thousands of Danish people from all walks of life. to deport the Jewish people of Denmark. The Danish Jews were taken to the coast, where fishermen helped ferry 7,220 Jews and 680 non-Jewish family members to Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz, the German attaché for shipping affairs, used his close contacts with leading Danish Social safety across the water in neutral Sweden. The previous year, Democrats to inform them of the impending danger for the Jews Sweden had accepted 900 Jewish refugees from Norway, and they now absorbed the Danish Jewish community.

The collective heroism of the Danes in rescuing their Jewish population from the Nazis is recognised all over the world. The main door of Copenhagen’s Danish Jewish Museum bears the sign with the Hebrew word ‘mitzvah’ (a good deed).

Many Danes still see nothing extraordinary in what they did. The modesty of the Danish people for their exceptional altruism is reflected in the words of the Danish police officer and fisherman, Knud Dyby, who has been honoured for his heroism in saving Jews: ‘If you wanted to retain your self-respect, you did what you could.’ Danish fishing boat that brought Jews to safety in Sweden USHMM

Find out more: www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-rescue-of-danish-jews

Bulgaria saves her Jewish community from the Nazis

In 1941 Bulgaria became an Axis partner of Nazi Germany, and in return received the territories of Macedonia and Thrace. When the Deputy Speaker of the Assembly, Dimitar Peshev, heard of the imminent deportation of the Jewish community of Bulgaria, he organised a petition signed by 42 legislators, including several bishops, urging the king not to deport the 49,000 Bulgarian Jews. The petition succeeded, and the Jews of Bulgaria were saved. However, they were unable to save almost 12,000 Jews from Macedonia and Thrace, who were deported to Nazi death camps, where most of them were murdered. Dimitar Peshev, Bishop Stephan, Bishop Kyril and Dimo Kazasov were later recognised as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Authority in Israel.

Find out more: HMD booklet 2004 on www.hetireland.org Monument in the centre of Plovdiv, with Beyond Hitler’s Grasp , Percapita Productions, a film by Nitzan Aviram the inscription: ‘To all who helped to save us on 10 March, 1943. From the grateful based on the book by Michael Bar-Zohar Jewish community of Plovdiv’

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39 Mind Mapping, Quotations, Images QUOTATIONS

These quotations should prompt discussion or class debate. Some were said in response to the Holocaust. Others were said at another time in a different context but are equally relevant. Find out the person who wrote each quotation, and when, where and why it was said.

Read one quotation . Discuss its meaning, significance and how it applies to our moral and ethical guidelines today.

First they came for the communists But I was not a communist, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the socialists and trade unionists But I was not a socialist or trade unionist, so I did not speak out. Then they came for the Jews But I was not a Jew, so I did not speak out. Then they came for me But by then there was no one left to speak out for me. Pastor Martin Niemöller

It is true that not all victims were Jews, but all Jews were victims. Elie Wiesel

The horror of the Holocau st is not that it deviated from normal human behaviour; the horror is that it didn’t. What happened may happen again, to others not necessarily Jews, perpetrated by others, not necessarily Germans. We are all possible victims, pos sible perpetrators, possible bystanders. Yehuda Bauer

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Edmund Burke

Where one burns books, one will, in the end, burn people. Heinrich Heine

Death cuts off life; extinction cuts off birth. Jonathan Schell

40 Mind Mapping, Quotations, Images IMAGES

The images provided should elicit a response from your students. They might also prompt students to do some research on their own and investigate one of the subjects in greater detail. The age group varies according to the images, from 11 or 12 years for the yellow star to 16–18 years for the soldier shooting the woman and for the smoking chimney.

■ YELLOW STAR

■ BADGES OF HATE

■ UKRAINE, 1942

■ SMOKING CHIMNEY

■ FOREST

41 Mind Mapping, Quotations, Images

Yellow Star

USHMM

■ What is this? ■ Who wore it? ■ Would you wear one?

Find out more: www.thoughtco.com/history-of-the-yellow-star-1779682

42 Mind Mapping, Quotations, Images

Badges of Hate

The yellow Star of Jews who were in David imprinted concentration camps with the word ‘ Juif ’ often wore yellow – the French word triangles like this one for ‘Jew’ – is typical marked with a ‘U’, of the badges the indicating that the Nazis forced Jews prisoner who wore it was to wear. from Hungary.

Jews also wore Star of David armbands.

This patch identified a Polish person living Jehovah’s under Nazi control. Witnesses, whose religion prevented them from swearing an oath of loyalty to Hitler, had to wear purple triangles. Black triangles were worn by those classified as ‘antisocial’, including Roma and Sinti, lesbians Pink triangles were and prostitutes. for homosexuals and those accused of homosexual acts.

Criminals wore green triangles.

Political prisoners wore red triangles. This armband was worn by a labour-camp prisoner.

Markings used by the Nazis to identify their victims USHMM

■ Who else wore identifying badges? ■ Find out what happened to other prisoners of the Nazis

Find out more: www.ushmm.org

43 Mind Mapping, Quotations, Images

Ukraine, 1942

Action in Ivangorod

■ What is going on in this picture? ■ Who took the photograph? ■ What might have happened to the soldier if he refused to shoot the woman and child?

Find out more: www.ushmm.org

44 Mind Mapping, Quotations, Images

Smoking Chimney

■ Is this what the Holocaust was about? ■ What else was it about?

Find out more: www.ushmm.org

45 Forest

Site of murder of 800 Jewish children. Zbylitowska, Góra, Poland, June 1942

46 Mind Mapping, Quotations, Images REFLECTION

The Holocaust did not begin with gas chambers and crematoria. It began with taunting and spitting, jeering and bullying. It was about cruelty, humiliation, loss of dignity, loss of freedom, loss of education, loss of income, confiscation of property, loss of civil rights and human rights. All of this was fuelled by antisemitism.

When Adolf Hitler became leader of the Nazi party in 1921, he stated clearly that his ultimate aim was ‘the removal of Jews from German society’. By the time he became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, he was planning to remove Jews from Germany by expulsion, ‘resettlement’ and ‘evacuation’. With the annexation of Austria in 1938 and the subsequent absorption of Czechoslovakia in 1939, Hitler was in control of more territory and more Jews. The invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, which heralded the beginning of World War II, brought a further three million Jews under German control. The words ‘resettlement’ and ‘evacuation’ soon became euphemisms for murder.

It is estimated that two thirds of the Jewish people of Europe perished in the Holocaust. Millions of other victims were also murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.

47 PROJECTS

48 Projects

Commemoration

International Holocaust Memorial Day is on 27 January every year and it is important to observe it. This was the date that Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated in 1945. A commemoration need not be a very complicated event; it can be as simple as lighting a candle or reciting a poem. Standing in a circle and holding hands for one minute of silence can be powerful and moving. Some schools like to organise more elaborate events or ceremonies that involve readings, images, music and special guests. It can involve one class, a whole year or even the whole school and the wider community. There are also other dates in the Holocaust narrative that might be particularly relevant to your school. Involving students in an act of remembrance reinforces memory.

Holocaust Education Trust Ireland assists and advises in all aspects of Holocaust education and remembrance. HETI provides accurate information, arranges visits of Holocaust survivors to schools, and provides guidance in organising Holocaust commemorations. The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), Yad Vashem, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) and other Holocaust education centres also produce comprehensive guidelines.

49 Projects

Pile of Shoes

This can be an ongoing project throughout the year. Get permission from the school to use a suitable space to create your own pile of shoes. It is going to grow over time. Ask students to bring in pairs of old or discarded shoes, tied together. Put the shoes in the designated pile. Perhaps the rest of the school, some staff and even members of the wider community may wish to contribute shoes to the pile. As the pile grows bigger, it should resemble the huge piles of shoes on display in the Auschwitz Museum in Poland. All of the shoes there belonged to individual people, each of whom had a life, a family, and a story. The pile you make in your school should prompt students to learn the story of one person who perished in the Holocaust. They might like to show photos or display the story of the person beside the pile of shoes.

Shoes belonging to victims, Auschwitz-Birkenau

50 Projects

Pool of Tears

Cut out teardrop-shaped pieces of paper and ask pupils to write a message to someone who perished in the Holocaust. Drop the ‘teardrop’ into a large basket. As the basket fills up with teardrops it will begin to overflow. Other pupils and staff may like to inscribe a teardrop. People from outside the school may also wish to add to your pool of tears.

Perhaps display photos or stories around your ‘pool’ about some of the young people who died in the Holocaust.

Consider other ways to commemorate the Holocaust

Design a project around one or more of these disciplines:

Art and the Holocaust Music and the Holocaust Drama and the Holocaust Poetry and the Holocaust Writing and the Holocaust Film and the Holocaust Add your own ideas to the list.

51 QUESTIONS & ANSWERS Pages 53 –54

GLOSSARY Pages 55 –56

BOOKLIST, DVDS & WEBSITES/REFERENCES Pages 57 –58

52 Questions and Answers All of these questions and answers may be investigated in greater depth.

When was the Nazi Party formed? 1920

When did Hitler write Mein Kampf ? 1924

Where did he write it? In prison

In what year was Hitler appointed Chancellor of 1933 Germany?

When were books burned in public bonfires? March 1933

What books were burned? Jewish religious books as well as books by Jewish authors and books about Jews. Other books written by writers considered to be degenerate or ‘un-German’ were also burned.

When were Jewish shops boycotted? April 1933

What else was boycotted? Jewish doctors, lawyers and other professionals

When were the Nuremberg Racial Laws introduced? 1935

What were the Nuremberg Racial Laws? Laws that deprived Jews of German citizenship and classified them as a ‘race’, and other statutes

What was going on in Germany in the summer of Berlin Olympic Games 1936?

In what year was Austria annexed as part of Greater 1938 Germany?

What was the annexation called? The Anschluss

When and what was the Evian Conference? July 1938, convened in France to consider policies on Jewish refugees

How many countries participated? 32

What was the result of the deliberations? None of the participating nations would offer refuge to Jewish refugees

When was Kristallnacht ? 9–10 November 1938

What else is it called? The November Pogrom; The Night of Broken Glass

What was Kristallnacht ? Nationwide pogroms against the Jews of Germany and Austria. Jewish businesses, homes, synagogues and schools were smashed and burned, the streets were strewn with glass

What were the Kindertransports ? Special trains organised to bring Jewish child refugees from Europe to Britain

What happened to the Kindertransport children? Most survived but their families perished in the Holocaust

53 Questions and Answers In what year were Jews forced to wear yellow stars 1941 in Germany and gradually in other Nazi- and other identifying labels? occupied territories

What were ghettos? Walled in or fenced off areas of towns or cities where Jews were forced to live

When were ghettos established? From 1939 onwards throughout all territories occupied by the Nazis

What purpose did they serve? They segregated the Jewish people from the rest of the population

When was the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising? 19 April to 16 May 1943

What happened? 7,000 Jews were killed. The ghetto was razed. 50,000 were deported to death camps. Few survived

What countries signed the Tripartite Pact? Germany, Italy and Japan

When did the mass murder of Jews by June 1941 killing squads begin in Eastern Europe?

What were the killing squads called? Einsatzgruppen

Where and when was the first concentration camp Dachau, Germany, 1933 established?

What were the different types of camps? Transit, Labour, Concentration, Death

How many death camps were there? Six

Where were they? All in Nazi-occupied Poland

Why were they dismantled? To hide all evidence of their activities

What happened to the Jews of Denmark? They were rescued by their fellow Danish citizens

How and when did Hitler die? Suicide, 30 April 1945

What date did World War II end in Europe? 8 May 1945

When did World War II end? 18 August 1945

How many Jews lived in Europe before World War II? Between 9 and 12 million

Who were the victims of the Holocaust? Jews, Roma, homosexuals, people with disabilities, political and Christian opponents, Slavs and ethnic minorities

What European countries were neutral during World Switzerland, Sweden, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, War II? (Turkey)

What countries saved their Jewish communities? Denmark, Bulgaria

Who are the Righteous Among The Nations? Non-Jewish people who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust

54 Glossary

ANSCHLUSS The annexation of Austria by Germany in March 1938

ARBEIT MACHT FREI ‘Work makes one free’ (or ‘work liberates’): sign placed above the entrance to Auschwitz and other concentration camps

ARYAN Term the Nazis applied to people of whom they said were ‘superior’ in their appearance and characteristics

BUND Jewish Socialist non-Zionist organisation

EINSATZGRUPPEN Mobile killing squads composed primarily of German SS, police, armed volunteers and local collaborators who shot mostly Jews (and others) in the Soviet and Eastern territories

FINAL SOLUTION Nazi code name for the annihilation of the Jewish people: the final solution to the Jewish question in Europe

FÜHRER Leader (Adolf Hitler)

GESTAPO Geheime Staatspolizei – Nazi Secret State Police

GHETTOS Sealed-off sections of towns and cities where the Nazis forced Jews to live in overcrowded conditions

JUDENFREI ‘Free of Jews’: area ‘cleansed’ of Jews and the Jewish bloodline

JUDENRAT (pl JUDENRÄTE) Jewish council in a ghetto, set up by the Nazis

KAPO Privileged inmate in a concentration camp; often a common criminal, very brutal

KRISTALLNACHT Night of Broken Glass, also called the November Pogrom

LEBENSRAUM ‘Living space’

LUFTWAFFE German air force

MEIN KAMPF My Struggle: political manifesto written by Adolf Hitler

MISCHLINGE People of mixed blood

NAZI PARTY Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei – National Socialist German Workers’ Party

55 Glossary

POGROM Organised violence against Jews

REICH Empire

REICHSMARK (RM) German monetary unit

RHSA Reichssicherheitshauptamt – Reich Security Main Office (led by Reinhard Heydrich)

SA Sturmabteilung – Stormtroopers (Brownshirts): paramilitary organisation established in the 1920s

SD Sicherheitsdienst – Security Service: intelligence service of the SS

SS Schutzstaffel: parliamentary and personal guard unit of Adolf Hitler, responsible for security

SHTETL Yiddish word for a small Jewish town or village

SONDERKOMMANDO ‘Special unit’: in killing centres, Sonderkommandos were selected as forced labourers to facilitate the killing process, particularly the disposal of corpses

TOTENKOPF ‘Death’s head’: human skull emblem worn by the SS, who were usually in charge of concentration and death camps

VOLK People, folk, nation

WANNSEE CONFERENCE A conference that took place on 20 January 1942, at which endorsement was given for Hitler’s plans to murder the Jewish people of Europe by poison gas

WEHRMACHT German armed forces (army, navy and airforce)

WEI MAR REPUBLIC 1919 –1933 German republic (democracy) established after World War I

YIDDISH Language (of the Jews) that combines elements of German and Hebrew, and some words of Slavic origin

ZYKLON B Hydrogen cyanide: insecticide used in gas chambers to murder victims

56 Booklist, DVDs & Websites/References

BOOKLIST DVD s

CORE TEXTS FILMS Christopher R. Browning, The Origins of the Final Schindler’s List 16 years Solution , William Heinemann 2004 Life Is Beautiful 16 years Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve The Pianist 16 years Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland , Harper Perennial 1998 Conspiracy 17–18 years Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich at War: How the The Counterfeiters 17–18 years Nazis led Germany from Conquest to Disaster , Allen In Darkness 17–18 years Lane (an imprint of Penguin Books) 2008 Jan T. Gross, Neighbours , Princeton University Press DOCUMENTARIES 2003 Recollections: Eyewitnesses Remember the Jane Marks, The Hidden Children: The Secret Holocaust, available through [email protected] Survivors of the Holocaust , Ballantine Books 1993 Beyond Hitler’s Grasp , Percapita Productions 2001, a Mordecai Paldiel, The Path of the Righteous: Gentile film by Nitzan Aviram based on the book by Michael Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust , KTAV Bar-Zohar Publishing House Inc. 1993 Till the Tenth Generation , Praxis Pictures (Ireland) Bernard Wasserstein, On the Eve: The Jews of Europe 2008, a film retracing the wartime experiences of Before the Second World War , Profile Books 2012 Tomi Reichental

READING ** Primo Levi, If This is a Man and The Truce (Survival in Auschwitz) , Abacus 1991 WEBSITES * Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl (definitive www.hetireland.org edition, trans. Susan Massotty), Puffin Books 2002 www.remember.org Imre Kertész, Fateless , Northwestern University Press 1992 www.yadvashem.org Janina Bauman, Beyond These Walls: Escaping www.iwm.org.uk the Warsaw Ghetto, a Young Girl’s Story , Virago www.ushmm.org Modern Classics 2007 www.adl.org (Anti-Defamation League) ** Bernhard Schlink, The Reader , Phoenix 1997 The Diary of Petr Ginz (ed. Chava Pressburger), www.memorial-museums.net Atlantic Books 2007 www.auschwitz.org/en/ * Be la Zsolt, Nine Suitcases , Pimlico 2005 ́ www.vhf.org (USC Shoah Foundation Institute * Karen Levine, Hanna’s Suitcase: A True Story , Visual History Archive) Evans 2006 www.centropa.org * Marilyn Taylor, Faraway Home , O’Brien Press 2001 www.deathcamps.org ** Annette Dumbach and Jud Newborn, Sophie www.yivo.org Scholl and the White Rose , Oneworld Publications 2007 www.theholocaustexplained.org www.romasintigenocide.eu/en/home * denotes recommended for primary level, aged 11 years ** denotes recommended for older readers, aged 17–18 years All others are recommended for 12 years upwards

57 Boo klist, DVDs & Websites/References REFERENCES BIBLIOGRAPHY Bachrach, Susan D., Tell them we remember: The story of the Holocaust , USHMM 1994 Berenbaum, Michael, The world must know , USHMM 1993 Gilbert, Martin, The Righteous: The unsung heroes of the Holocaust , Black Swan 2003 Grant, R.G., The Holocaust , Wayland Publishers Ltd 2000 Paldiel, Mordecai, The path of the Righteous: Gentile rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust , KTAV Publishing House Inc. 1993 Pressburger, Chava, (ed.), The Diary of Petr Ginz , Atlantic Books 2007 Rapoport, Safira, (ed.), Yesterdays and then tomorrows: Holocaust anthology of testimonies and readings , Yad Vashem 2002 Satloff, Robert, Among the Righteous , Perseus Books 2005 Tatelbaum, Itzhak B.,: Diary entries from Through our Eyes: Children witness the Holocaust , Yad Vashem 2003 Yad Vashem catalogue: To bear witness Yad Vashem 2002, How was it humanly possible? A study of perpetrators and bystanders during the Holocaust

IMAGES Action in Ivangorod , USHMM List presented to the Wannsee Conference , House of the Wannsee Conference, Berlin Adolf Hitler shakes hands with Paul von Hindenburg , Imperial War Museum Magda & André Trocmé, Yad Vashem Adolf Hitler , USHMM Main square, Bilgoraj, 1930 , private collection American serviceman helps little girl, DP camp, Germany , Yad Vashem Map of a Death March , Yad Vashem American troops liberate Mauthausen , USHMM Map of the death camps , USHMM Auschwitz women’s barracks , IBT Collection, Willie Warmen, photographer Map showing Jewish communities before the Holocaust , Yad Vashem Belzec , Chris Schwartz, Galicia Jewish Museum, Krakow Markings used by the Nazis to identify their victims , USHMM Burial of Jewish victims of Kielce pogrom , Yad Vashem Mary Elmes , private collection Burning of 20,000 books in Berlin , USHMM Members of the SA with political prisoners , BPK Berlin Burning synagogue , Imperial War Museum Nicholas Winton , Getty Images Danish fishing boat , USHMM Olympic torch arrives in Berlin , USHMM Doris Segal , private collection Oskar Schindler , Yad Vashem Einsatzgruppen in action , Imperial War Museum Park bench ‘not for Jews’ , Hulton archive, Getty Images Entrance to Auschwitz , courtesy Panstwowe Muzeum, Auchwitz-Birkenau, Passport with red ‘J’ (cover and inside) , Inge Frankel (Radford), private Poland collection Entrance to the Lodz Ghetto , USHMM Poster for Der ewige Jude , USHMM Family photo , Budapest 1944, Yad Vashem Pyramid of Hate , Anti-Defamation League Geoffrey Phillips photographs , private collection Raoul Wallenberg , USHMM German beer mat , Imperial War Museum, London Religious Jewish man being humiliated , Yad Vashem ‘Gnawing away at the Nations of the World’ , Der Stu ̈rmer , no. 39, 28 Roll call at Buchenwald , USHMM September 1944 Shoes belonging to victims , Panstwowe Muzeum, Auschwitz-Birkenau Grodno, Byelorussia: a street in a shtetl , USHMM Site of murder of 800 Jewish children , Chris Schwartz, Galicia Jewish Hanna Lehrer wearing the Star of David , USHMM Museum, Krakow Helga Kreiner arriving in Britain off a Kindertransport train , Yad Vashem Smoking chimney , private collection Hitler Youth, boys , Yad Vashem Stormtroopers fix notices in shop windows , USHMM Hitler Youth, girls (League of German Girls) , Yad Vashem Stylised map illustrating a Nuremberg Law , USHMM Inmates at forced labour in Mauthausen , National Archives, Washington DC Suzi Diamond photographs , private collection Inmates from Dachau during a Death March , Yad Vashem Swastika displayed at a Nazi rally , Getty Images Irena Sendler , Reuters Tomi Reichental photographs , private collection Jan Kaminski photographs , private collection Transport of Hungarian Jews , Yad Vashem Jesse Owens , USHMM Villa on Lake Wannsee , House of the Wannsee Conference Jew forced to carry sign: ‘I am a racial defiler’ , USHMM Wooden pedestrian bridge in the Warsaw Ghetto , The Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute ‘Jews are not wanted here’ , www.jerusalemperspective.com/6275/ Yellow stars , USHMM Jews being forced to scrub the streets in Vienna , USHMM Zoltan Zinn-Collis photographs , private collection Khaled Abdelwahhab , Robert Satloff Zyklon B gas can and pellets , Imperial War Museum Kindertransport children arriving in Britain, summer 1939 , Yad Vashem

Front and back covers: Original art by Tisa van der Schulenberg (Sr. Paula, Dorsten, Germany)

58 After the Holocaust

Grodno, Byelorussia: A street in a shtetl Suddenly, all those places where Jews had lived for hundreds of years had vanished. And I thought that in years to come, long after the slaughter, Jews might want to hear about the places which had disappeared, about the life that once was and no longer is. Roman Vishniac

Before World War II, it is estimated that between nine and twelve million Jews lived in Europe. Six million were murdered in the Holocaust, almost two thirds of European Jewry. Millions of other victims were also murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.

59 Clifton House, Lower Fitzwilliam Street, Dublin 2, Ireland. Tel: +353 1 6690593 Email: [email protected] Website: www.hetireland.org

Teacher Education Section

© Revised: Lynn Jackson 2017, Holocaust Education Trust Ireland Produced with support from the Teacher Education Section, Department of Education and Skills, Ireland. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means without permission in writing.