December 31 January 1 January 2 January 3 January 4

No School No School -Hand out books -Read pages 5-7 in -Read Part 1 (pages packet on different 3-22) -Read background types of info pages 2-4, discrimination, -Do questions for discuss discuss Part 1 on page 16

-Homework – do -Fill out page 8 with page 12 – pre-reading examples you found journal entries – one paragraph response to each question – beginning, middle, and end to each paragraph

January 7 January 8 January 9 January 10 January 11

-Read Part 2 (pages -Read Part 3 (pages -Read Part 4 (pages -Read Part 5 (pages -Read Part 6 (pages 23-28) 29-46) 47-65) 66-84) 85-97)

-Do questions for -Do questions for -Do questions for -Do questions for -Do questions for Part 2 on page 16 Part 3 on page 16 Part 4 on page 16 Part 5 on page 17 Part 6 on page 17

-Fill out page 8 with -Fill out page 8 with -QUIZ?? -Fill out page 8 with -Fill out page 8 with examples you found examples you found examples you found examples you found -Fill out page 8 with -Do pages 9-10 in examples you found -Do packet page 11 -Do page 13 in packet packet

January 14 January 15 January 16 January 17 January 18

-Read Part 7 (pages -Read Part 8 (pages -Read Part 9 (pages -Do pages 18 and 20 -FINAL TEST 98-103) 104-112) 113-115) in class -Packets due -Do questions for -Do questions for -Do questions for -Discussion on Part 7 on page 17 Part 8 on page 17 Part 9 on page 17 cruelty, genocide – -Collect books current article -Fill out page 8 with -Fill out page 8 with -Fill out page 8 with examples you found examples you found examples you found -QUIZ??

-Do page 14 in class -Do page 15 in class -Do page 19 in class and discuss and discuss and discuss

-QUIZ??

Night by Elie Wiesel. Night is the account of a young man (Elie) who must bear responsibility for his aged father and whose loss of a beloved parent wracks his spirit with terror, despair, and regret.

One of the most gripping autobiographical ordeals in literature, it carries the reader into the hell of Nazi perversity to the death camps intended to rid the German Reich of Jews.

Over eleven months – from deportation on May 16, 1944, to liberation in April 1945 – Elie moves from Hungary to Kaschau, Czechoslovakia and the reception center at Birkenau, Poland. Marched east to Buna, the electrical works at Auschwitz, Poland, he witnesses the worsening of his chances of survival as the hated “Butcher of Auschwitz,” Dr. Josef Mengele, steps up the extermination of the unfit.

This book contains 9 segments (or chapters).

Author’s Life and Works

Elie Wiesel, the third child of Shlomo and Sarah Feig Wiesel, was born September 30, 1928, in Sighet, a provincial town in the Carpathian Mountains in the far north of Romania near the Russian border (which was a part of Hungary during World War II). Shlomo Wiesel, a revered theologian, served as grocer and leader of the Jewish community. Having experienced torture and imprisonment as a young man, he urged his only son to study psychology, astronomy, and modern Hebrew. Sarah Wiesel impelled Elie toward traditional Judaism – Torah, Talmud, Kabbalah, and Hasidic lore.

Wiesel’s slender book, Night, tells the events of his teen years, when German forces deport his family by cattle car first to Birkenau, the SS reception center where his mother and sister Tzipora were separated from the family and never seen again as they died in the gas chambers on the night of their arrival at Auschwitz-Birkenau. At Auschwitz, Wiesel and his father worked at hard labor. Authorities transferred them to a third segment of Auschwitz, the electrical warehouse at Buna south of the Vistula River, and finally, near the end of WWII, 400 miles west to Buchenwald in central Germany, where Shlomo died of dysentery ten weeks before American forces liberated the camp.

 Dysentery is not a disease but a symptom of a potentially deadly illness. The term refers to any case of infectious bloody diarrhea, a scourge that kills as many as 700,000 people worldwide every year. Most of the victims live in developing areas with poor sanitation, but sporadic cases can pop up anywhere in the world.

Entrance, or so-called "death gate," to Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the extermination camp, in 2006. 2

Wiesel did not learn until after the war that his two older sisters, Hilda and Bea, also survived. After receiving medical treatment, Wiesel went to France with other orphans but he remained stateless. He stayed in France, living first in Normandy and later in Paris working as a tutor and translator. He eventually began writing for various French and Jewish publications. Wiesel vowed not to write about his experiences at Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald because he doubted his ability to accurately convey the horror. Wiesel’s self-imposed silence came to an end in the mid-1950s after he interviewed the Nobel Prize-winning French novelist Francois Mauriac. Deeply moved by Wiesel’s story, Mauriac urged him to tell the world of his experiences and to “bear witness” for the millions of people who had been silenced. The result was Night, the story of a teenage boy who survived the camps and was devastated by the realization that the God he once worshiped had allowed his people to be destroyed.

Since the publication of Night, Wiesel has written more than 40 books. He became an American citizen in 1963. In 1969, Wiesel married Austrian-born writer and editor Marion Erster Rose, also a survivor of the Holocaust. His wife has edited and translated many of his works. They have a son, Shlomo Elisha, born in 1972. They live in New York.

Wiesel has defended the cause of Soviet Jews, Nicaragua’s Miskito Indians, Argentina’s “disappeared,” Cambodian refugees, the Kurds, South African apartheid victims in Africa and more recently the victims and prisoners of the former Yugoslavia. In presenting the Nobel Peace prize, Egil Aarvik, chair of the Nobel Committee, said this about Wiesel, “His mission is not to gain the world’s sympathy for victims and survivors. His aim is to awaken our conscience. Our indifference to evil makes us partners in the crime. This is the reason for his attack on indifference and his insistence on measures aimed at preventing a new Holocaust. We know that the unimaginable has happened. What are we doing now to prevent its happening again?”

Timeline  September 30, 1928 – Elie Wiesel is born in Sighet, Romania, which later becomes part of Hungary.  March 1933 – Adolf Hitler is elected Chancellor of Germany; Heinrich Himmler opens Dachau, a death camp, near Munich  July 1937 – Buchenwald concentration camp opens  April 1940 – Germany captures Norway and Denmark. A concentration camp opens in Auschwitz, Poland  September 1941 – At Auschwitz, Germans begin using poison gas.  March 1943 – Himmler initiates the use of crematoria (a furnace or place for the incineration of corpses) in Auschwitz.  May 1944 – The Wiesels arrive at a concentration camp in Birkenau, Poland.  Summer 1944 – Elie and his father are sent to Auschwitz.  January 1945 – Elie and his father are taken to Buchenwald, Germany  January 18, 1945 – Russian forces liberate Auschwitz  April 1945 – American troops free inmates at Dachau and Buchenwald camps.  1947 – Elie enters the Sorbonne to study philosophy  1955 – Elie is encouraged to write about his incarceration in a death camp  1956 – Elie enters the U.S.  1960 – Elie publishes the English version of Night.  1986 – Elie receives the Nobel Peace Prize

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Definitions

1. Torah – The primary source in the Jewish religion is the Hebrew Bible, consisting of 24 books divided up into 3 sections. The Torah includes the first five books of the Bible. 2. Talmud – Next in importance to the Hebrew Bible is the Babylonian Talmud, a collection of teachings of early rabbis from the 5th and 6th centuries. 3. Cabbala – A collection of traditional lore that probes the mysteries of the universe. Covers such subjects as angels, death, numerology, and human reasoning. 4. Rosh Hashanah – Marks the new year of the Jewish calendar. It is both a joyous and solemn holiday. Jews around the world do not work or atte3nd school on this day. 5. Yom Kippur – This is the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. This is considered to be the day in which every individual is judged by God, and thus is a solemn day marked by prayer and repentance. No Jew attends work or school on this day. 6. Passover – An 8-day festival commemorating the freeing of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage. A ritual feast on the first 2 nights of this holiday, called a Seder, includes the recounting of the Passover story. Ritual foods are eaten during these eight days which are not eaten at other times of the year. Observant Jews do not work or go to school on the first 2 days and the last 2 days of the holidays. 7. Diaspora – Countries outside of Israel inhabited by Jews. 8. Assimilation – To accept the culture of another group while giving up one’s own. 9. Ghetto – A section of a city in which the Jews were required to live surrounded by walls. 10. Genocide – Coined after WWII as a direct result of how some nationalities and ethnic groups, particularly the Jews, were mistreated during the war. Its intention is the total annihilation of a race or ethnic group. 11. Holocaust – Refers to the destruction of 6 million Jews (and 6 million non-Jews) during 1933-1945. Its Greek root means “burnt whole.” 12. Aryan Race – The pure Germanic race, used by the Nazis to suggest a superior, non-Jewish Caucasian typified by height, blonde hair, and blue eyes. 13. Third Reich – The Third Republic of German which began with Hitler’s rule in 1933 and ended with his defeat in 1945. 14. SS or Schutz-Staffel – Established in 1929 as Hitler’s black-shirted bodyguards. They became the elite guards of the Nazis trained in brutality and put in charge of the concentration camps. 15. Gestapo – The secret police organized in 1933 to uncover and undermine political opposition. 16. The Final Solution – The plan devised in 1941 to speed up the system of killing Jews and “undesirables.” This final method used an efficient system of gas chambers and crematories to kill the Jews. 17. Selection – A term used when the SS forced prisoners to line up for inspection and decided which prisoners would live and which would be killed.

People

1. Elie Wiesel – the narrator and author of the novel, Night. 2. Shlomo Wiesel – Elie’s father. They manage to stay together during their deportment. 3. Idek – A crazy Kapo who beats Elie. The worst of Elie’s mistreatment comes after he laughs at Idek lying with a young Polish girl. For this, Elie is given 25 lashes and faints. 4. Rabbi Eliahous – This rabbi’s son deserts him in order to survive. Disturbed by the son’s selfishness, Eli prays that he will never grow so callous toward his own father. 5. Heinrich Himmler – Hitler’s second in command and the head of the S.S. He established Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp, near Munich, Germany. 6. Adolf Hitler – Dictator of Germany; a demagogue and tyrant who obtains power by appealing to the emotions and prejudices of the masses. 7. Dr. Mengele – The “Angel of Death”; a doctor who performed brutal, unnecessary experiments and operations upon prisoners.

Places

1. Sighet, Hungary – Elie’s home town 2. Kaschau, Czechoslovakia – The first concentration camp that Elie and his father arrive at after their deportation from Sighet. It is here that they see their wife, mother, sisters, and daughters for the last time. 3. Auschwitz, Poland – home of a concentration camp that opened in April, 1940. 4. Birkenau, Poland – The Wiesels arrive in this concentration camp in May of 1944. 5. Buchenwald, Germany – Home of a concentration camp opened in July, 1937. Elie and his father are taken her in January, 1945.

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Discrimination

Why do we read so many books on the Holocaust? The Holocaust is an example of discrimination – a world-wide example in which most people can connect to and understand. There are several types of discrimination and several examples throughout the ages of time. Read each type of discrimination and find an example of each type in a newspaper, magazine, or internet article and attach it. Discrimination – different treatment of others based solely on their membership in a socially distinct group of category, such as race, ethnicity, sex, religion, age, or disability. Discrimination can be viewed as favorable or unfavorable, depending on whether a person receives favors or opportunities, or is denied them. For example, a senior citizens’ discount shows favorable discrimination toward senior citizens. However, in modern usage, discrimination is usually considered unfavorable.

1. Economic Discrimination – In early common law, discrimination referred to improper distinctions in economic transactions. For example, discrimination occurred if a person who was engaged in a common calling, such as an innkeeper, refused to serve an orderly person, or if a common carrier refused to transport the goods of one person in preference to those of another.

Most of the time society sees the homeless as a nuisance, subhuman or an embarrassment and they are often shunned and mistreated. People don't understand their situation and blame them for their predicament. They assume they don't want to help themselves, that they asked for it, and that they must have deserved it. Therefore people are reluctant to help the homeless and feel little or no compassion for them. There are laws directed towards the homeless: laws against lying or sitting on curbs, on park benches, in alleys or in streets, no urinating in public places, no panhandling, no trespassing, no littering, and no sleeping on public property. Sometimes restaurants put up signs in their bathrooms, "For patrons only". If they can't urinate in public places or outdoors, where are they to urinate? If they have problems getting a shelter for the night and they can't sleep outdoors, where are they to sleep? Where are they to sit down when they get tired from walking all day? Where are they welcome? Many homeless are entitled to Social Security and welfare, but the ironic thing is that a check can't be issued without an address for the recipient. Unemployment insurance is only available to those who were full time workers who recently lost their jobs. Part time or day labor is usually not covered. If they have been unemployed for a long time they would most likely not be eligible for benefits since there is usually only a 26 week period to collect unemployment. Many are uncompensated, unaware that's it's available or where to obtain the forms, or just don't want to hassle with the system. Welfare and AFDC (Aid to Family With Dependent Children) is also available to the poor and homeless but many people don't want to hassle filling out the many forms or don't know how to fill them out. The waiting periods could be a matter of a half a year when they don't have that kind of time to wait for a roof over their head or a bite to eat. Many of the homeless people that apply for such benefits are turned down if they don't have a permanent address.

2. Discrimination against women – American women have historically been victimized by discrimination in voting (which was not secured for women until a 1920 constitutional amendment), employment, and other civil rights (for many years, for example, women were denied the right to serve on juries). In the late 1960s women organized to demand legal equality with men. They founded the National Organization for Women and other groups to press for equality in education, employment, and government.

The Gender Wage Gap and Wage Discrimination: Illusion or Reality? by Howard Wall

Despite laws to prevent wage discrimination in the workplace, the median weekly earnings for full-time female workers in 1999 was only 76.5 percent that of their male counterparts. A close analysis, however, reveals that much of this gap is due to non- discriminatory factors:

 Weekly vs. hourly wages. Women typically work fewer hours a week than men. When you compare hourly wages, almost one-third of the gap disappears.

 Education, experience, occupation, union status. A 1997 study shows that men's educational and experience levels are currently greater than women's and that men gravitate toward industries and occupations that are higher-paying than women, including union jobs. These factors reduce the remaining wage gap by 62 percent.

The remaining 6.2 cents of the gap, which is unexplained, is the maximum that can be attributed to wage discrimination. Some of this unexplained portion might be due to the difficulties involved in accounting for the effects of childbearing on women's wages. For example, women aged 27 to 33 who have never had children earn a median hourly wage that is 98 percent of men's.

If it is flawed as a measure of wage discrimination, what do we make of the gender wage gap? Perhaps it is best used to indicate the underlying expectations and social norms that drive our career and workforce decisions, which themselves may be affected by other types of gender discrimination. 5

3. Racial and Ethnic Discrimination

One of the most pervasive forms of discrimination s that directed toward racial and ethnic groups. The term "racial discrimination" shall mean any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, color, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.

 In August 1955, Emmett Till, a fourteen year-old from Chicago, visited relatives in Mississippi. He and several other boys stopped at a local grocery store for some candy after a long day of picking cotton. While at the store, Till allegedly whistled at a white grocery store owner’s wife. A few days later, after Roy Bryant, the store owner, returned to town and learned of the event, Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam made plans to “teach the boy a lesson.” Bryant and Milam kidnapped Till, and then brutally beat, mutilated and shot him before dropping him in the Tallahatchie River. While Bryant and Milam were arrested for the murder, the all-white Mississippi jury took just over an hour to acquit the two. Mamie Till Bradley, Till’s mother, held an open casket funeral in Chicago so mourners could see how her son had been mutilated. Even so, Bryant and Milam later boasted about the murder in a Look magazine interview, since double jeopardy protected them from retrial.

SAN FRANCISCO – February 2007 In a bizarre attack, a well-known author and Holocaust scholar was dragged out of a San Francisco hotel elevator by an apparent Holocaust denier who reportedly had been trailing him for weeks.

Police escorted Elie Wiesel to San Francisco International Airport on Feb. 1 after a man accosted Wiesel in the elevator at the Argent Hotel, at 50 Third St., after Wiesel participated in a panel discussion at a peace conference and before Wiesel was scheduled to catch a flight back to New York.

4. Discrimination against other groups

Throughout U.S. history, many other groups have suffered racial or religious discrimination. Since Europeans first came to America, Native Americans have been forcibly deprived of their lands and denied civil rights. Many religious groups, including Roman Catholics, Jews, and others, have been discriminated against as well. Discrimination has also taken other forms. For many years, urban voters were denied equal representation in Congress and state legislatures; the elderly have been faced with discrimination in employment and housing; former prisoners and mental patients have suffered legal disabilities after their terms of confinement ended; and some aliens have been denied equal employment opportunities. People with physical disabilities have endured discrimination in employment and access to public facilities and transportation.

Loaded with style and potential, they have been garaged, considered almost as a museum piece. As a result, each day, literally hundreds... perhaps even thousands of employers across the nation violate the nation's civil rights' laws. How? They discriminate against a resource that represents one of this country's biggest losses in terms of skills, productivity, creativity and just good business operations by turning away the older worker. That such discrimination exists is undeniable. To prove it, however, is more difficult, since the illegal act is cloaked in terminology such as "you are too qualified...we can't afford someone of your talent and experience...we have changed our focus and need someone with less experience and salary requirements...you have a wonderful background, but it doesn't fit our needs..." As a result, the talents of our older citizens too often are cast aside in favor of lower-cost and less-experienced employees. Of course, they deserve their opportunity as well as the older workers, but the chance should be based upon competitive factors in which skills and talents are measured not in terms of age, but by the ability to get the job done. There are those employers who will claim that they need to build their workforce with younger people, who will be with them much longer than an older employee. However, the question of age is becoming less and less of a factor in longevity with a company. There is no guarantee that the younger employee will remain with an employer longer than the older worker. As a matter of fact, the odds are likely that the younger worker will move more frequently as he or she builds a career. Also, age is becoming more and more of a relative factor. Actually, it is highly likely that the older worker might be in better shape physically and emotionally than a younger employee. This is reflected as the retirement age (if there is such a thing) creeps upward on the part of employers and the Social Security Administration.

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5. Discrimination outside of the United States Most nations practice discrimination against foreigners and disfavored minorities within their borders. It may be religious, such as policies that disfavor Roman Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and others; racial, as in the apartheid policy that was enforced in South Africa from 1948 to 1992; or sex discrimination, as in many countries where women have few rights.

Saudi officials have arrested a man in Mecca for being a Christian, saying that the city, which Muslims consider to be holy, is off-limits to non-Muslims. Nirosh Kamanda, a Sri Lankan Christian, was detained by the Saudi Expatriates Monitoring Committee last week after he started to sell goods outside Mecca's Great Mosque. After running his fingerprints through a new security system, Saudi police discovered that he was a Christian who had arrived in the country six months earlier to take a job as a truck driver in the city of Dammam. Kamanda had subsequently left his place of work and moved to Mecca. "The Grand Mosque and the holy city are forbidden to non-Muslims," Col. Suhail Matrafi, head of the department of Expatriates Affairs in Mecca, told the Saudi daily Arab News. "The new fingerprints system is very helpful and will help us a lot to discover the identity of a lot of criminals," he said. Similar restrictions apply to the Saudi city of Medina. In a section entitled, "Traveler's Information," the Web site of the Saudi Embassy in Washington states that, "Mecca and Medina hold special religious significance and only persons of the Islamic faith are allowed entry." Highway signs at the entrance to Mecca also direct non-Muslims away from the city's environs.

Now it is your job to find examples of the 5 types of discrimination from the modern era. Find examples in the newspaper, magazines, or from a reliable internet site. Attach the examples to this packet and make sure to notate which article shows what type of discrimination.

1. Economic discrimination 2. Discrimination against women 3. Racial and ethnic discrimination 4. Discrimination against other groups 5. Discrimination outside of the United States

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Specific Examples of Kindness, Cruelty, Selfishness, and Unselfishness As you read, write down passages that demonstrate kindness, cruelty, a character acting for the good of himself, or a character acting for the good of another and include the page number and passage. Use the chart below for this purpose. For each characteristic, you should list four examples for each one. This will make a total of 16 entries. Each passage entry is worth 3 points for a total grade of 48 points.

KINDNESS CRUELTY SELFISHNESS UNSELFISHNESS Example: Example: Example: Example:

Page # Page # Page # Page #

Example: Example: Example: Example:

Page # Page # Page # Page #

Example: Example: Example: Example:

Page # Page # Page # Page #

Example: Example: Example: Example:

Page # Page # Page # Page #

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General vocabulary terms that apply to the general area of prejudice and stereotyping. 1. anti-Semitism - discrimination against or prejudice or hostility toward Jews 2. civil rights - The rights belonging to an individual by virtue of citizenship, especially the fundamental freedoms and privileges guaranteed by the 13th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and by subsequent acts of Congress, including civil liberties, due process, equal protection of the laws, and freedom from discrimination 3. ethnocentrism - the belief in the inherent superiority of one's own ethnic group or culture. 4. ghetto - (formerly, in most European countries) a section of a city in which all Jews were required to live 5. holocaust - the systematic mass slaughter of European Jews in Nazi concentration camps during World War II 6. Ku Klux Klan - Official name, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. a secret organization inspired by the former, founded in 1915 and active in the southern and other parts of the U.S., directed against blacks, Catholics, Jews, and the foreign-born 7. stereotype - a simplified and standardized conception or image invested with special meaning and held in common by members of a group 8. skinhead - an antisocial person who affects a hairless head as a symbol of rebellion, racism, or anarchy 9. racism - a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others 10. scapegoat - a person or group made to bear the blame for others or to suffer in their place 11. propaganda - information, ideas, or rumors deliberately spread widely to help or harm a person, group, movement, institution, nation, etc. 12. pogroms - An organized, often officially encouraged massacre or persecution of a minority group, especially one conducted against Jews 13. lynching - To execute without due process of law, especially to hang, as by a mob 14. demagogues - A leader who obtains power by means of impassioned appeals to the emotions and prejudices of the populace 15. bigotry - stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one's own. FBI: Hate crimes up 8% in 2006

Last update: November 19, 2007 – 8:32 PM

Nationally, hate on the rise: Hate crime incidents rose nearly 8 percent last year, the FBI reported Monday, as civil rights advocates increasingly take to the streets to protest what they call official indifference to intimidation and attacks against blacks and other minorities.

... but down in Minnesota: A total of 162 hate crimes were reported in Minnesota in 2006, according to an FBI report. Of those, 85 were classified as forms of intimidation. The next most common tactic reported was destruction or damage to property and vandalism, with 44.

Reported hate crimes were much higher in the state in the previous two years; 302 in 2005 and 291 in 2004

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Black students are upset that Minneapolis Community and Technical College did not disclose the incident sooner. By Randy Furst, Star Tribune

Last update: November 15, 2007 – 8:15 AM

A student journalist was fired, students are angry and the college is under fire.

Gabriel Keith said he had no understanding of the racist implications of a noose when he taped one to the ceiling of the newsroom at the campus newspaper at Minneapolis Community Technical College last month.

"I am definitely aware of it now," says Keith, who was fired as the paper's news editor and has become the center of a robust debate over cultural sensitivity at the campus where nearly half the 11,800-student population is minority and 30 percent are black.

Two student groups held a protest rally last week to express outrage over the noose and plan more meetings today. The school administration has organized a meeting with students over the noon hour.

Accusations are flying, both about the incident and the college's response. Some students find it difficult to believe Keith, 26, didn't know what he was doing. They also say the college tried to prevent the campus paper from reporting it.

Administrators deny the accusations.

"We want to educate around cultural understanding," said Laura Fedock, interim associate vice president for academic and student affairs. "We need to teach each other when something is offensive. ... We hope students will come to talk this out."

But Chris Smith, 22, who is black and a member of a student multicultural group, says the school should learn something about transparency. "I'm concerned that it took a whole month to find out about it. Why didn't the school tell us about it?” We are angry," said Lisa Dean, 31, president of Associates of Black Collegians, a student group. "If we do not nip it in the bud, it will spread and a lot of students may not want to attend this college because of racism."

Keith said it wasn't racism, but what he thought was a joke Oct. 10, when he came up with the idea of displaying a noose to encourage student reporters at the City College News to turn in their articles on time.

There were other suggestions, he said, including using a knife, but Keith settled on the noose. He asked a fellow student; also white, to make a noose, which he did, from a drawstring on Keith's sweater.

______

1. Both of these articles are recent – from the year 2007. How have Americans made progress in the fight for civil rights and have have Americans taken steps backwards in the issue of civil rights? Have rights changed? Do you think that Minnesotans are more sympathetic towards one another than others in the country? Explain your answer.

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Think about the following groups. What are your first impressions that pop into your mind? How would you classify them? What are your feelings towards these groups? 1. vegetarians 2. people of other races 3. Goths 4. people sporting major bling 5. people with different color hair 6. skaters 7. people from a different socio-economic class than you 8. athletes – both high school and professional level 9. obese or very, very thin people

1. Are there certain sections of town where different groups of people live? Think about people of different races than your own, people from different countries, people of different socio-economic classes.

2. Is there an area that is off-limits to specific groups in your town?

3. Why do some people join hate groups?

4. Discuss how prejudice and discrimination are not only harmful to the victim, but also to those who practice these beliefs.

5. Is it possible to grow to adulthood without harboring at least some prejudice towards someone or group of people?

6. What can you do to fight prejudice in your school, community, or neighborhood?

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Pre-reading journal entries: 1. What does it feel like to be an outsider?

2. What does it feel like to be an insider?

3. What does it feel like to be though of as “less worthy” because of one’s skin and/or hair color?

4. How important is it for you to look right?

5. How important is it for you to be part of the crowd or a certain group?

6. How do you feel when you don’t belong?

7. Do people (parents, teachers, friends, employers, etc.) pick favorites? Have you ever been the favorite or least favorite? Describe how it made you feel.

8. Think about a book you have read or a movie you have seen which shows an example of prejudice or favoritism. Why do so many books and movies cover this topic?

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‘Genocide is the deliberate extermination of a racial, religious or ethnic group’ (Chambers Dictionary) The word 'genocide' was coined in 1944 to name a particularly shocking and horrific crime of violence which it was then believed could never happen again. That it has been put into practice so many times in one century is even more shocking. The human race is the only species that can and does think itself into anger and violence. ('The more I thought about it, the angrier I got.') We ought to be able to think our way out of it too. ('Later I realized that violence didn't achieve anything.') One much-practiced way of thinking one's way to violence is developing beliefs to back it up; some of them may head towards the absurd. 'Violence is the only way to get respect.' 'Violence is the only language they understand.' 'I'm good, you're evil,' 'We're peaceful, they're brutal.' 'I wasn't going to let them beat me.' 'They're ALL cheats/liars/scroungers/dirty.' 'If I took it lying down, I couldn't hold my head up again.' And so on. There may have been a time in the early history of the human race (a time when the natural world was the chief threat to survival) when this kind of primitive thinking served a purpose. But it's nothing but a handicap now. Genocide is not a wild beast or a natural disaster. It is mass murder deliberately planned and carried out by individuals, all of whom are responsible whether they made the plan, gave the order or carried out the killings. Whatever its scale, genocide is made up of individual acts, and individual choices to perform them. So human individuals need to make the commitment, as early in life as possible, that they will have no truck with it. To do that, the way genocide becomes possible has to be understood. Prejudice, racism, grievance, intolerance, aggression, injustice, oppression - they all start small, and we need to spot and stop them in our own local orbits before they grow and get out of control. This means looking at the often long prehistory of genocide, as well as its symptoms in the present. Understanding these will help to avert future horrors.

Children of Rwanda’s Genocide

In early April, 1994, groups of ethnic Hutu, armed mostly with machetes, began a campaign of terror and bloodshed which embroiled the Central African country of Rwanda. For about 100 days, the Hutu militias, known in Rwanda as interhamwe, followed what evidence suggests was a clear and premeditated attempt to exterminate the country's ethnic Tutsi population. When the bloodshed abated, an estimated 500,000 people had been killed. The country's industrial infrastructure had been destroyed and much of its population had been dislocated. Commerce was paralyzed and tourism ceased altogether. In a country where 95% of the population depended upon cash-crop or subsistence farming, the agricultural sector was ruined. The real gross domestic product of Rwanda for 1994 was reduced by half. Humanitarian organizations working in the region now report that Rwanda's children have been the most vulnerable to the poverty and exploitation which followed the ethnic conflict. The massacres have left several hundred thousand children either orphaned or separated from their parents. A recent Unicef report estimates that 700,000 children - 18 percent of Rwanda's 4.2 million children - still live in difficult circumstances. "These children were faced with having to deal with feeding themselves, clothing themselves, whether they went to school or not and just determining their own future," said Lizanne McBride, the deputy director of programs for the International Rescue Committee in Rwanda. "This might be something that we tend to forget in New York or in Europe," says Luc Chauvin, advocacy and monitoring officer for Unicef in Kigali, who has been in Rwanda since November 1994. "Because the genocide ended in 1994 it does not mean it is all over. The presence of the genocide is still here. It's still with the Rwandan children. “For three months, the interhamwe militias massacred entire villages of Tutsi and moderate Hutu - on average 5000 people every day. By mid-July, almost one tenth of the people in the small but densely-populated nation had been slain. In the wake of the killings, at least half a million had been killed and over two million had been forced to flee. Rwandan jails are now packed with 125,000 prisoners, almost all of them ethnic Hutu, charged with murder, rape and other crimes arising from the militia's actions. The violence that children were exposed to or engaged in is a unique and traumatic problem for Rwanda. A recent Unicef study found that 96% of children interviewed in Rwanda had witnessed the massacres and 80% of the children had lost at least one family member. "The level of trauma among children is unprecedented," Chauvin said. "They had some assistance in some areas and certainly the government gave them assistance, but it's never enough given the number of children and what the government was dealing with post genocide," McBride said. "The problems from the genocide do not end with the aid and the assistance that comes in the immediate aftermath in one or two years."

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BRAINSTORM

1. BRAINSTORM ALL OF THE ______o Feelings you have reading a diary of someone in hiding o Things people need to survive o Reasons German people turned their heads o Charismatic methods used by Hitler o Minority groups who have been made scapegoats o Changes that would take place in the world if you had to go into hiding for two and a half years o Ways you would entertain your younger brother and sister while in hiding 2. BRAINSTORM AS MANY ______o Items you would take into hiding o Types of recreation used by those in hiding o Ways the “protectors” got food to those in hiding o Ways people are persecuted in your school o Ways people are persecuted in our society 3. HOW MANY WAYS CAN YOU COME UP WITH TO ______o Go into hiding o Cook potatoes and beans o Disguise yourself as another nationality 4. HOW WOULD ______LOOK TO ______? o A typical meal of a concentration camp teenager/teenagers today o Hitler/Abraham Lincoln o Hitler/Saddam Hussein 5. IF YOU WERE A ______, WHAT WOULD YOU (see, taste, smell, feel)? o Gas chamber o Crematorium o Crowded barracks at a concentration camp o Concentration camp guard tower 6. YOU ARE A ______. DESCRIBE HOW IT FEELS. o Concentration camp guard o Concentration camp commandant o Young friend of a Jew killed in a camp o French border guard turning back German Jews o Boxcar transporting Jews o Barbed wire fence through which Jews are escaping 7. SUPPOSE YOU COULD ______o Suppose you could eliminate prejudice. How would our world be different? o Suppose you could eliminate poverty. How would our world be different? o Suppose you could cure cancer or AIDS. How would our world be different? o Suppose you could eliminate nuclear and chemical weapons. How would our world be different? o Suppose you could change one thing in history. How would the world be a different place? o Suppose you invent one thing that could change the world of tomorrow. What would you invent and why? 8. WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF ______WERE TRUE? o Everyone looked alike o Everyone had the same religion o No one had the same religion o Hitler won the war o One race was completely eradicated o Atomic power never existed 9. WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THERE WERE NO ______? o Weapons o Different languages o Borders o Atomic weapons o Religions o Races

14 In Germany, they came first for the communists, and I didn’t speak up because I was not a communist.

Then, they came for the Jews and I didn’t speak up because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I was not a trade unionist.

Then, they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then, they came for me and by that time, no one was left to speak up.

…Martin D. Niemoller

I would like to be an artist I am not an artist but my mind had Standing in the ghetto with your arms So I could make a painting of you painted a painting of you up as many Nazi machine guns little polish boy Ten Million Miles High is the painting pointing at you And the monument Standing with your little hat so the whole universe can see you now will tremble so the blind world on your head Little Polish Boy now will know The Star of David on your coat Standing with your little hat What fear is in the darkness The Sanding in the ghetto with your arms on your head world who said nothing up as many Nazi machine guns The Star of David on your coat I am not a composer pointing at you Sanding in the ghetto with your arms but I will write a composition I would make a monument of you and up as many Nazi machine guns for five trillion trumpets the world who said nothing pointing at you so it will blast I would like to be a composer so I And the world who said nothing the ear drums of this world could write a concerto of you I’ll make this painting so bright that it The world who heard nothing I Little Polish Boy will blind the eyes am Standing with your little hat of the world who saw nothing Sorry on your head Ten billion miles high will be the that The Star of David on your coat monument so the whole universe can It was you Sanding in the ghetto with your arms remember you and up as many Nazi machine guns Little Polish Boy Not me pointing at you Standing with your little hat I would write a concerto of you and on your head the world who said nothing The Star of David on your coat

1. Why is it important to speak out for people who are going through some type of injustice?

2. What do you think Wiesel means by his quote, “Take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

3. What do you think Wiesel means when he says, “The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.”

15 Reading Questions:

Section 1 - Pages 3-22

1. Who was Moishe the Beadle? 2. Why did Eliezer spend a lot of time with Moishe? 3. What happened to Moishe that caused a great change in him? 4. How did the rest of the community react to what Moishe told them? 5. What were the ghettos? 6. At first, how did the Jews of Sighet feel about the ghettos? 7. Who offered Eliezer’s family safe refuge? 8. On what day of the week was Eliezer’s family expelled?

Section 2 - Pages 23-28

1. Why did the Hungarian lieutenant move among the prisoners with a basket? 2. Who was Madame Schachter? 3. What would happen if someone tried to escape? 4. Where was the final stop for the train?

Section 3 - Pages 29-46

1. What 8 words did the SS men keep repeating when they arrived at the camp? 2. What was Eliezer’s last view of his mother and sister? 3. Why did Eliezer and his father lie to Dr. Mengele? 4. Why did his father wish Eliezer had gone with his mother? 5. What is the Kaddish? 6. According to the SS officer, what was the only way to avoid the furnaces? 7. Why did the gypsy strike Eliezer’s father? 8. To what new camp were the prisoners marched? 9. What does the sign ARBEIT MACHT FREI on the entrance to Auschwitz translate to in English? 10. What is the only way to survive according to the Pole in charge of Block 17? 11. What did Eliezer’s new name become when it was tattooed on his arm? 12. After 3 weeks in Auschwitz, what camp do they march to next?

Section 4 - Pages 47-65

1. What does one of the tent leader’s aides want from Eliezer? 2. The dentist wasn’t looking for cavities but instead ______. 3. What work assignment did Eliezer and his father get? 4. How did Eliezer avoid getting his gold tooth extracted by the dentist? 5. What does Franek want from Eliezer? 6. What was Eliezer’s punishment for seeing Idek with the Polish girl? 7. Why did the sirens go off? 16

Section 5 – Pages 66-84

1. On Rosh Hashanah, what did Eliezer lose? 2. On Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, what did Eliezer decide to do? 3. Eliezer was transferred to a new Kommando – what was it? 4. Why did Eliezer’s father give him his knife and spoon? 5. Why did Eliezer need an operation? 6. What does the faceless man in the hospital say about Hitler? 7. With the advancement of the Red Army, what is the decision of the camp?

Section 6 – Pages 85 – 97

1. What happened to people who couldn’t keep up the pace in the march? 2. Who is Rabbi Eliahu looking for? 3. When the prisoners finally arrive at Gleiwitz and struggle to sleep, what sound comes through? 4. How do Eliezer and his father avoid selections. 5. At the end of this section, where do the prisoners march?

Section 7 – Pages 98-103

1. When the train stops, what do the SS command the prisoners to do? 2. What happens when bread is thrown into the train? 3. What happens to the old man when he comes up with some bread? 4. On the 3rd day, what does someone try to do to Eliezer? 5. Where did the train bring the prisoners? 6. One hundred people got on the train – how many got off?

Section 8 – Pages 104-112

1. In regards to his father, what does Eliezer men when he says, “I knew that I was no longer arguing with him but Death itself.” 2. What does Eliezer feel ashamed about? 3. Why weren’t the sick in the infirmary given any food? 4. What was Eliezer’s dad suffering from? 5. What was “poison” to his father even though he begged his son to give him some? 6. What was his father’s last word?

Section 9 – Pages 113-115

1. What was Eliezer always thinking about? 2. On April 5th, what did the Germans decide to do with all of the prisoners at the camp? 3. On April 10th, they were going to kill the remaining 20,000 prisoners and the blow up the camp. What happens to deter it? 4. The next morning on their way to be killed, what happens? 5. What is Eliezer’s first act as a free man? 6. What happens to Eliezer three days after liberation? 7. What image of Eliezer is he left with at the end of the book? 17

Who Is Responsible?

Directions: you will be determining who was responsible for creating the Holocaust and to what extent they are guilty of crimes against humanity. Create a circle graph in which you assign the person(s) listed the percentage of responsibility you believe they bear for the Holocaust. Remember, all percentages should add up to 100%. Use the colors listed for each section of your graph. After you have made the designations of responsibility for each person(s), you must also provide a written explanation as to why you assigned that amount. (Don’t give me responses such as, “That’s just they way it adds up to 100%. This will not earn you credit)

RED: Residents of Auschwitz and other towns near concentration camps who knew about the camps but did nothing to stop them.

BLUE: Minor Nazi soldiers who carried out the mass extermination orders without questioning their superiors.

YELLOW: Top SS offices who designed and executed the “final solution” for Hitler.

GREEN: Hitler, the leader of the German nation who hated Jews and wanted them to be destroyed.

PURPLE: Non-Jewish Europeans who turned against their Jewish friends and fellow citizens for fear that they too would be imprisoned as Jewish sympathizers.

ORANGE: Leaders of Allie countries who saw evidence of the Holocaust but refused to get involved or voice opposition to Hitler’s plan of extermination. After-reading questions. Please respond to the following questions in complete sentences.

1. Elie Wiesel tells us: “The street was like a marketplace that had suddenly been abandoned. Everything could be found there: suitcases, portfolios, briefcases, knives, plates, banknotes, papers, faded portraits. All those things that people had thought of taking with them, and which in the end they had left behind. They had lost all “value.” Explain what the author means by this. Do you agree with him as well? Why or why not?

2. Wiesel questions the existence of God after witnessing the unspeakable treatment of the prisoners by the Nazis. Do you think that you could remain a believing person if you witnessed these atrocities?

3. When Wiesel gets to Buchenwald, the last stopping place for him, and simultaneously, the war ends here, he writes: “Our first act as free men was to throw ourselves into the provisions. We thought only of that. Not of revenge, not of our families. Nothing but bread.” How do you think you might have felt if you experienced and witnessed what Wiesel did? 4. Why do you think Wiesel continues to speak about the Holocaust, even though the war has been over for over 60 years?

5. What have you learned by a study of racial and ethnic stereotypes in this unit?

6. Do you think that you will be less judgmental of those who are “different” from you? Why or why not?

7. What obligations do you have to speak out against bigotry and hatred?

8. Since this unit deals with stereotypes – how do you feel when you hear adults say that all adolescents are irresponsible, unintelligent, lazy, disrespectful, and uncaring?

9. What can you do to defeat this biased and negative attitude?

10. What are other ethnic conflicts that are occurring in the world today? `

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Ukraine: Death by hunger

By Maria Danilova, Associated Press. Last update: November 23, 2007 – 8:29 PM

KRASYLIVKA, UKRAINE - After authorities broke into Yakiv Atamanenko's home in autumn of 1932 and confiscated the family's food, his mother and two brothers died of starvation and their bloated bodies were tossed among others in a freshly dug grave on the outskirts of this farming village. Atamanenko and other survivors said their neighbors, Oleksandra Korytnyk and her husband, ate their two children. "They cut their children into pieces and ate them," recalled Atamanenko, 95. In the end, the Korytnyks died as well. Today, Ukraine marks the 75th anniversary of the famine of 1932-33, engineered by Soviet authorities to force peasants across the former U.S.S.R. to give up their privately held plots of land and join collective farms. Millions died. Now President Viktor Yushchenko is leading an effort to gain international recognition of Holodomor -- or death by hunger, as it is known here -- as a crime rather than merely a disaster, by labeling it an act of genocide. Long kept secret by Soviet authorities, accounts of the Great Famine still divide historians and politicians, not just in this nation of 47 million but throughout the former Soviet Union. Some are convinced that the famine targeted Ukrainians as an ethnic group. Others say authorities set out to eradicate all private land owners as a social class, and that the Soviets sought to pay for industrialization with grain exports at the expense of starving millions of its people. Josef Stalin's collectivization drive affected the entire U.S.S.R, but was particularly calamitous for Ukraine, which had some of the richest agricultural land. The campaign coincided with the Kremlin's efforts to root out a Ukrainian nationalist movement. Estimates of the number of people who died in Holodomor differ, but there is no doubt the death toll was horrific. Yushchenko estimates 10 million Ukrainians died; historian Stanislav Kulchitsky believes the number is closer to 3.5 million. Authorities set production quotas for each village. But these quotas generally exceeded crop yields and in village after village, when farmers failed to meet their targets, all their food was confiscated. Residents were prohibited to leave their homes -- condemning them to starvation. In Krasylivka as many as 1,017 people -- roughly the village's current population -- died in that terrible year, according to a list of the victims compiled by village authorities. Elders say the famine nearly wiped out the village. Villagers tell stories of their neighbors collapsing in the street and dying. Driven to despair, people ate whatever they could scrounge: leaves, dirt, birds, dogs, rats and -- witnesses said -- even each other. Olena Yaroshchuk, 94, said she filled her aching stomach with grass. "Those who could survived, those who couldn't -- that was the end of it, one house after another -- almost all died," she said. Kulchitsky, a famine researcher, argues the famine was a genocide aimed at Ukrainians who resisted Soviet rule. "The conditions authorities created for the Ukrainian peasantry were incompatible with life," he wrote in a recent article. But Heorhiy Kasyanov, a top historian with the National Academy of Sciences, says the issue is more subtle. "There is no hard evidence that there were concrete statements or actions aimed at destroying ethnic Ukrainians by someone else." The Ukrainian parliament has labeled the famine genocide. So has the United States. But Russia, the legal successor to the Soviet state, resists the label. It says the famine did not single out Ukrainians; Russians and Kazakhs were also targeted. "There are no grounds to talk about genocide. We can talk about 'sociocide' ... on the part of Soviet leadership," said Russian historian Andrei Petrov. But another Russian historian said Holodomor was one of many acts of genocide by Stalin. "It was genocide in the direct sense of this word -- it is the killing of people, the killing of the Ukrainian people," he said. Even in Krasylivka, people say the issue is complicated. Many survivors blame the Soviet government. But many also say that the cruelty of the local authorities compounded the tragedy.

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