education file Witnesses of witnesses. Remembering and recounting Auschwitz Following a Journey of the Memory to Auschwitz I and Auschwitz II-Birkenau, we students decided to make a direct commitment to the witnesses who guided us through their memories with stories of events that feel as though they happened so much longer ago than they actually did, by recalling, by handing down the memory of what happened and by not forgetting the atrocities that reaped thousands of victims, in short, by becoming witnesses ourselves. In an era when people are afraid of anyone who’s different, of foreigners, and when laws are adopted specifically to sideline people, the memory of what happened may well be the thing that saves us. Students of the Jouneys of Memory This education file is devised • GLOSSARY for adults, teachers and parents interested in exploring further. • WHAT IS THE SHOAH? The Shoah is explained for young people, set in its time, introduced • HISTORICAL CONTEXT by a glossary and brought closer by a selection of illustrated albums. • BOOKS AND FILMS FOR TEENAGERS A useful resource for further developing the topics addressed • SITOGRAPHY in the museum either at school or at home. For an ongoing exchange and reflection extending beyond the tour of the exhibition. 1 Glossary AUSHWITZ the biggest concentration camp in Europe, in Poland, sadly famous for hav- ing been a factory of suffering and death. BIRKENAU not only Auschwitz but also Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau and nu- merous other cities in Germany, Poland, Austria, Belgium, France, Norway, Ukraine, Belarus, Serbia and Italy. CONCENTRATION CAMP a camp in which Jews, political adversaries, Roma and Sinti people, dis- abled people, homosexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses are violently impris- oned, used for hard labour and marked down for death. DEPORTATION when people were forcefully rounded up and taken to the camps in cattle wagons or small boats used for carrying animals. The journey was soul-de- stroying and lasted for weeks, without food and without a stop. EMANUELE ARTOM an Italian Jewish artisan and historian who fell victim to the Shoah. His diary is an exceptional document on racial persecution in Italy and on the partisans’ contribution to the liberation of Italy from Nazi-Fascism. FÜHRER the German word for guide or leader, this was the title one had to use when addressing or talking about Adolf Hitler. JEWISH GHETTO a part of the city marked off from the rest to confine Jews, instituted in many European cities as long ago as the later Middle Ages. 2 HITLER in his 12 years in power, hatred for - and the total annihilation of - anyone different reached a peak and made an indelible mark on world history. IRENA SENDLER she was one of the great “Righteous Among the Nations”; together with other members of the Polish Resistance she saved 2,500 Jewish children by taking them out of the ghetto in Warsaw and hiding them in homes, convents and orphanages. LAGER the German word for forced labour camp. MANUAL LABOUR some of the deportees were forced to perform hard labour until it killed them, others were exploited as porters, arms factory workers, waiters, mu- sicians, barbers and tatooers. ENEMY the image of the enemy was specifically built to be negative and caricatural compared to one’s own: us/them, good/bad and dirty/clean were some of the juxtapositions on which hatred for anyone different was based. HOMOSEXUALS men and women attracted by people of the same gender, they were victims of the Shoah because their sexual orientation was considered unnatural. PROPAGANDA when public opinion is influenced by the media: the press, television, the cinema, the social media; it entails the manipulation of news in favour of those responsible for spreading the propaganda. JEWISH QUESTION affairs associated since ancient times with the presence of Jews in the world, with religion linked to nationality, to the customs and prejudices that have fraught their settlement with difficulties throughout History. ROMA AND SINTI PEOPLES ethnic minorites who fell victim to the Shoah on account of alleged racial differences; present in Europe since the year 1,000, they are still the object of discrimination and ill-treatment today. SHOAH the Hebrew word for catastrophe, destruction. WITNESSES the survivors who informed the world of the tragedy of the concentration camps; they are few in number today, and keeping their memory alive means becoming a “witness of the witnesses”. MANKIND in his diversity of culture, habits, customs, lifestyle and religion, each hu- man being is equal to the others; mankind with his rights and duties is based on diversity. VICTIMS roughly 6 million Jews, 3 million prisoners of war, 250,000 Roma and Sinti people, 80,000 political adversaries, 70,000 disabled, 12,000 homosexuals, 2,500 Jehovah’s Witnesses and many others. ZYKLON B the poisonous insecticide in blue capsules that was used in gas form in a number of concentration camps; it was invented by Nobel Chemistry Prize- winner Fritz Haber, who was a Jew and so he also ended up being perse- cuted. 3 IDEAS FOR DEBATE In our own small way What is the Shoah? Many people still suffer from discrimination and racism in various The Holocaust is a page in the book of Mankind from ways even today. What can we do which we should never remove the bookmark of memory. about it? There are gestures of dissent that have a particularly effective impact, that become symbols in their Primo Levi own right - such as when American athletes knelt during the national anthem in protest against their On 27 January 1945, Red Army troops battered down the gates of Auschwitz President’s creeping racism. How would you oppose discrimination and freed the largest Nazi concentration camp’s inmates. The horror was un- and racism? In our own small way, imaginable, difficult to recall and to recount to younger audiences. we have the strength to achieve great Can we talk to children and teenagers about the persecution and mass exter- things! mination perpetrated in the concentration camps? We think we can, even if it is a tough and difficult memory that requires proper mediation. What we can Legal doesn’t always mean right and must do is understand how the Shoah can possibly have come about, how With the race laws of 1939, backed things got that far, what racism, intolerance and their consequences lead to. by scientists who argued the Millions of people lost their lives in the concentration camps, including many existence of different human races, boys and girls - Jews, but also Roma and Sinti people, political adversaries, some of which they claimed were the disabled, homosexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses. All those “extraneous “inferior”, Fascist Italy became to the community” were discriminated against, persecuted and eliminated to all intents and purposes a racist on the basis of a radical and scientific programme in which every phase was state. So the state can violate deliberately and meticulously planned. the basic rights of the individual, of equality and of human dignity. In today’s societies, in which hatred and intolerance for weaker members still exist, it’s important to remember that the complex interplay between politics, ideology and laws can foster inequality and injustice. 4 Historical context The least glorious pages of our past would be the most instructive if only we agreed to read them in their entirety. Tzvetan Todorov How did things get as far as the Shoah? Getting the historical context right is the starting point for avoiding falling into the rhetoric of hor- ror and the superficial division into good guys and bad guys. The denial of the rights of Jews and all the other “undesirables” needs to set in a context of economic crisis, abuse of power, propaganda and minorities’ gradual marginalisation. 1918 Germany loses World War I. 1919/1933 Weimar Republic. 1919 Adolf Hitler founds the National Socialist Party. 1923 Party members attempt a coup d’etat but fail. Hitler is jailed and writes Mein Kampf in prison. 1924 General election. The National Socialist Party garners 3% of the vote. 1929 Global economic crisis. 1930 The National Socialist Party garners 18.3% 1932 The President of the Weimar Republic gives Hitler a mandate to form a government. 5 1933 Hitler becomes Chancellor. The dictatorship of the Third Reich begins. 1933 Political adversaries are imprisoned in Dachau concentration camp. 1933 Jewish shops and businesses start to be boycotted. 1933 The Nazis throw some 25,000 books considered dangerous onto bonfires in the public square. 1935 The so-called Nuremberg race laws deprive Jews of citizenship, voting rights and the right to marry non-Jews or to work in the unversities, in theatres and in publishing houses. 1937 An exhibition on Degenerate Art opens in Munich, showcasing works of art rejected by the Reich. 1938 Anschluss: Austria is annexed by the Third Reich to form “Große Deutschland” 18 settembre 1938 Mussolini promulgates the race laws in Italy 1938 Kristallnacht, on which 91 Jews are killed and 1,400 synagogues are burnt together with homes and shops; 30,000 are arrested and sent to concentration camps. 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of non-aggression between the Third Reich and Soviet Russia. 1939 Hitler’s invasion of Poland marks the start of World War II. 10 giugno 1940 Mussolini’s Italy joins the war as Hitler’s ally 1942 Wannsee Conference decides on the “final solution to the Jewish question”. 16 ottobre 1943 Roundup in Rome’s Jewish ghetto 1945 Auschwitz concentration camp is liberated. 25 aprile 1945 Italy is liberated from Nazi-Fascism 1946 Nazi leaders are brought to trial in Nuremberg for war crimes and crimes against humanity.