History that moves you Forward
Signature Curriculum Unit: Choices&Consequences1
Dallas Holocaust Museum/Center for Education and Tolerance 211 N. Record Street, suite # 100, Dallas, Texas 75202 214-741-7500 www.dallasholocaustmuseum.org
Target audience: Grades 7 through 12; Social Studies or English/Language Arts.
Scope: Two 50-minute classroom lessons that could possibly but are not necessarily combined with a visit to the Dallas Holocaust Museum.
Opportunities to use: Either related to the existing curriculum, or anytime that a teacher has a small teaching gap to fill, or as an opportunity for particularly interesting and engaging TAKS writing prompts.
Compromises: We recognize that we cannot teach it all in 2 classroom lessons; we “select out” nearly all subject matter, and focus in on one thin aspect. In the tension of breadth vs depth, we chose depth.
In the tension of chronology/factual information vs thematic teaching (intended to develop strong characters, independent, critical thought, concerned citizens, etc.) we chose the latter. It is not our desire to study the Holocaust in order to know more history or to conclude that “lots of bad things happened to „them,‟ „way over there,‟ and „way back then.‟” Our goal is to study the Holocaust and conclude that “we” need to act differently “here” and “now” in response to unacceptable situations that exist half a globe away and in our own backyards.
Background information can be endless; we supply little here and shift the responsibility on to each teacher to delve into background only to the extent that there is need and interest. (The wonders of the internet bring everything to your desktop.)
Focus: Choices and Their Consequences. How many times do teachers confront students about the choices that they have made (or need to make)? Educators are constantly stressing the consequences
1 Amended Nov. 2009 2
of choices; it is a key part of character education and the teaching of responsibility and self-discipline.
An example: Mr. Dlin‟s own son, a student in a Plano, Texas middle school, brought home a contract at the start of the 2006-7 school year that he was asked to sign. It stressed the importance of respect, and the specified:
“YOUR RIGHTS & RESPONSIBILITIES
You have the right to: You are responsible for:
A safe learning environment Maintaining a safe learning environment Make choices The consequences of your choices Your own thoughts and ideas Respecting others Be treated fairly Your own actions” Be yourself (emphasis added)
Background: The Holocaust was an event unlike any other in history. Choices in the Holocaust were not simple, nor were they mere dilemmas. Prof. Lawrence Langer felt the need to describe them by coining a new phrase: “choiceless choices.”
These two lessons focus students on aspects of their personal choices and reveal insights that apply directly to their daily lives. These lessons can help us to better understand human society and ourselves, while at the same time enabling us to become better and more engaged citizens of our local, national and global communities. By revealing how human being ought not to behave towards one another, we can teach students to make better choices and to be more aware of the consequences of the choices that we do make, and the dangers of “choosing not to choose.” Students need to understand that abstaining from making a choice is also a choice, and it‟s one over which they abdicate any influence over the results. Students must realize that apathy and indifference never protects the victim but it always serves the perpetrator.
Assumptions: This unit is both modular and idiosyncratic. We strongly encourage teachers to take ownership by adapting and substituting selections at will and use what they know and like, and what they feel will work best with their students. It is intended that teachers will pick and choose selections according to their individual interests, teaching styles, personal predilections, students‟ needs, available time, curricular contingencies, etc.
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BELL-RINGER ACTIVITY
A 5-minute introduction designed to aid students in realizing that there are aspects of their lives over which they have control and they can make meaningful choices and there are other aspects that are beyond their ability to influence; that the options to choose and also the parts over which we cannot choose, both empower and limit each and every person – the homeless as well as the President of the United States. Just as they limit all who ever lived in the past.
Fill in below using + to indicate: I‟m in control; I choose
- to indicate: I have little or no control or I cannot make meaningful choices
o to indicate: I don‟t know/ the question is not relevant to me/ my power to control equals the limitations over which I have no control
Am I in control of… ? __ my hairstyle __ my skin color __ the house I live in now __ choosing the last movie I watched on TV __ my favorite sports team __ information about the Iraqi war __ choosing the school I attend __ the size and shape of my nose __ choosing my mother tongue __ choosing the shirt I‟m wearing right now __ winning the next big lottery __ electing the President of the USA __ filling in these answers __ doing something to help refugees in Darfur __ crossing an intersection when the light is red Questions can be added or substitute at will and, of course, adapted to your students
Frontal discussion (2-3 minute):
Hands up: Did anyone use only plus signs? Does anyone have total control in all of these situations? (we should expect no hands)
Did anyone use only all minus signs? Or have all zeros? (again, none)
What does that mean? A: That it‟s virtually impossible for any of us to have total control over every aspect of our lives and, alternatively, to have no control over anything. The most powerful world leader cannot make the sun shine more hours in the day or force another to love him; a prisoner in Auschwitz could always choose to share his bread ration with a neighbor or to try to steal his neighbor‟s portion of food.
A dilemma is defined as “a choice between equally unfavorable or disagreeable alternatives.” For example: having to leave the party early and end the fun or risking your parents‟ anger if you defy them and don‟t respect your curfew.
Is “not choosing” also a choice? Is “not choosing” a way to avoid “unfavorable or disagreeable alternatives”? If you told your parents that you came home from the party well after your curfew but didn‟t “choose” to do so, it just sort of happened, how would they likely respond? Does “choosing not to choose” also have consequences to which you can be held responsible and accountable?
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In a situation in which you are aware of an injustice being committed, does “not choosing” (also called apathy or indifference) ever protect or defend the victim? How does it affect the perpetrator? A: It allows the action to continue unimpeded and unopposed. Research shows that the act of “bullying” requires 3 actors: a bully, a victim, and bystanders whose acquiescence provides tacit support of the bully.
Vocabulary exercise: Draw a clear distinction between three key terms:
CHOICE – The act of choosing or selecting from amongst alternatives.
DILEMMA – An act necessitating a choice between two or more unpleasant, unfavorable or disagreeable alternatives.
CHOICELESS CHOICES – exist (according to Prof. Langer) “in the absence of humanly significant alternatives …where crucial decisions did not reflect options between life and death, but between one form of abnormal response and another, both imposed by a situation that was in no way of the victim's own choosing.”
Possible classroom writing prompt or homework exercise:
“You are not defined by what happens to you but by what you choose to do about it.” Write a paragraph explaining why you agree or disagree.
For the balance of the first class period: Working with Texts and Photos Selections
Working either individually, in small groups, or at rotating learning stations (whatever is determined by the teacher to be most effective), students may be given one or more texts and/or historical photographs as writing prompts or as stimuli to prepare verbal reports.
Six selections are included herein: two shorter texts and two longer ones that related directly to the Holocaust, one historical photograph from the Holocaust, and a newspaper article describing a murder in downtown Dallas that took place but a few blocks away from the Dallas Holocaust Museum. We repeat that these selections are by no means exhaustive and that teachers are encouraged to make substitutions using other selections that they are familiar with and of which they are particularly fond or they feel may be more effective with their students.
The final section of this unit outlines an approach for framing a visit to the museum.
In the rest of the first period that follows the “bell-ringer activity,” students will read the selections and begin to respond, completing their work in the second classroom period or as homework.
Alternatively, the second period might be used to have individual students present their work in small groups or to the class as a whole.
5 a) Emanuel Ringelblum, a Jewish relief worker in the Warsaw Ghetto, wrote this entry in his diary on May 26, 1942 (see Yad Vashem, Documents on the Holocaust 1981, p. 232).
“Relief work doesn‟t solve the problem; it only keeps people going a little while. The people have to die anyway. It lengthens suffering but cannot save them; if it [the Jewish community relief organization inside the Warsaw Ghetto] really wanted to do anything, it would have to have millions of zloty [the Polish currency] at its disposal every month, and it does not have them. It remains a proven fact that the people fed in the soup-kitchens will all die if they eat nothing but the soup supplied and the dry rationed bread. The question thus arises whether it would not serve the purpose better to reserve the available money for selected individuals, for those who are socially productive, for the intellectual elite, etc. But the situation is such that first of all, the numbers even of such select individuals is quite considerable, and there would not be sufficient even for them. Secondly, the question arises of why should one pronounce judgment on artisans, laborers and other useful persons, who were productive people back in their small towns, and only the ghetto and the war have turned them into non-people, into scrap, into human dregs, candidates for mass graves. There is left a tragic dilemma: What shall one do? Shall one hand out the food with little spoons to everybody, and then no one will live, or in generous handfuls to just a few...?”
In crisis situations such as a battlefield during wartime or a major disaster such as an earthquakes or the attack on September 11, 2001, relief workers are forced to choose to implement a system called “triage” which assigns rankings for medical treatment and prioritizes assistance based on objective criteria such as the extent of the injury, the urgency of the medical procedure, the availability of resources, and a victim‟s ultimate chances of survival.
Triage might mean allowing a critically injured patient – who could be saved where s/he to be in a hospital setting – to bleed to death in the field because the manpower and supplies needed to save this one individual might deprive many more injured people of urgent medical care and so result in a far greater number of preventable deaths.
Questions: Should Ringelblum have given an equal portion of food to all? What criteria might have been chosen to select who gets food and who does not?
Is triage fair, or the right thing to do, or morally defensible? What alternatives might there be in the situation in which Ringelblum found himself (through no choice of his own)?
What alternatives might there be at the scene of a bus accident in which 50 people sustain a mixture of injuries from light to lethal, there is only one doctor on hand and her/his medical supplies are limited to what s/he normally carries in the car?
It may be possible to interview or invite a medical professional who works in an emergency room to speak in class about triage policies in their hospital.
Possible journaling activity: Was there ever a time in your life in which you had to make a very difficult choice? What were the consequences? What might the consequences have been of a different choice? 6 b) A Jewish Policeman in Warsaw
A father was completely beside himself. He was overwhelmed with fear and anxiety because his son had been picked up in the street in a Nazi raid. The boy was being held in a large holding area, waiting for the train to take him to the Death Camp at Treblinka, to be murdered. The only Jews who were allowed in and out of that holding area were the Jewish policemen who were forced to assist the Nazis to arrest their fellow Jews.
The father knew someone who worked for the Jewish police. He went to the policeman‟s apartment and began to plead for his help. “I‟m exhausted,” was the answer. “I just worked a 12- hour shift and I‟m on duty in another few hours. I simply must get some sleep as I‟m dead on my feet. But you can do it yourself. Take my cap and my armband, grab my stick and try to look as official as you can when you enter the area to get your boy out.”
The father was overjoyed. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he said as he donned the cap, put on the armband and grabbed the stick. “Oh, and one more thing,” the policeman said. “On your way to the holding area, you must grab another kid for the exchange, because the number count of prisoners must be exactly correct.”
The father stopped cold. He turned, took off the armband and the cap and, without a sound, left the room.
Questions: Would you consider the situation facing the father to be a “choiceless choice”?
Did the Jewish policeman see the situation in the same way? If not, then how do you account for this difference?
Why might a Jewish person choose to become a policeman and be placed by the Nazis in a position to persecute other Jews?
Additional Activity:
Wladyslaw Szpilman, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, wrote a memoir The Pianist which was a movie directed by Roman Polanski. View or read these encounters with the Jewish Police: - p. 71: Wladyslaw‟s brother, Henryk, was advised to join the Jewish Police but refused. - p. 77-8 which includes the line: “We were all the more horrified when we saw that men with whom we used to shake hands, whom we had treated as friends, men who had still been decent people not long ago, were now so despicable. You could have said, perhaps that they had caught the Gestapo spirit.” Henryk is arrested by the Jewish Police, Wladyslaw gets him released, and Henryk is angry with his brother for “interfering in other people‟s business.” - p. 96-107: Wladyslaw and his parents are arrested and brought to the deportation compound waiting deportation to Treblinka Death Camp. Suddenly Wladyslaw is grabbed by the collar and flung out. He tried to rejoin his parents but the police line prevented him from re-joining those going to their deaths. And Wladyslaw is saved by the Jewish Police. How do you assess the choices made by the Jewish Police? Should Henryk have joined them? Were they despicable? Did the Nazis really need the Jewish Police or did they have the power to murder without their help?
7 c) Photo taken by the US Army Signal Corps in Buchenwald Concentration Camp, April 1945
Questions: Who are the civilians seen in the bottom of the photograph? Why are they there? Do you think they freely chose to come there on their own volition? Why or why not? And if you feel that they were compelled to come to the camp, by whom and why?
Who are the victims lying on the truck bed in the top right? Why are they there? Is this where they died or were they purposely placed on this truck bed? If so, then by whom and why?
In what sense could the citizens of the near-by town of Weimar (home to German cultural giants such as Goethe and Schiller) be considered “bystanders to the Holocaust”? What choice had they made? How might they have reacted to the atrocities that were committed in their names, by the government that they supported, and in a notorious place of torture and death that was located in their own backyard?
This picture is located immediately below the following quotation in the Museum: “The world is a dangerous place to live in – not because of the people who do evil, but because of the people who sit and let it happen.” (Albert Einstein) Why was this photograph placed in the Dallas Holocaust Museum as the very first photograph to be seen by visitors? How does this picture illustrate the quote by Albert Einstein?
Additional Activity:
The American officer standing on the far left in the front of the group of soldiers is a local Dallas man named Rudolf Baum. Born in Germany in 1915, he immigrated in 1936 and was drafted into the military, serving for 5 years from 1941. He lives in North Dallas and speaks to students at the Dallas Holocaust Museum. Upon request we can lend the teacher an excerpted version of an audio-visual interview of US Army Captain (ret.) Rudolf Baum, for viewing in class.
8 d) Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, Auschwitz, pp. 88-93
Dr. Nyiszli was Jewish, Hungarian and a medical pathologist. He lived and worked in a crematorium in the Auschwitz Death Camp, where he assisted Dr. Josef Mengele‟s medical experiments by performing autopsies on the bodies of gassed prisoners that the Nazi doctor had singled out for further study as subjects of medical research.
The Jewish prisoners who worked in the crematoria and who pulled the dead bodies out of the gas chambers and into the ovens to be burned, were all men; no women at all worked in that fenced area.
“In number one crematorium‟s gas chamber 3,000 dead were piled up. The Sonderkommando had already begun to untangle the lattice of flesh. The noise of the elevators and the sound of their clanging doors reached my room. The word moved ahead double-time. The gas chambers had to be cleared, for the arrival of a new convoy had been announced. The chief of the gas chamber kommando almost tore the hinges off the door to my room as he arrived out of breath, his eyes wide with fear or surprise. „Doctor,‟ he said, „come quickly. We just found a girl alive at the bottom of the pile of corpses.‟ I grabbed my instrument case, which was always ready, and dashed to the gas chamber. Against the wall, near the entrance of the immense room, half covered with other bodies, I saw a girl in the throes of a death-rattle, her body seized with convulsions. The gas kommando men around me were in a state of panic. Nothing like this had ever happened in the course of their horrible career. We removed the still living body from the corpses pressing against it. I gathered the tiny adolescent body into my arms and carried it back into the room adjoining the gas chamber, where normally the gas kommando men change clothes for work. I laid the body on a bench. A frail young girl, almost a child, she could have been no more than fifteen. I took out my syringe and, taking here arm – she has not yet recovered consciousness and was breathing with difficulty – I administered three intravenous injections. My companions covered her body which was a cold as ice with a heavy overcoat. One ran to the kitchen to fetch some tea and warm broth. Everyone wanted to help, as if she were his own child. The reaction was swift. The child was seized by a fit of coughing, which brought up a thick globule of phlegm from her lungs. She opened her eyes and looked fixed at the ceiling. I kept a close watch for every sign of life. Her breathing became deeper and more and more regular. Her lungs, tortured by the gas, inhaled the fresh air avidly. Her pulse became perceptible, the result of the injections. I waited impatiently,. The injections had not yet been completely absorbed, but I saw that within a few minutes she was going to regains consciousness: her circulation began to bring color back into her cheeks, and her delicate face became human again. She looked around her with astonishment, and glanced at us. She still did not realize what was happening to her, and was still incapable of distinguishing the present, of knowing whether she was dreaming or really awake. A veil of mist clouded her consciousness. Perhaps she vaguely remembered a train, a long line of box cars which had brought her here. Then she had lined up for selection and, before she knew what was happening, been swept along by the current of the mass into a large, brilliantly lighted underground room. Everything had happened so quickly. Perhaps she remembered that everyone had had to undress. The impression had been disagreeable, but everybody had yielded resignedly to the order. And so, naked, she had been swept along into another room. Mute anguish had seized them all. The second room had also been lighted by powerful lamps. Completely bewildered, she had let her gaze wander over the mass huddled there, but found none of her family. Pressed close against he wall, she had waited, her heart frozen, for what was going to happen. All of a sudden the lights had gone out, leaving her enveloped in total darkness. Something had stung her eyes, seized her throat, suffocated her. She had fainted. There her memories ceased. Her movements were becoming more and more animated; she tried to move her hands, her feet, to turn her head left and right. Her face was seized by a fit of convulsions. 9
Suddenly she grasped my coat collar and gripped it convulsively, trying with all her might to raise herself. I laid her back down again several times, but she continued to repeat the same gesture. Little by little, however, she grew calm and remained stretched out, completely exhausted. Large tears shone in her eyes and rolled down her cheeks…I learned that she was sixteen years old, and that she had come with her parents in a convoy from Hungary. The kommando gave her a bowl of hot broth, which she drank voraciously. They kept bringing her all sorts of dishes, but I could not allow them to give her anything. I covered her to her head and told her that she should try and get some sleep. My thoughts moved at a dizzy pace. I turned towards my companions in the hope of finding a solution. We racked our brains, for we were now face to face with the most difficult problem: what to do with the girl now that she had been restored to life? We know that she could not remain here for very long. What could one do with a young girl in the crematorium? I knew the past history of the place: no one had ever come out of here alive, either from the convoys or from the Sonderkommando. [This is the name of the units of Jewish workers who worked in the crematorium. They were murdered at regular intervals of about 4 months, then new ones were recruited, only to be killed in turn. Dr. Nyiszli was the exception; he survived because his medical skills are irreplaceable.] Little time remained for reflection. Oberschaarfuehrer Mussfeld arrived to supervise the work, as was his wont. Passing by the open door, he saw us gathered in a group. He came in and asked us what was going on. Even before we told him he had seen the girl stretched out on the bench. I made a sign for my companions to withdraw… I described for his benefit…(that) she had breathed in a few lungfuls of zyklon gas. Only a few, though, for her fragile body had given way under the pushing and shoving of the mass as they fought against death. By chance she had fallen with her face against the wet concrete floor. That bit of humidity had kept her from being asphyxiated, for zyklon gas does not react under humid conditions… I asked him to do something for the child. He listened to me attentively then asked me exactly what I proposed doing. I saw by his expression that I had him face to face with a practically impossible problem. It was obvious that the child could not remain in the crematorium. One solution would have been to put her in front of the crematorium gate. A kommando of women always worked there. She could have slipped in among them and accompanied them back to the camp barracks after they had finished work. The presence of one new face among so many thousands would never be detected, for no one in the camp knew all the other inmates…But Mussfeld [the German guard] thought that a young girl of sixteen would in all naiveté tell the first person she met where she had just come from, what she had seen and what she had lived through. The news would spread like wildfire, and we would all be forced to pay for it with our lives. ‟There is no way getting round it,‟ he said, „the child will have to die.‟ Half an hour later the young girl was led, or rather carried, into the furnace room hallway, and there Mussfeld sent another in his place to do the job. A bullet in the back of the neck.”
Questions:
Some teachers may wish to ask students before they read this piece: When is a life worth saving? How far would you go to save the life of someone you had never met?
Language Arts teachers may wish to ask how students might describe the tone of the first 3 paragraphs. How does it suddenly shift when the prisoners found the young girl alive? What evidence can you find to support the view that the girl is a symbol of hope?
“Everyone wanted to help, as if she were his own child.” So why do they kill her in the end? Could the prisoners have made different choices and saved the young girl?
If Dr. Nyszli was so sure that all of the Jewish workers in the sonderkommando would eventually be killed, why did he not risk slipping the girl into the women‟s camp? 10
Why did Mussfeld, who worked each day in the place where many hundreds of thousands of people were put to death, send another guard to kill the girl? Why didn‟t he do the deed himself? What might Mussfeld‟s behavior say about the basic humanity of a murderer and war criminal? [The key may be that anonymous victims with whom you have no relationship are easier to kill than ones with whom you‟ve had close contact.]
Additional Activity:
Abraham Bomba, a prisoner in the Treblinka Death Camp, was one of the barbers cutting woman‟s hair in the gas chambers. Interviewed for the film “SHOAH”, a full transcript is printed in SHOAH, an Oral History of the Holocaust. The Complete Text of the Film by Claude Lanzmann, on pages 111-7. The prisoners were told: “‟Barbers, you have to do a job to make all those women coming in believe that they are just taking a haircut and going in to take a shower, and from there they go out from this place.‟ (But) we know already that there is no way of going out from this room, because this room was the last place they went in alive, and they will never go out alive again.” (p. 113) Some women that he knew well from his own hometown in Poland came in and asked what was going on. At this point Abraham Bomba asks: “What could you tell them? What could you tell?” He goes on to say that friends of his were working as barbers in the gas chamber when a wife and her sister entered. “They could not tell them this was the last time they stay alive, because behind them was the German Nazis, SS men, and they knew that if they said a word, not only the wife and the woman, who were dead already, but also they would share the same thing with them. In a way, they tried to do the best for them, with a second longer, a minute longer, just to hug them and kiss them, because they knew they would never see them again.”
What other choices did the husband have for his own wife? What would have been the consequence for him if he told her what was going to happen to her and the Nazi guards found out that it was he who talked?
Is this a choiceless choice?
Is the choiceless choice harder or easier for Abraham who was acquainted with the women from his hometown but not married to any of them? Is it harder, do you think, to hide the truth of this situation from a loved one or a casual acquaintance?
11 e) Fighting back with the force of will; (Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz, p. 34-5)
“The washroom is far from attractive. It is badly lighted, full of draughts, with the brick floor covered by a layer of mud. The water is not drinkable; it has a revolting smell and often fails for many hours. The walls are covered by curious didactic frescoes: for example, there is the good Häftling [prisoner], portrayed stripped to the waist, about to diligently soap his sheared and rosy cranium, and the bad Häftling, with a strong Semitic nose and a greenish color, bundled up in his ostentatiously stained clothes with a beret on his head, who cautiously dips a finger into the water of the washbasin. Under the first is written: „So bist du rein,’ (like this you are clean), and under the second: ‘So gehst du ein’ (like this you come to a bad end)… On the opposite wall an enormous white, red and black louse encamps, with the writing: ‘Ein Laus, dein Tod’ (a louse is your death), and the inspired distich [a rhyming couplet]: „Nach dem Abort, vor dem Essen Hände waschen, micht vergessen.’ (After the latrine, before eating, wash your hands, don‟t forget.) For many weeks I considered these warnings about hygiene as pure examples of the Teutonic [Germanic] sense of humor…But later I understood that their unknown author, perhaps without realizing it, were not far from some very important truths. In this place it is practically pointless to wash every day in the turbid [dark, muddy] water of the filthy washbasin for the purposes of cleanliness and health; but it is most important as a symptom of remaining vitality, and necessary as an instrument of moral survival. I must confess it; after only one week of prison, the instinct for cleanliness disappeared in me. I wander aimlessly around the washroom when I suddenly see Steinlauf, my friend, aged almost fifty, with nude torso, scrub his neck and shoulders with little success (he has no soap) but great energy. Steinlauf sees me and greets me, and without preamble asks me severely why I do not wash. Why should I wash? Would I be better off than I am? Would I please someone more? Would I live a day, an hour longer? I would probably live a shorter time, because to wash is an effort, a waste of energy and warmth. Does not Steinlauf know that after half an hour with the coals sacks every difference between him and me will have disappeared? The more I think about it, the more washing one‟s face in our condition seems a stupid feat, even frivolous: a mechanical habit, or worse, a dismal repetition of an extinct rite. We will all die, we are all about to die: if they give me ten minutes between the reveille and work, I want to dedicate them to something else, to draw into myself, to weight up things, or merely to look at the sky and think that I am looking at it perhaps for the last time; or event to let myself live, to indulge myself in the luxury of an idle moment. But Steinlauf interrupts me. He has finished washing and is now drying himself with his cloth jacket which he was holding before wrapped up between his knees and which he will soon put on. And without interrupting the operation he administers me a complete lesson. It grieves me now that I have forgotten his plain, outspoken words, the words of ex- sergeant Steinlauf of the Austro-Hungarian army, Iron Cross of the „14-‟18 war. It grieves me because it means that I have to translate his uncertain Italian and his quiet manner of speaking of a good soldier into my language of an incredulous man. But this was the sense, not forgotten either then or later: that precisely because the Lager [camp] was a great machine to reduce us to beasts, we must not become beasts; that even in this place one can survive, and therefore one must want to survive, to tell the story, to hear witness; and that to survive we must force ourselves to save at least the skeleton, the scaffolding, the form of civilization. We are slaves, deprived of every right, exposed to every insult, condemned to certain death, but we still possess one power, and we must defend it with all our strength for it is the last – the power to refuse our consent. So we must certainly wash our faces without soap in the dirty water and dry ourselves on our jackets. We must polish our shoes, not because the regulation states it, but for dignity and propriety. We must walk erect, without dragging our feet, not in homage to Prussian [German] discipline but to remain alive, not to begin to die.”
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Questions: The author admits that neither cleanliness nor better health could be achieved by washing in the camp latrines. Why then, did he choose to do it anyway?
Would you consider his choice to be an act of hygiene or an act of something else? Was it resistance against the Nazis? If so, then how was it resistance and how do you understand the term “resistance”?
Did Primo Levi‟s choices hurt the Nazis in any way? Would they likely have even noticed or cared?
How effective or ineffective do you think Levi and Steinlauf‟s acts of cleanliness were in the war effort? In the campaign to murder the Jews? In the will of these individual prisoners to fight on to survive?
Explain the title: “Fighting back with the force of will.”
Additional Activity:
If students have already read Elie Wiesel‟s Night or Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston‟s book, Farewell to Manzabar (or any similar story), they might wish to compare this story with something from those other books.
A summary of Farewell to Manzabar reads: “Upon arriving in the camp, the Japanese Americans find cramped living conditions, badly prepared food, unfinished barracks, and swirling dust that blows in through every crack and knothole. There is not enough warm clothing to go around, many people fall ill from immunizations and poorly preserved food, and they must face the indignity of the non-partitioned camp toilets, an insult that particularly affects Mama. The Wakatsukis stop eating together in the camp mess halls, and the family begins to disintegrate.” (see the end of the third chapter.
Does it make an important difference that Manzabar was an internment camp without an explicit program of torture and murder?
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f) Irena Sendler: Social Care Nurse in the Warsaw Ghetto2
“The reason why I rescued children from the ghetto dates back to may family home and childhood. I was brought up to react that a person must be rescued when drowning, regardless of religion and nationality. A requirement dictated by the heart.
When war broke out I was a social care nurse in the Warsaw City Council's Health and Care Department. We looked after both Polish and Jewish poverty-stricken persons. Immediately on the German occupation of Warsaw a regulation was proclaimed depriving the Jewish population of all material aid. The situation deteriorated when the ghetto was closed on the 15.10.1941, after being opened in November 1940. That was when I recruited a group of my most trusted colleagues to rescue the most endangered people. By forging hundreds of documents in which Polish families were indicated under original Jewish names, we received money from Social Care, thereby saving at least a few from starvation.
We were given "passes" allowing entry to the Warsaw ghetto as functionaries of the Urban Sanitation Works. . . . It soon proved imperative to get children out on the so- called Aryan side since inside the ghetto it was hell.
We reached homes to say we could rescue children and lead them outside the ghetto walls. The basic question which then arose was: what guarantee could we give.
We had to admit honestly that we could give no guarantee since we did not even know whether we would succeed in leaving the ghetto today.
They (the children) had first to be placed with families we trusted the most to adapt the children to wholly changed conditions (family atmosphere and language - they often only spoke Yiddish). We called those homes "emergency care units". Those who did not know Polish had to be taught it, also basic prayers so as not to differ from Polish children when later taken to Social Care units.”
2 Condensed from Irena Sendler’s own story “How I rescued children from the Warsaw ghetto.” http://www.dzieciholocaustu.org.pl/szab58.php?s=en_sendlerowa.php
14
Irena was constantly afraid that the Nazis would find the roll of paper containing the list of names of al of the children and there locations that she alone kept. She was always watchful of when they might burst in on her and demand the information about the children and her co-rescuers.
Such a day did come on the 20.10.1943. There was a terrible banging on the front door which awoke my mother first and then let my head clear. I behaved just as I had trained through several years what to do should the Germans arrive. I grabbed that roll and wanted to throw it out of the window but could not, for the whole house was surrounded by Germans. So I threw it to my liasing colleague and went to open the door.
There were 11 soldiers. In two hours they almost tore the whole house apart, ripping up the floor, disemboweling pillows etc. The file was saved due to the great courage and intelligence of my liaising colleague who hid it in her underwear. I felt enormously, though paradoxically, happy when the Gestapo personnel let me dress for I knew they had not found the file of those children.
I cannot give a short description of what I experienced in the Gestapo cellars in Szucha Street and in Pawiak prison. The Pawiak museum contains a special cabinet with the instruments used by those "supermen" to torture prisoners. I still carry the marks on my body of what those "German supermen" did to me then. I was sentenced to death. "The Żegota" [Relief Council for Jews, working under the auspices of the Home Army] the Jewish underground aid organization smuggled messages to me that I am not to worry for it is doing everything possible to get me out. . . .
Apart from any sentiments, there was also anxiety that the only trace of those children would disappear should I die.
It is beyond description to tell what you feel when traveling to your own execution and, at the last moment, to find you had been bought out. A Gestapo officer had let me out for a large bribe. I figured in their documents as having been killed by firing squad. But after two months incorrect records were found in their registers. The Gestapo bribe- taker was sent to the eastern front and the Gestapo again visited me, but unsuccessfully for after leaving Pawiak illegally I had to change all my documents and also never to be found at home. . . . I continued working as the head of the children's section of "Żegota" though using entirely changed personal documents.
During the Warsaw Uprising I buried the "File" in two bottles in the garden of my liaising colleague, to ensure it would be given to a proper person even should I die. After the war in Poland ended, I delivered the matter of those children, i.e. the so-called "File", into the hands of Dr. Adolf Berman, the erstwhile first president of the Jewish Committee. . . .
In conclusion let me stress most emphatically that we who were rescuing children are not some kind of heroes. Indeed, that term irritates me greatly. 15
The opposite is true - I continue to have qualms of conscience that I did so little.
Discussion Questions
1. Irena was not a Jew, so why do you think she and the others took risks to save Jewish children?
2. What is the difference between a bystander and an upstander, and which is Irena?
3. Could Irena have done her job as a social nurse without rescuing the children?
4. How do you think Irena was able to talk the Jewish families into letting her have their smallest children?
5. Why did Irena risk further torture and even the threat of death to protect the rescued and the other rescuers?
6. What somewhat surprising decision did Irena make after the Zegota rescued her from her death sentence?
Additional Activities
1. Research Irena Sendler to see how her little-known heroics came to light just a few years ago.
2. Find out for which awards was Irena nominated, and what awards she has received?
3. Research the “Righteous among the Nations” award that is given by Yad Vashem, in Jerusalem.
4. Research to find out if there are any “Righteous among the Nations” in the Dallas/Ft.Worth area, and what their experiences might be.
16 g) Teenager Fatally Beaten by Downtown Mob (condensed from articles in The Dallas Morning News, NBC5i.com, and TXCN.com.
Dallas police said that Joseph Davis Jr., 18, died after a fight broke out. The teen had gone downtown with two relatives to attend a party following the Grambling-Prairie View A&M football game, but it was too crowded. They were hanging out in a near-by parking lot at Ross and San Jacinto streets, when a mob of young men launched what police described as “an unprovoked attack.” Davis was punched and kicked by up to 20 men, who also attacked Davis‟ uncle and beat him severely.
Courtesy photo; Joseph Anthony Davis Jr. was killed on Oct. 2, 2005.
Reportedly, between 100 and 200 bystanders witnessed the beating. Police said they were baffled by the lack of witnesses coming forward and this despite a $35,000 rewards that has been offered for information leading to an arrest. One woman, who wished to remain unnamed, told Texas Cable News that using her cell phone, she took a photo of Davis in the last moments of his life. “When I took the picture, a heavy set guy turned around and looked at me and said you better stop taking pictures before they beat you up,” she said. She went on: “People were coming from everywhere hitting that boy. Nobody tried to stop nothing. I knew he was dead, I knew he was dead because he looked so limp,” adding: “You don‟t say nothing and you don‟t get nothing done to you.” She said that the only reason the beating stopped is because police eventually arrived. “This is nothing short than terrorism,” said Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price. “We talk about terror in a far-off land – this is domestic terrorism, and we will not be terrorized in our own community. Davis, a native of Mississippi, was new to Dallas and was preparing to go to junior college in January. He wanted to be a Marine, family members said.
Questions: Before reading the article, students see only the photograph of Joseph Anthony Davis Jr. and are asked the following: This picture appeared recently with an article in The Dallas Morning News. Write the headline that appeared over it.
After reading the article: Describe how you feel to learn that the headline was: “Teenager Fatally Beaten by Downtown Mob”?
What might any of the bystanders have done to prevent this murder, while at the same time not directly endangering themselves? Why do you think that no one did anything to prevent this murder by summoning help?
The “Good Samaritan Law” makes it an offence to witness a crime and not report it. To what extent would you blame these bystanders for not trying to prevent this murder?
On a scale of 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest) – who is responsible for Joseph‟s death? Every member of the mob? The 2 or 3 mob leaders who encouraged verbally? The person who threw the first punch? The victim, Joseph? His uncle? Every member of the crowd that watched? The ones standing in 17
the very front row who were closest to the beating? The ones who had cell phones and who could have called the police?
What kind of a community can be built on the ethical principle of: “You don‟t say nothing and you don‟t get nothing done to you.”
Additional Activity:
Design a tri-fold brochure, a flyer or a newspaper ad promoting a new community that would be organized around the principle of: “You don‟t say nothing and you don‟t get nothing done to you.”
Listen and react to Phil Ochs‟ song “Outside of a Small Circle of Friends” and the implications of the attack, rape and murder of Kitty Genovese.
“Outside Of A Small Circle of Friends,” by Phil Ochs
Look outside the window, there's a woman being grabbed They've dragged her to the bushes and now she's being stabbed Maybe we should call the cops and try to stop the pain But Monopoly is so much fun, I'd hate to blow the game And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody Outside of a small circle of friends.
Riding down the highway, yes, my back is getting stiff Thirteen cars are piled up, they're hanging on a cliff. Maybe we should pull them back with our towing chain But we gotta move and we might get sued and it looks like it's gonna rain And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody Outside of a small circle of friends.
Sweating in the ghetto with the (colored/Panthers) and the poor The rats have joined the babies who are sleeping on the floor Now wouldn't it be a riot if they really blew their tops? But they got too much already and besides we got the cops And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody Outside of a small circle of friends.
Oh there's a dirty paper using sex to make a sale The Supreme Court was so upset, they sent him off to jail. *Maybe we should help the fiend and take away his fine. But we're busy reading Playboy and the Sunday New York Times And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody Outside of a small circle of friends.
Smoking marihuana is more fun than drinking beer, But a friend of ours was captured and they gave him thirty years Maybe we should raise our voices, ask somebody why But demonstrations are a drag, besides we're much too high And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody Outside of a small circle of friends.
Oh look outside the window, there's a woman being grabbed They've dragged her to the bushes and now she's being stabbed Maybe we should call the cops and try to stop the pain But Monopoly is so much fun, I'd hate to blow the game And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody Outside of a small circle of friends.
[Additional verse, 1974] 18
Down in Santiago where they took away our mines We cut off all their money so they robbed the storehouse blind Now maybe we should ask some questions, maybe shed a tear But I bet you a copper penny, it cannot happen here And I'm sure it wouldn't interest anybody Outside of a small circle of friends.
[Notes: Chords supplied by [email protected] (Rocky Bivens) * This line is often misquoted as follows: "Maybe we should take a stand and send the fiend a fine" which completely reverses the meaning of the verse and the intent of the song, however on There and Now - Live in Vancouver 1968, Phil himself sings it this way. It was probably accidental as he also forgot a portion of the previous verse in that performance.] The first and last verses comment on the murder of Kitty Genovese in NYC on March 14th, 1964. Dave Marulli supplies the following about this incident:
On March 13, 1964, a 28 year old New York City woman gained world-wide recognition for her role in an event which even today is remembered by people everywhere, creating a legacy still held up as an example of American values, or lack thereof. There can be no doubt, however, that Kitty Genovese would have given all her worldly possessions to have avoided the global "fame" acquired on that Friday the 13th that gave to her the ultimate horror associated with this symbol of bad luck.
Even though 47,000 New York City residents have been murdered since, hers remains the most tragic because 38 "citizens" awakened by her cries for help watched as she was assaulted not once, but three times over a half hour period. Not only did they fail to come to her aid, they also failed to call the police for help. Vincent Mosely, her assailant, stabbed her several times, then left, only to return a few minutes later to cut her up a little more.
During his brief absence, these "decent" New Yorkers turned off their lights and went back to sleep, only to be awakened again by this second assault, a scene repeated a third time, after which she no longer needed the assistance she failed to get the first, second or even the third, and final time.
During Mosely's trial, witnesses made several statements, but one stands above the rest as a symbol of this tragic event and is the reason for its world-wide infamy: "We didn't want to get involved." No surprise to Mosely, for as he said: "I knew they wouldn't do anything - they never do."
Thousands of articles were written about the murder of Kitty Genovese and the supposed “downfall of American values.” It also inspired studies including one that concluded that if more than 4 people witnessed an event, none of them would do anything about it. It suggested that each person said to themselves, "I don't have to get involved since there are other people here who could help, and if none of them think that it‟s necessary to act, then why should I?"
Optional: A Visit to the Dallas Holocaust Museum
Before the visit, have each student read this poem by Martin Niemöller (1892 – 1984):3 First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Jew;
3 Over the years, Niemöller reportedly articulated several different versions and named different groups in slightly different orders. This version is the most commonly quoted. 19
Then they came for me— and there was no one left to speak out.
* * * Visit DHM – tour the display * * * *
After returning to class, refrain from making any explicit connection with Niemöller or even mentioning his name.
Question: How do you think the following person would likely have responded to the Nazi rise to power?
He is a nameless German Navy officer who was a very strong nationalist and a decorated veteran of World War I, having fought bravely as a commander of a German U-boat (submarine). Having written a book about his wartime, he was widely recognized in Germany as a war hero. He became involved with a group of ex-soldiers known as the Freikorps who were right-wing fascists, described by one historian as “the vanguard of Nazism.” Not only was he unsympathetic to the idea of parliamentary democracy but he was openly hostile to the government and culture of the Weimar Republic.
Answer: He would have enthusiastically welcomed Adolf Hitler to power.
Question: How do you think the following person would likely have responded to the Nazi rise to power?
A Protestant Pastor in Germany who was morally troubled by the realization that the Nazi government was acting in conflict with what he understood to be true Christian beliefs.
Answer: He would likely not have welcomed or supported Hitler. Indeed in 1934, as a leader in the anti-Nazi Confessing Church (Bekennende Kirche), he starts speaking out against Nazism and he writes critical letters to Hitler that are published.
Question: What was his likely fate in the Third Reich?
Answer: He was arrested for “malicious attacks against the state,” initially released with a suspended sentence but, because he continued in his opposition to the Nazi government, he was re-arrested in 1938, imprisoned in Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, and then transferred to Dachau where he remained incarcerated through 1945.
Who are these men? Both are the same complex individual - Martin Niemöller.
Question: How do you think Niemöller, at that time a prisoner in a Concentration Camp, would have reacted to the outbreak of war in September 1939?
Answer: Niemöller volunteered to serve his country and to defend the Nazi government that had incarcerated him, by fighting in the Navy. His offer was rejected by the authorities and he remained in the Camp until he was liberated by the Allies.
Question: What might you expect Niemöller‟s politics to be following World War II?
Answer: Niemöller become a committed pacifist who pushed for Germany to be militarily disarmed and not aligned with either East or West. Politically neutral in the Cold War (he did not advocate for either side). He visited Moscow in 1952 and in 1967, early in the Viet Nam War, he visited Hanoi saying: “Whoever wants peace must be willing to live together with their enemies. We have to stop the arms race and to risk trusting each other.”
Questions: Are you surprised that a man who spent 7 years in Nazi Concentration Camps – often in solitary confinement – came to believe in total military disarmament?
Are you surprised that a former Concentration Camp prisoner could advocate “blind trust” in the possibility of converting one‟s enemies to a position of tolerant understanding and peaceful co-existence?