Monday was an 8:30-5:30 classroom day. It should have been exhausting and draining, but instead it was exhilarating to gain as much as information as I did! I was like a vacuum cleaner, just sucking up every single detail. I'm not going to go into the specifics of the topics here because I want to save them for the classroom, but I'll list the topics below and one or two insights from some.
Nazi Racial Ideology and the Jewish Question
I have so many pages of notes from this session, but I'll just mention one thing here that I think is so worth considering... The T4 Euthanasia Program (the murder of over 200,000 mentally and physically handicapped people-- GERMANS) was ceased for one reason. It was an open protest by the Catholic Bishop of Munster, August von Galen. Imagine what could have happened to all other aspects of Nazi methodology if more people had been willing to speak out. In this case, it only took ONE to change the times.
Persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany (1933-1939)
Two points he made that were things I had not ever really thought of were that humiliation is as powerful a weapon as fear and the Germans used it almost as often in the very beginning a. He also pointed out the difference in the ... spirit(?) of German Jews versus Polish Jews. German Jews were much more patriotic and thus were so deeply hurt and humiliated by being denied citizenship, whereas the Poles had a huge spirit of survival and FIGHT in them.
Music of the Jews during the Holocaust
This session presented a lot of inspiration. I knew they had concerts in the ghettoes, but I did not know that they charged admission. The money raised was used on various social projects. She made several really powerful statements about these concerts after asking us, "You are dying of hunger. You are going to a concert when you don't even have money to spend on them, so what is so strong to bring you to the concerts?" She then shared a quote with us from Abraham Sutzkever, a partisan fighter who fought to save as many Jewish lives as possible by killing Germans after he heard a concert: "Today I heard a beauty for which it is worthwhile to fight." One can't live in error and horr all of his life; we need the beauty.
The Holocaust and Art
My biggest takeaway from this (that I want to share here instead of in class) is her ending: "There's no way to tell the story of the Holocaust, but there's a way to tell one story. And in telling one story, you tell the story of the Holocaust." WOW.
The last session was just trying out a teaching tool on their website, something that will be very useful.
After our day in class, we went to the Tower of David Sound and Lights Show, which was really pretty cool (and kind of cheesy too). They project the entire show on the walls of the Tower of David and it's basically the complete history of the Jerusalem (conquest after conquest). I left that show and last week's lectures saying that it's actually miraculous that there was ANYTHING left in this city to preserve. :)
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