Week of August 31

This week we will move quickly into the heart of the Holocaust, beginning with propaganda. Hitler would probably not have accomplished what he did (in an educated nation) were it not for the use of propaganda. Propaganda is probably more pervasive in your own life today than you even realize....

Monday, 8/31
Judaism Discussion
Memorial Planning

Tuesday, 9/1
Propaganda E and R

Wednesday, 9/2
Make Propaganda
Salvaged Page Reading Day
SUB

Thursday, 9/3
SP Activity
Book Thief Reading Day

Friday, 9/4
Watch "I'm Still Here"
SUB

Week of August 24

This week, we are studying Judaism, both the history, the people, and the faith. I hope you discover all sorts of interesting things and also that it provides a foundation for a deeper understanding of the events of the Holocaust.

Monday, 8/24
Continue research

Tuesday, 8/25
Present research, photos

Wednesday, 8/26
Guest speaker - Coach Al Miller
Be on your BEST behavior

Thursday, 8/27
"Image Before My Eyes"
Possible stories

Friday, 8/28
Judaism discussion
Memorial Planning

Everyday Jewish Life Pre-WWII

In order to better understand what Jewish cultural and communal life was like in Europe prior to WWII, you will be finding photographs from that time period and analyzing them, as well as researching the town(s) where the photos were taken. Follow the assigments below in order, working at your own pace.

Sidenote: Spend a few minutes looking around the Holocaust Museum website. That link is here.

Assignment #1 Photo Collection
Think of two words that symbolize "everyday life". Ex: shopping, school, family time, sports, etc. Go to the USHMM Photo archives collection and type your word into the search engine. Don't pick the very first picture you find. Instead, browse the pictures. Spend some time looking at what is available and thinking about them. Your photo cannot be dated AFTER Nazi occupation, which varied by country. Below is a list of Nazi occupation dates:
Austria March 1938
Poland Sept 1939
Czech March 1939
Denmark 1944 but not really
Norway April 1940
Holland May 1940
Belgium, Luxembourg, France June 1940
Transylvania 1940
Greece April 1941
Yugoslavia April 1941
Russia June 1941
Hungary 1944
Slovakia, Romania 1940
Italy-->Albania April 1939
Sov Union -->Poland 1939
Sov U --> Finland 1940
Sov U --> Romania June 1940

Make certain that the photo you choose includes a location where it was taken.

The link to the archives is here.

Once you have found a photo for each key word that you really like, right click on it, copy it, and paste it into a word doc. Also copy and paste ONLY the date and location (city and country) (no other info like captions). Print it.

Photo requirements are that it must have people in it, cannot be what is classified as a portrait, and must be prior to German occupation.

Assignment #2 Photo Analysis
Using the following questions, analyze ONE of the photos. Write this on a separate piece of paper.

Describe what you see. · What do you notice first? · What people and objects are shown? · How
are they arranged? · What is the physical setting? · What, if any, words do you see? · What other details can you see?

Why do you think this image was made? · What’s happening in the image? · When do you think it was made? · Who do you think was the audience for this image? · What tools were used to create this?
· What can you learn from examining this image? · What’s missing from this image? · If someone made this today, what would be different? · What would be the same?

What do you wonder about...
who? · what? · when? · where? · why? · how?

Assignment #3 Photo Research-- type these paragraphs on a sheet of paper in the lab. You will present them tomorrow.
Look up each town from your two photographs. You need to write a well-researched paragraph for each in which you will note the following:
How large was the town/city's Jewish population and how long had Jews been living there?
What was the Jewish life/culture in that town/city like prior to the Nazi invasion?
Where is or was that town/city located?
When and how did the town/city come under Nazi rule?
What was the fate of this particular town's/city's Jews during the Holocaust? What about the country?

Assignment #4 Photo Reflection-- using one of the photos you selected from the archives and the photo you brought from home to "match" it, please answer the following questions, also in a typed paragraph:
Identify evidence that suggests that life was normal for Jews prior to the Nazis.
What did you discover as you looked through your own family's photos in comparison to those that you had researched?
Which photo of your family did you choose that relates and why?
How do the photos show similarities between you, your family, or your community to those in European Jewish life prior to WWII?

Week of August 17

As Unit 1 wraps up with Monday's test, I want to tell you that I feel good about your class. You are very involved in discussion and willing to speak up, which is essential in this class. Most of you are very engaged and, although you might be itching to get to the details of the Holocaust, you were focused on the foundation that must be laid to fully understand the context of the travesty of the Holocaust. 

Monday, 8/17

Unit 1 Test

Tuesday, 8/18

Elements of Drama

"Fiddler on the Roof"

Wednesday, 8/19

"Fiddler"

Thursday, 8/20

Finish "Fiddler"

Discussion

Friday, 8/21

Research photos

Jewish Life Pre-WWII

Week of August 10

Welcome to the class! I'm really excited about our time together and the fact that you care about and are interested in this topic.

Monday, 8/10
Stereotyping
Assign The Book Thief

Tuesday, 8/11
GATTACA

Wednesday, 8/12
GATTACA
Discussion

Thursday, 8/13
Racism

Friday, 8/14
Holocaust/Shoah, anti-Semitism, Genocide

Link to the TED Talk I mentioned in class Monday:
https://www.ted.com/talks/verna_myers_how_to_overcome_our_biases_walk_boldly_toward_them

Tuesday Toughday

I'm finally started to feel really, really drained. Mentally, physically, and emotionally. I'm on day 14 at this point of full days of learning a tough topic, meager food, lots of exertion, being away from my family, and getting very little sleep. Today I think I hit a wall. I'm hoping tomorrow is better. :)

Today (Tuesday) was very, very full. We started with a lecture on Jewish Leadership in the Shoah, had two lessons on ghettos, a lecture on cultural and spiritual resistance, and ended the time at Yad Vashem with a lesson on Holocaust Literature (yes, totally up my alley!).

Again today, I feel like there is just so many details, most of which I want to try and incorporate into my lessons later, that I don't have very much to say here. I want to end with a very powerful quote I heard and just leave it with you in a few minutes.

We ended the day at the Israeli Museum where I got to see the Dead Sea Scrolls. If you're not familiar with the story of the discovery of that little piece of history, look it up. It's kind of amazing. It was so wild to look at them and know they are the earliest paper (parchment) documentation of the Bible. My other favorite part of that museum was the reconstructed model of Jersusalem's Old City. I am NOT a spatial person, so it was really really helpful to see how the ruins we saw and walked actually looked when they weren't... well... RUINS. :)

Here's the quote I'll leave with you:

"At the end of World War II, everyone sat down to count their dead. The Jews began to count their living."

SO MANY GREAT LECTURES MONDAY

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. :)