Essential Questions:
Why does learning about the choices people made during the Holocaust teach us about the power and impact of our choices today?
What was the Holocaust? Why would people try to deny that the Holocaust ever happened?
How can a particular text, image, document or film be an appropriate historical document?
What role did propaganda play in the Holocaust? What does Rhetoric play in propaganda?
Who was to blame for the Holocaust? Why didn’t anyone try to fight against the Nazis? Why did people sit by ‘passive?’
What is the meaning of Human Dignity? How did the Nazis seek to dehumanize and deprive their victims of basic human rights?
How is deep-seated hatred countered?
How can the study of history help us avoid repeating the mistakes of the past?
Questions to ask while reading:
Which is more powerful: fear or hope?
To what extent is it possible for one person’s story to change another person’s life?
What’s more powerful: my voice or my silence?
ASSIGNMENTS:
Vocabulary - words used in our books and articles relating to the Holocaust.
Rhetoric - When reading through your articles, make sure to fill out the following form for 2 articles.
Book Analysis - This book analysis is due on the last day of our Holocaust Unit
*Why the Jews: History of Anti-Sematism (Movie)
Images of WWII - some of these are very graphic, view with discretion
*Survivors: First Person Video Conversations
Berlin Olympics: Anti-Semitism vs. Jim Crow Laws
The Jewish Library: great source of information
- Political Ads: Propaganda
- Teetering on the Brink between Life and Death
- Horrors of Nazi Concentration Camps
Auschwitz Concentration Camp
The Boy on the Wooden Box: *Autobiography* Leyson tells the horror of WWII through his 10-year-old self, who grows up during the war and ultimately becomes protected by Oscar Schindler, who saved over 1,200 Jewish men and women.
*The Cage: *Autobiography* Riva and her Jewish family watch their friends turn against them when Nazi beliefs start perpetrating Poland. Moving to the Ghetto, trial upon trial berates the family until they are all sent to Auschwitz, separated from each other. This is a painfully haunting memoir worth reading.
*The Girl in the Green Sweater: *Autobiography* Krystyna Chiger's family knew trouble was brewing with the Nazi invasion into Lvov, Poland. Her father made arrangements while in the Ghetto to keep his family safe...but staying safe meant living in the sewers with strangers for 14 months, becoming dependent on non-Jewish Polish citizens to help them.
The Light in Hidden Places: *Biography* Stefi is a Polish Catholic who works for a Jewish family. The family is moved to the ghettos, where Stefi cares for them by bringing food and medicine. They realize they must escape the ghetto if they want to survive the ghetto liquidation. The family asks Stefi if she'd be willing to risk her life to hide them.
4 Perfect Pebbles: *Autobiography* Marion and her family run away after the Nazi's rise to power. We see how Marion's family does everything possible to stay together and encourage each other, even when living as refugees and 'living' at concentration camps. Their story is one of horror and hardship, but it is also a story of courage, hope, and the will to survive.
Daniel's Story: Daniel and his family are forced from their German home in Frankfort to Lodz, and the Polish Ghettos, which ultimately leads them to the death camp Auschwitz. David must depend on his family and find the courage to survive. *Historical Fiction