Holocaust Studies
Concepts to Consider:
"Choiceless Choice"
The role of the:
Perpetrator
Victim
Survivor
Rescuer
Bystander
Liberator
Book Burning - who? what? where? when? why?
Propaganda - who was in charge? target audience? message?
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Propaganda Exhibit
Faith - how does adversity test one's faith? Does it strengthen or weaken it?
Who were the victims? They were not ONLY Jewish people.
What is going on today?
Read the Smithsonian Magazine article (02/2010) Can Auschwitz Be Saved? (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Can-Auschwitz-Be-Saved.html)
AP Article September 29, 2010 Testaments of the Heart: music from the Holocaust (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100929/ap_en_mu/us_holocaust_music)
Kristallnacht:
Know ... When? Where/ What happened?
Link from online exhibition at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/kristallnacht/
USC Shoah Foundation Interviews http://college.usc.edu/vhi/education/kristallnacht/
Petr Ginz and Eva Ginzova Diaries from Salvaged Pages
Dr. Seuss's view on Racism shown in THE SNEECHES - YouTube
The Wave Part 1
The wave Part 2
Quote (USHMM WALL by Pastor Martin Niemoller):
"First 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 am not a Jew. Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak for me."
Poetry - Nobel Prize in Literature 1980
A Poor Christian Looks at the Ghetto by Czeslaw Milosz
Elegy for the Little Jewish Towns by Antoni Słonimski
MOVIE: HItler's Children
Poems:
Elegy for the Little Jewish Towns
by Antoni Słonimski
Gone now are, gone are in Poland the Jewish villages,
in Hrubieszow, Karczew, Brody, Falenica
you look in vain for candlelight in the windows
and listen for song from the wooden synagogue.
Disappeared are the last rests, the Jewish possessions,
the blood is covered over by sand, the traces removed,
and the walls whitewashed with lime,
as for a high holiday or after a contagious disease.
One moon shines here, cold, pale, alien,
already behind the town, on the road,
when night uncoils its light,
my Jewish relatives, boys with poetic feeling,
will no longer find Chagal’s two golden moons.
The moons now wander above another planet,
frightened away by grim silence, no trace of them.
Gone now are those little towns where the shoemaker was a poet,
The watchmaker a philosopher, the barber a troubadour.
Gone now are those little towns where the wind joined
Biblical songs with Polish tunes and Slavic rue,
Where old Jews in orchards in the shade of cherry trees
Lamented for the holy walls of Jerusalem.
Gone now are those little towns, though the poetic mists,
The moons, winds, ponds, and stars above them
Have recorded in the blood of centuries the tragic tales,
The histories of the two saddest nations on earth.
(The English language translation is attributed to Howard Weiner.)
Elegy for the Jewish Villages
Edward Hirsch
The Jewish villages in Poland are gone now—
Hrubieszrow, Karczew, Brody, Falenica . . .
There are no Sabbath candles lit in the windows,
no chanting comes from the wooden synagogues.
The Jewish villages in Poland have vanished
and so I walked through a graveyard without graves.
It must have been hard work to clean up after the war:
someone must have sprinkled sand over the blood,
swept away footprints, and whitewashed the walls
with bluish lime. Someone must have fumigated
the streets, the way you do after a plague.
One moon glitters here—cold, pale, alien.
I stood in the dark countryside in summer, but
I could never find the two golden moons of Chagall
glittering outside the town when the night lights up.
Those moons are orbiting another planet now.
Gone are the towns where the shoemaker was a poet,
the watchmaker a philosopher, the barber a troubadour.
Gone are the villages where the wind joined Biblical songs
with Polish tunes, where old Jews stood in the shade
of cherry trees and longed for the holy walls of Jerusalem.
Gone now are the hamlets that passed away
like a shadow that falls between our words.
I am bringing you home the story of a world—
Hrubieszrow, Karczew, Brody, Falenica . . .
Come close and listen to this song—
the Jewish villages in Poland are gone now—
from another one of the saddest nations on earth.