Local Survivor Testimony - In Hiding

Tonight  Jeff Benes and I will be presenting a lesson on “In Hiding” as part of Telling the Story: Teaching With Witness Testimony ~ A Seminar Series for Middle and High School Educatorsat the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education.  As I viewed the testimonies of 4 local survivors for this segment, I was greatly affected by their recollections.

One in particular stood out in my mind.  Ralph Berets was two or three years old when he and his family were forced to leave their home in Amersfoort, Holland and go into hiding.  They lived for several months in a cottage that was owned by one of his father’s friends.  The Germans were informed of their presence and the family hid in a ditch until the soldiers left.  The family was forced to split up.  Ralph and his mother were hiding in an ice cream shop, where he always had something to eat.    

Other memories were of his parents’ playing cards with German soldiers and a grenade that was thrown into a window but did not explode.  They lived in a chicken coop with 12 other people and Ralph remembered the strong odor of the chickens.  Maybe his young age made his testimony so compelling to me.

It was interesting to study the different perspectives of the four survivors, not only in their ages but where they lived.  Margalith Clarenberg was 15 when she went into hiding in Holland. When Ann Walters was 13 years old, she was left with a farmer in Poland.  Maria Devinki lived in Wodzislaw, Poland.  She was a slave laborer.  She was released from the camp through the efforts of a Polish soldier who was a friend of a high school acquaintance.  He would be their protector for the next two years.  She was 23 years old when she, her husband, 2 brothers and her mother went into hiding.  She was 25 when the Soviets liberated Poland. 

I plan to use these four testimonies with my students as a lesson in perseverance as part of my Holocaust unit. You can find the documentary at the MCHE Resource Center and later this summer you can find the lesson plans we are teaching tonight on the MCHE website!

Number the Stars as performed at the Coterie Theatre

Lois Lowry won her first Newbery Award for this book set in Denmark during the Holocaust. The book explores many universal themes including bravery, friendship, and human decency as well as Holocaust topics including rescuers, hiding, perpetrators, resistance, and antisemitism. While the book’s focus is on the two young friends, Annemarie and Ellen, the play is often focused on a young member of the Resistance. Peter (who would have been Annemarie’s brother-in-law had her sister not been killed in her work with the Resistance) provides important details about the history of Denmark and the work of the Resistance members there.

The play is well-acted. Actresses a bit older than their characters convincingly play the three young girls. The supporting cast is believable in their roles as either perpetrators or rescuers. The set is a simple but fascinating one. On the stage are a table, chairs, and a trunk. But the backdrop is constantly changed to show a variety of settings using wall-sized Etch-A-Sketch-like drawings. The audience of middle-school students was fully engaged in the action. The hour-length play was well-written and represented the key concepts and characters in the book very closely.

Like Laura Patton (see her January 17 post), I would prefer to use non-fiction over novels or historical fiction. But there are many effective ways to use a book like Number the Stars (a quick, engaging read for most 6-8^th grade students). Students can study the literary aspects of the book, how the author researched and incorporated the history of the Holocaust in Denmark, and then research the historical aspects themselves. Once students research events presented in the book, they become interested in knowing about other, related events and people.

MCHE, as the education partner of The Coterie Theatre for this play, provides Number the Stars Educational Materials.

There are dozens of online sites providing educational activities to use with the book. Carol Hurst's Children's Literature Site provides discussion ideas, activities, and related books. This is one site that shows creative ways to incorporate a novel into historical curriculum.

Lois Lowry's Blog provides useful insights about the book and her research.

In the Afterword of the book, Lowry addresses the question “How much of Annemarie’s story is true?” This is a wonderful section to use with students to pique their interest in the history portrayed in the book. The playwright (Douglas W. Larche) uses this section to create a moving letter from Peter read at the end of the play:

            “… the dream for you all, young and old, must be to create an ideal of human decency, and not a narrow-minded and prejudiced one. That is the great gift that our country hungers for,   something every little peasant boy can look forward to, and with pleasure feel he is a part of — something he can work and fight for.”

I think there are many teachable moments and valuable concepts in this book and in the play that can easily lead to a study of the history of the Holocaust and the memoirs, poetry, and artwork of its victims.

Teaching Anne Frank – The Whole Story

Many middle school English teachers teach some version of the story of Anne Frank to their kids.  In Shawnee Mission, we teach the play version of the diary.   Most of us remember Anne as being our first introduction to the Holocaust.  She is someone that students can easily identify with, and also someone who students can admire for her strength of character and insight into the world.  However, if you teach only Anne’s diary, or some form of it like the play, students are not really getting a Holocaust story.  They are getting a wonderful story of a girl who is in hiding, during the Holocaust.  I feel it is important for teachers to teach their students what happened to Anne and her family before they went into hiding and after, in order for them to see who she really was and what was really happening to her and the millions of other victims of the Holocaust.

One excellent resource, in my opinion, is the movie Anne Frank: The Whole Story (2001).  This was a miniseries which is now available in its entirety on DVD.   It was made without actually using the diary – the Anne Frank Foundation did not allow them to use her actual words.  However, it is based on several other biographies and testimony of people who knew her or shared experiences with her.  This movie is in three parts.  Part 1 tells of their life before Hitler came to power in Amsterdam, all the way through to their going into hiding.  I have found it to be an excellent way for the kids to understand how their lives changed once Hitler came into power, the family dynamics before they are forced to live in hiding, and who Anne really was, apart from her diary entries.  

Part 2 is the story of their hiding.  We watch this after we have read the play.  My advanced students read the play as well as about 5 diary entries, so they can see how the play was different than the actual diary.   While it follows the basic story line of the play, it shows in more detail the dynamics of the people living there and just how hard it was.  It also includes all four of the helpers, rather than just Miep and Mr. Kraler in the play.  I have found it to be a great supplement to reading the diary or play.  The kids can see everything a little more realistically than the play, and from more than just Anne’s perspective in the diary.

Part 3 tells the story of what happened to them after they were caught.  To me, this is the most important part of the story that we don’t talk about.  So many people think of Anne’s life only in hiding.  They don’t know (and probably don’t want to know) what happened to her in the camps.  I think it is important to understand how terribly difficult the remainder of her life was, and how strong she did stay despite the conditions.  I also think it’s important to put the diary and play into perspective.  I have my students think about her most famous line, “I still believe people are good at heart,” and analyze whether that is an accurate statement of Anne’s whole life, or just how she was feeling at the time.  Would she have said that in Bergen Belsen?  

The film is long; there definitely is merit in showing portions of it rather than the whole thing.  However, if time allows, I have found that the students get so much more from seeing the whole film in conjunction with reading the diary and/or play, and there is so much that you can teach while watching the film.

The Hiding Place revealed

As educators, we realize how important it is to continue to read within our disciplines for a well-rounded mental library from which to draw. The school year gets started, we are saddled with deadlines, grading, meetings, collaborating, with all the while trying to keep up with our own family lives. It simply gets hectic. Outside reading often goes by the wayside.

In 2010, I was bestowed with the honor of becoming a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Fellow. One of the many perks is a stipend to spend freely in the USHMM bookstore. As I was relishing in my decisions, I walked past Corrie Ten Boom’s The Hiding Place. My Mother often quotes from Ten Boom’s work and as a Holocaust educator I was somewhat familiar with the premise of her story. I picked up a few other items and kept coming back to The Hiding Place. I am so very glad that I did.

As a Christian, living in Holland, Ten Boom tells of a very rich family life and a love of people from all walks of life, prior to the outbreak of World War II. The incredible theme in her story is not of heroism, danger and rescue, which are all present. The elements that are glaringly apparent throughout the entire account are those of common decency coupled with forgiveness. Ten Boom struggled with these in face of incredible odds. She reveals throughout prewar, during her wartime imprisonment and postwar how forgiveness & mere decency are powerful elements in living a fulfilled life. Ten Boom lost significantly at the hands of the Nazis yet she remained decent to her captors & forgiveness helped her to push through the pain of loss. Her story does not focus solely on faith, nor ethnicity or gender and it is one of my most powerful works that I have read from any genre.