Student tours of Deadly Medicine - a docent's perspective

I enjoy my interactions with students, teachers, other docents, and NARA & MCHE staff as a docent for Deadly Medicine. To docent the exhibit requires careful advance preparation in order to provide an effective and positive learning experience for both students and teachers.

For Deadly Medicine, MCHE, the USHMM, and the National Archives provided training about the content, the historical background, and the facility (National Archives) itself. While this training provided a brief overview, every docent with whom I’ve spoken felt the need to learn and research more—beginning with the exhibit materials and additional suggested resources.

I viewed the online exhibit at USHMM and the pertinent resources to Deadly Medicine on the museum site as well as sites recommended by the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education as I wanted to have site recommendations for students and teachers that I knew would provide accurate information to questions that needed more in-depth responses than I could provide. I also attended a session of the trainings given for teachers so I would have an idea of the background/materials they would have available.

Since most of the school groups would be spending between 30-45 minutes in the exhibit, I created an abbreviated tour guide. Using the brief introductions and summaries for the three sections of the exhibit from the guidebook provided in training, I created a framework for the tours I would lead. The exhibit provides a very intense experience for even those with in-depth knowledge of the Holocaust. Most students come to the exhibit with a minimal background in Holocaust study. To fully view and experience each section of the exhibit would require hours. I did not want students and teachers to feel overwhelmed before we even started.

At the beginning of the tour, I give a brief, general overview of what the group will be seeing and how the information will be presented. I check the students’ understanding of primary sources and describe some of the types used in the exhibit. We also discuss the term “eugenics” and their understanding of it—this gives me an idea of how much preparation they have received for the tour. Each of the three sections will include:

1) overview of the section pre-viewing

2) description of one or two specific exhibits to be sure to view carefully.

I give them about ten minutes to walk through each section, read the accompanying information, and ask questions as they go. At the end of the section, I summarize what they just saw and ask them to respond to one or two questions to check for their understanding and clarify any misconceptions about that section.

The key concepts I cover in the tour are as follows:

Section 1 –
eugenics in the U.S. & Europe, in Germany

why “race science” needed/used by the Nazis

how policies were instigated

1. through propaganda
2. through laws
3. through education
   

Section 2 –
application of Nazi eugenics policies/racial ideology - strong versus weak

emphasis on family, women, “pure Germans”

sterilization/marriage laws

Nuremberg Laws

antisemitism

Section 3 –
T-4 program

killing squads to death camps

Final Solution

involvement of medical professionals, scientists, etc./accountability

Again—this a lot of information presented in a very short time frame. But I believe it’s important for students to hear the terminology and see it in the context of the exhibit.

It is sometimes necessary to adjust the amount of time spent in a given section as students become particularly engaged in a certain display/video. At the end of the exhibit, we discuss again why/how the Nazis used eugenics, how they delivered their message, and how the Final Solution was the end result of Nazi policies. Oftentimes, students want/need additional resources to answer specific questions they have. I encourage them to use the MCHE and USHMM websites for accurate information.

As a docent, I see firsthand the effects of the exhibit on students and their teachers. High school students are obviously far removed from this period in history. Unfortunately most students do not study the Holocaust for more than a few days, if that. This exhibit helps show students a piece of that history. The exhibit engages students using learning styles and presentation styles that are most appealing to the students—posters, videos, photos, artifacts, and accompanying written descriptions that are brief and easy to follow. Due to state standards and testing, students do cover propaganda techniques. This is an effective concept to use as a connection to various aspects of the exhibit.

I have led diverse student groups through the exhibit. Some came very well prepared with an activity to complete while in the exhibit (available on the MCHE website). Some came with minimal preparation (prior to their study of the Holocaust). But all of the students became engaged in the exhibit at some point, and many asked questions about what they saw. One memorable moment was when a young lady realized that she would have been labeled an undesirable, “life unworthy of life,” because of her race/ethnicity. The exhibit took on a whole new level of meaning for her.

I am sure that most students (most adults as well) continue to process what they see and learn from Deadly Medicine well after they have completed the brief tour. As a former teacher, I know that these experiences provide wonderful springboards of learning opportunities—for the class and for individuals. I end the tour by encouraging the students to return to the exhibit with a friend or parent(s) and to visit the online exhibit.

Educator event at Deadly Medicine

SPECIAL EVENT FOR EDUCATORS:
The Complicity of Educators in Nazi Germany
May 12, 2010 ~ 4:30-5:30 ~ National Archives at Kansas City
This presentation by Dr. William Meinecke, historian at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, will explore the complicity of professional educators in Nazi Germany, specifically the indoctrination of children. Participants are welcome to stay for Dr. Meinecke's 7:00 public presentation on Medical Ethics and Nazi Ideology. Please RSVP to Jessica Rockhold at schools@mchekc.org or 913-327-8195 with your name and school contact information by May 7, 2010.

SCHOOL TOUR INFORMATION :
Free tours are available for groups in grades 9 and up. Groups of up to 60 students are recommended, but larger groups can be arranged. One adult per 15 students is required. Please allow 1 hour to tour the exhibition. Contact Lori Cox-Paul, Education Specialist at NARA, at 816-268-8017 or lori.cox-paul@nara.gov to schedule at tour.

Resources and lesson plans appropriate for use in high school classrooms are available by clicking here.

Assigning survivor memoirs

For many teachers finding the time in class to spend on the Holocaust is difficult. In order to engage your students in learning the Holocaust consider using survivor memoirs. The memoirs provide an opportunity for students to further deepen their understanding of the Holocaust outside of class. I chose to have my senior International Baccalaureate History students read memoirs by survivors from Auschwitz. I acquired copies of three different memoirs, Survival in Auschwitz by Primo Levi, Five Chimneys by Olga Lengyel, and Eyewitness Auschwitz by Filip Muller. These three memoirs provide a variety of experiences from Auschwitz including those from a man (Levi) and woman (Lengyel) along with someone forced to work in the crematoria (Muller).

The class was divided into three large groups with each group reading a different memoir. Students had approximately one month to read their assigned memoir and were required to take notes for the questions listed below. The notes had to be typed and include the page number(s), a brief description, and include as many examples as they could find.

• What country were they from?
• What was their family background (brothers & sisters, etc.) & what happened to them?
• When did they arrive in Auschwitz?
• Approximately how old were they when they entered Auschwitz?
• What kind of work did they do in Auschwitz?
• Based on their experience, what role did religion play in Auschwitz either personally or that they witnessed?
• What types of resistance did they practice or witness in Auschwitz?
• What were some of the major/significant events in Auschwitz during their imprisonment that they participated in or witnessed?
• What helped them to survive?

The day before we began discussion of the memoirs I did a lesson on mapping Auschwitz-Birkenau created by the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education. The purpose of this lesson was two-fold, one it modeled photographic analysis for students, and two it allowed students to actually see the camp they had been reading about during the past few weeks. Another possibility I have considered for providing background is showing a video on Auschwitz. In particular I recommend the MCHE video Witnesses to the Holocaust: Auschwitz.

The discussion over the memoirs encompassed two days.

Day 1:

• Class began with students writing a personal reflection on the memoir they read (5 minutes). I didn’t have a specific question or parameters. I just wanted them to write whatever they thought about the memoir.
• Next, for each memoir, students were divided into groups of 2 or 3. That meant I had about three or four groups per book. The purpose of the groups was to provide a framework for discussion amongst those who read the same memoir.
• To facilitate the discussion students participated in a “pass the folder” activity. The groups with the same memoir worked together on this activity. It works best with at least 3 groups per book. Depending on how many groups you have this activity may require completion the next day.

1. Each group was given one folder.
2. They had 5 minutes to choose an issue from the memoir to discuss and write it on the front of the folder.
3. Then 5-10 minutes to discuss it and write their ideas on the issue inside the folder.
4. Once finished they passed the folder to the next group.
5. The next group got 5-10 minutes to discuss the issue on the front of the folder and write their thoughts inside the folder.
   
6. This was repeated until each group for a memoir had a chance to discuss and write their ideas for each folder.
7. The folders were then returned to the groups of origin. These groups had 5-10 minutes to read and discuss the ideas that had been written in response to their original issue.

Day 2:

• The groups from the first day meet for 5-10 minutes to compare their notes to the questions students were required to answer as they read the memoir.
• Then two (in some cases three) students from each memoir were put together into groups.
• Each pair had 5-10 minutes to share information from their memoir. The information to share could be the answers to some of the questions or a general summary of the experiences of the author.

Overall, this proved to be one the best Holocaust assignments/activities I have done. The students found the memoirs engaging and thus read them thoroughly. The discussions that ensued were lively and always on topic. Some of the student comments from the reflections indicated that, while the memoirs could be emotionally difficult to read, the students found it hard to put them down. Others commented on the benefit of reading firsthand experiences which they thought gave them a better understanding of what happened. Many had to remind themselves that what they were reading was not fiction. Finally, one student wrote, “I found myself sharing all the shocking things I read with the people around me because I could not believe some of the things she [Olga Lengyel] had to go through.”

Using Nazi and Genocide Propaganda to Teach Persuasive Fallacies

With the help of my awesome library media specialist, Abby Cornelius, I created a PowerPoint Presentation to demonstrate to students how the Nazi regime used different persuasive fallacies to promote their ideas between 1933 and 1945. The librarian was able to find a visual example of each type of persuasion and fallacy that English teachers are supposed to teach to students before they take the Kansas State Reading Assessment (standard and benchmark listed below).

Students were able to see each persuasive technique used in a visual after we had studied both the Holocaust and I after had introduced the different types of persuasive appeals. The PowerPoint presentation was a great visual to enhance how these persuasive methods have been used in history, not just in advertising and editorials, as we had also spent time discussing prior to the Holocaust unit.

I used this at the end of my Holocaust memoir unit and after introducing persuasion throughout Holt Elements of Language, Third Course, text book, but you could easily use it while reading the Holocaust unit and while discussing persuasion. I begin the persuasive unit with ReadWriteThink’s persuasive tools that may be found on their website. The web site says that the lesson was created for elementary students, but I think the resources also work for high school (I use them with freshmen). They have an assignment titled “Persuasion Is All Around You,” a PowerPoint presentation, and worksheets that I utilize and then have students read editorials that I find in the local newspaper as well as look at advertising that uses the different types of persuasion.

Students have demonstrated a good grasp of the types of persuasion at the end of the unit and have expressed a positive attitude about the unit.

State Assessment Benchmark/Indicator

Standard/Benchmark/Indicator

R.HS.1.4.14

▲identifies the author's position in a persuasive text, describes techniques the author uses to support that position (e.g., bandwagon approach, glittering generalities, testimonials, citing authority, statistics, other techniques that appeal to reason or emotion), and evaluates the effectiveness of these techniques and the credibility of the

information provided.