Holocaust Photo Analysis

A great activity to use with students studying the Holocaust is analyzing photos. It helps to actually create a “picture” in the minds of our students of the real people affected by the Holocaust. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has a photo archive that is filled with powerful photographs. You can access the photo archive by going to http://www.ushmm.org/research/collections/photo/.

Here are some of the questions you can use with your students when analyzing photographs:

• Describe the photograph. What is happening in this photograph? What does it tell you about the time period and people portrayed in the photograph? What social class do you think they belong to? Do you know when and where this photo was taken?
• Who do you think took the photo? How did you come to that conclusion?
• Why do you think this photograph was taken?
• What are your personal reactions to this photograph? What does this photo tell you about the lives of the people in it?
  

This can be a great individual writing activity with students where they write a reflection about a photograph or can be easily incorporated as a group activity. Students can share their analysis of the photographs with the class which can be a great starting point for discussion about many aspects of the Holocaust.

Making connections

As a language arts and reading teacher, I am constantly asking my students to connect what they read to their own personal experience, background knowledge, other texts they have read, and the world at large. I recently finished a book that caused my brain to fire with connections to the Holocaust.
 

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand tells the true story of Louis Zamperini whose pursuit of the four-minute mile took him to the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Chapter 4 offers a fascinating description of the Nazi Olympics, Louie’s encounter with Hitler, and his theft of a Nazi flag from the Reich Chancellery. It also relates American basketball player Frank Lubin’s experiences when he lingered in Berlin and watched the city reinstate the antisemitic signs and newspapers that had not been present during the games.

Following the Olympics, Louie enrolled at USC and began training for the 1940 Tokyo Olympics. Of course, that dream was dashed when World War II began. Louie joined the Army Air Corps before Pearl Harbor and was trained to be a bombardier. While searching for a missing plane over the Pacific on 27 May 1943, Louie’s own plane crashed at sea killing all but three of the men aboard. The survivors floated on a raft in the Pacific until mid-July when they were captured by the Japanese.

Until the end of the war, Louie was held in Japanese POW camps where he and his fellow inmates were subjected to dehumanizing and sadistic treatment from his guards, inadequate rations, unsanitary living conditions, exposure, disease, lack of medical care, and slave labor. What I find remarkable about how the POWs endured the Japanese camps is the same thing that I find remarkable about how the Jews survived conditions in the Nazi camps – the use of spiritual resistance. On page 243 Hillenbrand describes acts of sabotage and smuggling that “were transformative. In risking their necks to sabotage their enemy, the men were no longer passive captives. They were soldiers again.” On pages 268-269 she describes a Christmas play that the POWs staged for themselves to boost morale. On page 282 she told how Tom Wade recited Shakespeare’s soliloquies and speeches from Churchill and Lincoln to his fellow POWs while they carried back-breaking loads of coal.

The book does not end with Louie’s liberation. It goes on to tell of his struggles with nightmares, flashbacks, anxiety, and finding a purpose in his post-war, civilian life. Woven throughout Louie’s story, Hillenbrand also tells of efforts made to prosecute the Japanese camp guards for war crimes. Ultimately, Louie finds a way to forgive his Japanese persecutors and redeem his life.

Students in my classroom and participants in workshops at MCHE have often asked me, “How do you manage not to become depressed when you study the Holocaust?” I have been affiliated with MCHE for 14 years now. During that time of intensive learning about the Holocaust, there have been times when I have broached a topic that was simply more than I could bear. However, mostly, I find my studies uplifting. I have read and heard countless testimonies to the strength and resilience of the human spirit. In the face of unimaginable evil, people have acted with kindness, courage, hope, and integrity. I have personally heard survivors as world-famous as Gerda Weissmann Klein and as beloved as our own Bronia Roslawowski speak about the importance of forgiveness.

I believe that all of us are challenged to live our lives with kindness, courage, hope, integrity, and forgiveness. The Holocaust survivors, who have every reason to be fearful, bitter, complaining, and unforgiving, serve as an example for the rest of us when they choose the alternative. Louis Zamperini, through Laura Hillenbrand’s wonderful book, now serves as another shining example for me.

Children in the Holocaust and genocide

My 8^th graders have just finished studying the ghettos of Poland with emphasis on the Lodz ghetto. I had them view a documentary entitled The Lodz Ghetto which I found at the resource center at the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education. This video was divided into 4 parts with discussion questions for each one. This gave my students a great introduction and overview of the ghettos. I would certainly recommend this video for classes either to be seen in its entirety or in parts.
 

The next reading selection for my class will be Surviving Hitler. It is a memoir written by Andrea Warren about the experiences of Jack Mandelbaum, a local Holocaust survivor. There is a curriculum unit which can be found on the MCHE website which is very good. My past students gave great reviews on this book. They seemed to especially connect with the fact the Mr. Mandelbaum is from the Kansas City area. Of course, they all want to meet him after reading his memoir.

I will be ending my Holocaust unit with a lesson comparing and contrasting the diaries of two young people. The students will read excerpts from the Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak, a young man who lived in the Lodz ghetto and the diary of Zlata Filipovic, who lived in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War. This lesson is designed to connect lessons learned from the Holocaust with what has happened in the world since the end of World War II. I used this lesson last year and it was a success.

Extra Credit Video Assignment

Because I am an English teacher and only teach the Holocaust in conjunction with teaching the memoir, Night by Elie Wiesel, I do not spend as much time on other aspects of the Holocaust as I would sometimes like, especially with snow days. So, to provide students with an opportunity to learn a little more about the Holocaust on their own, I allow them to watch a Holocaust video for extra credit, using the attached list and assignment qualifications. I do always try to preface the extra credit opportunity by saying that some of the selections are a Hollywood portrayal of the Holocaust and may have some inaccuracies. The students must write about the movie, making connections to what we have learned in class and reviewing the movie’s “credibility.” So, the extra credit opportunity also requires the students to practice some of the good writing habits that they are supposed to be developing in class.

Front loading vocabulary

Over five years ago, my high school brought in a reading specialist, Bill McBride, who talked to us about how to help students engage in reading across the content areas. While I teach communication arts/ language arts/ English, I am by no means a reading teacher, especially at the high school level, so this workshop was very helpful. Among the advice he gave us was to always “front load” the vocabulary we would be working with in a particular unit. He was kind enough to give us all a worksheet that we could take and implement in our classrooms for this purpose. I call this worksheet the “Predicting ABC’s” and have taken it and adapted it to use to introduce Holocaust vocabulary at the beginning of the Holocaust memoir unit I teach to freshmen.

I have the students think of as many terms as they can that they know about the Holocaust and write them on the chart alphabetically, and then we share out their responses. Then, I always have some that I tell them that I want them to know for the unit and test, and these are listed on the back of the worksheet. Some I already provide the definition for and others I make them take down as notes. This has been a great tool to help students know the terms that we will use during the unit, and the worksheet can be adapted for any unit in any content area.

Teaching about Rescue

Teaching the Holocaust in middle school can be tricky. On one hand, the students have had little, if any, exposure to the topic and are eager to learn everything they can about it. On the other hand, they are still a bit young to hear all of the horrific details, and they can get very sad about it very quickly. I have found it to be very important to teach the facts, while also trying to teach some of the more inspiring aspects of the topic. One of these aspects is the subject of rescue.

Many middle school students read The Diary of Anne Frank. This is a great chance to teach about rescue. Once they have read the story, you can then teach them about Yad Vashem and their Righteous among the Nations honor. All four of the Frank rescuers are on this prestigious list. You can find information about the list and a discussion of the main forms of rescue during the Holocaust. You can then discuss how the Frank family helpers fit into this list.

Another person to study is Chiune Sugihara. There is a short story written about him, included in some middle school literature textbooks, called Passage to Freedom. You can also find his story on the Yad Vashem website. This can be a great chance to talk about stereotype as well. Most students only know of Japan as being our enemy during WWII. Learning about Sugihara can illustrate to the students that not all Japanese were “bad,” and that people from many countries and of all different races did what they could to help, even risking their lives. After studying his story, you can show a short video about him and his family, including primary resource photographs and an interview with his wife.

Once students have learned about a few rescuers, you can then have them explore the actual list of The Righteous Among the Nations and choose one to write about. The website also includes rescuers from other genocides, so it could be a jumping off point to teach about these other events. Another fantastic resource for learning about rescuers is the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous. This is an organization that helps those rescuers who are still alive. Their website has the stories of many of rescuers, sorted by country. This would also help students understand that people from all over Europe tried to help. Writing about a rescuer can be a great way to cover many different curricular objectives, including research, paraphrasing and character study.

While it is important for students to understand that the Holocaust was a horrific event, I think it is also important, especially for the younger students, to see that there were people, although few in number, who risked their lives to help those who could not help themselves.

Dr. Seuss, Hitler and Human Rights

Many teachers celebrate Dr. Seuss during the week surrounding his birthday- March 2. I am an inner city school librarian working with mostly minority students. Due to my students’ poor test scores regarding nonfiction, I pledged to spend this school year on nonfiction. My middle school students shared with me their excitement about the upcoming Dr. Seuss birthday celebrations. As a librarian, it’s imperative that I collaborate with teachers in order to support what is happening in the classroom, yet I did not want to lose our momentum studying nonfiction. I work to have Holocaust studies a major part of what we learn. How do I celebrate Dr. Seuss, continue our nonfiction studies, and incorporate the Holocaust into one unit?

Fortunately, a year ago, a Cadre colleague, Cathy, shared a great text with me- Dr. Seuss Goes to War: The World War II Editorial Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel, by Richard H. Minear. I created a lesson plan about political cartoons for high school juniors and seniors. But, middle school?

I began by guiding a student discussion making text-to-text connections with the works of Dr. Seuss that the students are familiar with. I guided the students to seeing the larger themes of his works, such as the equal rights message of The Sneetches and Other Stories. A couple of students were aware of the larger themes for his books, and they enjoyed sharing their knowledge with others. I also shared with them Dr. Seuss’ own brushes with antisemitism. He was German. Due to that and that he had a larger nose, many students at his college thought he was Jewish, and he was not accepted by a group (fraternity) that he wanted to join on campus, so he redirected his interests in to the campus paper.


I asked them what issues were important to Ted Geisel (Dr. Seuss). The students were impressed that he was addressing equal rights well before the 1960s. We examined his cartoon of a man sitting at an organ while another man watching tells him he has to use the black keys, too. We then moved to the pressing issues of the late 1930s- isolationism and Hitler’s growing power. Students chose one of his political cartoons addressing Hitler/ antisemitism, and wrote a reflection on the cartoon.

The most gratifying comment made in the post discussion was that one can impact many. I was thrilled; teaching our students to want to make a difference is my mission.