Making connections in an Olympic year

With the school year quickly approaching, I’m, as always, brainstorming how I will grab these history students’ attention at the beginning of the year.  Using the Olympics as a “hook” might be the perfect connection between past as present.  We can spend some time on the ancient games and culture as well as a few games as case studies.  With my high school students, the 1936 Nazi Olympics would be a great example of how politics drive the actions of a nation and effects the international community- something we will continually come back to over the course of the year.

If making this connection is something you’re interested in, there are some fabulous resources out there.  Most notably, there is an excellent exhibition on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s website, titled “The Nazi Olympics: Berlin1936”.  This is something that is easily navigated by students. It is supported by a teacher’s guide, which holds valuable, well-written activities and discussion questions. (There is also this set of lesson plans developed by the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education to accompany the exhibition.)

Students might also be intrigued by the Jewish VirtualLibrary’s article “The Nazi Olympics”.  It lists out non-“Aryan” medalists in the games.  Students always are amused when they see examples of Hitler’s ideas on Aryan supremacy being nullified.

Every four years, we have the opportunity to watch the world unite for friendly competition.  I believe it is always great to remind our students what we learned from the past and have a frank discussion about what we can improve on today.

Have a great beginning to your school year!

Very little time? No problem!

It's amazing how quickly the end of the school year can come once May begins. This past year I taught Advanced Studies World History to 10th graders for the first time. When teaching a new course I find it difficult to stay on a set schedule with the units. While I am using materials created by others who have taught the course I like to adjust things and find or create new lessons. The end result was that I found myself with very little time at the end of the semester to cover World War II and the Holocaust. Originally I had grand plans of spending a few weeks covering these topics. Instead I only had a couple of weeks. I went into scramble mode to think of ways to teach the Holocaust. The Echoes and Reflections curriculum provided the solution. The great part of this curriculum is the ability to use it in small or larger pieces. It includes very short (generally 1-2 minutes long) video clips as well as lesson plans with documents. Here is how I used it.

• As part of our look at the Nazi ideology and antisemitism I showed Echoes & Reflections video clips from Lesson 2 (Part 1) which consisted of survivors discussing life before the war in Germany and examples of antisemitism. 
• As part of the discussion on Nazi propaganda with emphasis on how Jews represented I showed Echoes & Reflections video clips - Lesson 2 (Part 2) in which survivors talk about their experience with Nazi propaganda. 
• When it came to look at the ghettos I showed Echoes & Reflections video clips - Lesson 4 which includes testimony that provides a very thorough look at life in the ghettos. In addition I used the Echoes & Reflections student handouts on "The Ghettos" & "Excerpts from The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak". There are questions that can be used to guide discussion. 
• Finally, in studying Liberation I used Echoes & Reflections video clips - Lesson 8 which covers the topics of liberation and also the DP camps.

 These weren't the only topics I covered but they were the ones in which the Echoes and Reflections curriculum proved most useful to meet my needs. I won't let this happen next year. The Holocaust will be covered in greater detail over a longer time frame. However I still plan to use the Echoes and Reflections curriculum extensively. It is comforting to know that if I leave myself short on time that I can fall back on the lessons from the curriculum. If you get the chance to attend a training or just purchase the curriculum do it without hesitation. It is thorough in its coverage of the Holocaust but can be easily used in small segments to meet your needs.

Countries that Own Glass Houses Shouldn’t Throw Rocks

Having just finished the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Dr.Will Meinecke’s book Nazi Ideology and the Holocaust (available for free download by clicking here), I was disturbed, but not surprised, by the Nazi’s plan for euthanasia and sterilization of the "undesirable" European population.

“From 1939 to 1945, an estimated 200,000 Germans deemed ‘unworthy of life’ were killed in the various ‘euthanasia’ programs.” These programs included Operation T-4 and Operation 14 f13. Specific groups were also targeted by the Nazis for sterilization, including the “Rhineland Bastards” or children of African soldiers and German women. The Gestapo actually set up Special Commission #3 and between 1935 to 1937, they found, identified, and sterilized (in secret) some 385 children of these mixed raced couples. In July of 1933, a law was passed by the Nazis called the “Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring."

If you were born with certain disorders that German scientists believed were inherited you were to be sterilized. These disorders included mental illness, feeblemindedness, serious physical abnormalities, seizures, blindness and deafness, alcoholism, and Huntington’s Chorea. The law was very specific about the possibility of passing on a congenital disease to an offspring. If there was a chance of this happening the state would have you sterilized. Period. After 1934, the Nazis sterilized between 300,000 to 400,000 disabled people and through this law they were also able to sterilize Roma or gypsies. Mind boggling numbers – yes? However, the Nazis were not the only society culpable of this practice. It was going on in America as well.

In the early 20^th century, some 15,000 people were sterilized in over three dozen states on the grounds of eugenics. In 1927, even the Supreme Court upheld the practice in the case of criminal punishment. But Americans were also sterilized for being poor, a prisoner, or feebleminded. Sound familiar? During the Depression over 30,000 were sterilized and most were in mental asylums or state institutions. The justification for this practice was the cost to taxpayers for institutional care. Remember the infamous propaganda poster? “This genetically ill person will cost our people's community 60,000 marks over his lifetime. Citizens, that is your money.” You probably noticed the word “marks” and figured this was German. But it could just have easily been posted on a street corner in Kansas or Missouri. That’s how widespread the practice of sterilization was in our country.

Sterilization ended in Germany when the Nazis were defeated in 1945 and throughout most of the world it began to disappear. So imagine my surprise and dismay when I woke up last week to my NPR news report at 6:00am and heard that North Carolina’s legislature had decided to compensate eugenics victims from their state. Unbelievably North Carolina continued sterilization until the mid-1970s. Some 7,600 men, women and children were seen by the state’s eugenics board and deemed unable to “improve the caliber of the population” or were seen as a welfare burden on the state. Sound familiar? One girl was sterilized at 14 after the birth of her only son. The board decided she was unfit for parenthood, because she was poor and smelled bad. Many of the North Carolinian victims had the procedure unknowingly and weren’t aware until they tried to have a child later in life. If you ever get a chance to see USHMM’s “Deadly Medicine” the end is very telling. Video clips show victims of Nazi sterilization who were having fertility tests for years before they told their doctors what camps they had been in and who had taken care of them. Only to find they were no longer able to have a child.

As a library media specialist in a middle school, I teach propaganda lessons with my 8^th grade students in the context of the Nazis and World War II. I added American propaganda this year as well to remind students of our county’s use of fear and euphemisms in persuading our citizens. However, next year when I teach the persuasive technique of “citing statistics” I will show the above information side by side so students can see the alarming parallels. Only in America, sterilization went on for another 30 years and paying the live victims $50,000 now as an apology won’t erase the crime committed on them.

Resources:

• Teaching Resources for eugenics and Deadly Medicine
• Jewish Virtual Library Resources on Euthanasia
  
• “Panel Recommends Paying Eugenics Victims $50,000,” Julie Rose, 10 Jan 2012.
• Excerpt from a 1942 biology text book in Germany discussing racial policy
• USHMM Other Victims booklet - The Handicapped
• Propaganda images promoting racial policy and euthanasia
• Race and Membership in American History: The Eugenics Movement
  

New Lesson Plans

The Midwest Center for Holocaust Education is pleased to announce the addition of several new lesson plans to it's website at www.mchekc.org/lessonplans. Written by members of the Isak Federman Holocaust Teaching Cadre, these lessons explore relevant connections between the Holocaust and at least one other modern genocide. The lessons added to date are:

·         Bystanders in the Holocaust and Rwanda
This lesson explores testimony of bystanders to the Holocaust and the Rwandan Genocide. It encourages students to understand what it means to be a bystander and to refrain from being one in the future.

·         Document Based Question on Resistance in the Holocaust and Rwanda
This document based question explores resistance in both the Holocaust and Rwanda. It is designed to allow students to practice all the necessary DBQ skills while learning about the Holocaust. Approaches to deconstructing the DBQ and utilizing the documents in other settings are explored.

·         Children's Genocide Diaries - Bitton-Jackson and Zlata's Diaries
Utilizing the memoir I Have Lived A Thousand Years (Holocaust) and Zlata's Diary (Bosnia), this lesson plan allows students to analyze and explore the impact of genocide on children.

·         Children's Genocide Diaries - Sierakowiak and Zlata's Diaries
Utilizing The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak (Holocaust) and Zlata's Diary (Bosnia), this lesson plan allows students to analyze and explore the impact of genocide on children.

·         Children of Genocide: Communicating Through Art
This lesson plan helps students analyze art created by children during the Holocaust and the genocide in Darfur.

·         Connecting a Holocaust Memoir Study to Modern Genocides
This lesson plan helps students make relevant connections amongst genocides by utilizing first hand testimony of genocide survivors and witnesses at the conclusion of any Holocaust memoir study.

·         Propaganda in the Holocaust and Rwanda
This unit explores propaganda utilized by a variety of media outlets in both the Holocaust and Rwanda. It was specifically designed to help middle school students learn about the elements of propaganda and their effective use, but has wide applications in high school and history settings.

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.

Teaching Anne Frank and the Holocaust while preparing for assessments

In this day and age of testing, it can be very hard to teach the subjects we are passionate about. This is particularly true teaching middle school in Kansas, where students are given the reading assessment in 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. However, it is important for us as educators to still teach those topics that we feel are essential for students going forth in their education. The Holocaust is one subject I feel this way about.

Most middle school students read The Diary of Anne Frank. In many districts, the story (diary, excerpts or the play) is in the language arts textbook. It is possible to teach the key points of the Holocaust while using Anne Frank's story.

Before reading the story, take a class period to explain the major details of the Holocaust. It is hard for students to understand why the Franks are going into hiding when they don't know what was happening in Europe. It is possible to give an overview in one class period and students will start the story with excellent prior knowledge.

In order to tie the subject in with state tested standards, you can teach your unit on persuasive techniques before teaching Anne Frank, and then discuss Nazi propaganda during the unit.

While reading the story, be sure to use context clues to discuss vocabulary and ask questions which require the students to use inference, again tying the story with state standards.

Anne Frank can be an excellent tool for character study and the elements of character which are tested on the reading assessment. Motivations, character changes, environment changing the characters and character drives are all done very well in this story.

If reading the actual diary, it can be a great chance to discuss author's viewpoint and position. As with all stories, plot structure can be analyzed in this story as well.

Personally, I have found it hard to come to terms with the fact that high stakes tests are going to have to take precedence in our classes. However, I have also come to the realization that I can still teach the things I love while also tying those things to assessment goals. They do not have to be taught independent of each other.

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.