Teaching the Holocaust & Genocide

Incomprehensible

Human Reason and Science

Can people ever live together with people of

other cultures and persuasions?

Knowledge Quiz:1. Was Hitler part Jewish?

2. What did the Jews do to bring on what happened to them?

3. Who else besides Jews did the regime go after?

4. What were the two main methods of mass murder used by the Nazis?

5.  What groups/social categories besides victims were involved in the Holocaust?

REICH WAR AGAINST THE JEWS

More than 2,000 anti-Jewish measures were put into effect in Germany under Nazi rule.

Small steps over years

FOUR PART PROCESS TO SOLVE THE JEWISH QUESTION

1. Definition: 1920s -1935 Define a Jew (legal and propaganda)

2. Expropriation: Transfer Wealth: 1933 – 1945Aryanize the economy (in Germany)Steal their possessions Use their slave labor

3. Segregation: Social and Geographic: 1935-1945 Race Mixing and Segregation Laws

Identify and Isolate the VictimsConcentrate them into Ghettos

4. Extermination: 1941-1945Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing unitsKilling Center Concentration Camps

Exercise 1: How do you take a society…technologically advancedworld power with coloniesindustrializedliberaltolerant of diversitya cosmopolitan western civilizationwith a highly educated population

And turn it pretty quickly into one poised to discriminate, cheat, rob, humiliate and murder hundred’s of thousands of its citizens?

Who Was Involved in the Holocaust: The Perpetrators

Different Levels of Perpetrators

Top Level Leaders- political power, policy makers, initiators, true believers (Hitler, Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, Goring, Goebbels, etc.)

Front Line Killers – the ordinary men who did the murdering

Accomplices - Support bureaucrats & businessmen

Bystanders – silent or indifferent

What’s important here for teaching?

Why Did They Do It?

Was it …Biology?????

Personality?????Society?????

Anti-Semiism/Hate Propaganda In-group vs. Out-group War and patriotism Military culture Career advancement Peer pressure/conformity Obedience/ following orders Social norms Alcohol Greed

Not personality or mental illness

HOLOCAUST IS TIME OF

HATRED

AND

AVARICE!!!

STANLEY MILGRAM QUOTE"The social psychology of this century reveals a major lesson: often it is not so much the kind of person a man is as the kind of situation in which he finds himself that determines how he will act." (1974)

Ethical Issue

Where is the line that you won’t cross?

What are your values?

Do you have a choice?

Who Was Involved in the Holocaust: The Bystanders

What did they see?

Discrimination Speeches Lots of restricting laws Book burnings, boycotts Loosing their jobs Possessions taken away Being marched away Wearing the yellow star Being harassed Empty homes Ghettoes in the town, village, city Nearby concentration camps

Being shot into mass graves Slave laborers

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is

for good men to do nothing.” 

Edmund Burke

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” Elie Wiesel

“Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil. The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.” Elie Wiesel

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” Elie Wiesel

“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Ethical Issue

Where is the line that you won’t cross?

What are your values?

When do I speak out?About what do I speak out?

Who Was Involved in the Holocaust: Resisters and Rescuers

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed people

can change the world: indeed it's the only thing that ever has!”

- Margaret Mead

A boat used by Danish fishermen to transport Danish Jews to safety in Sweden

Large SmallScale Scale

National GroupIndividual

Categories of Rescue

http://www.jfr.org/site/PageServer

Rescuer info and reunion films

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDW_Q4TEPHc&feature=youtu.be

Like ordinary men who were perpetrators, but made the more courageous choice

Why Courageous???

Ordinary individuals who made the choice to rescue

Irena Sendler

Dervis Korkut

Alexander Roslan with Jacob and David Gutgelt

Pastor André Trocmé, wife Magda and children.

O

Otto Rasch

Ernst Szymanowski

Raoul Wallenberg

Sempo Sugihara

STANLEY MILGRAM QUOTE

"It may be that we are puppets--puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation." (1974)

Ethical Issue

Where is the line that you won’t cross?

What are your values?

You do have a choice.

The Holocaust Which role do you

most often play? Victim, Perpetrator, Bystander, or Rescuer?

Which role would you like to play?

What can you do to become the person you want to be?

Why Teach the Holocaust

Values Clarification Moral Development Gangs/Violence Peer Pressure Courage Good and Evil Anti-Hate/Prejudice

Civic Engagement (STAND http://www.standnow.org/ )

Social Action Active Citizenship Fragility of Democracy Self Worth Identity Leadership

History, Standards and

The Other Lessons: