A lesson plan for the Grade
XI, XII and English speakers
Here is a collection of quotes to stimulate thought and discussion
about various aspects of the Holocaust. I imagine the quotes being
used with good Grade XI., XII and English Speakers' class. Lesson Plan 1 - Reading, group work,
presentation 1. Divide into groups. Give each group a
quote or two to work on and then they read and present to the class. Allow
discussion. You could create some general leading questions for all
groups to focus on. Here are some ideas.
What is the main idea expressed in the quote? Why do you think the
person who is quoted, said the things he/she said. How does the quote make
you feel? Does your quote contain an opinion. If so, do you agree with
that person? Can you relate anything in the quote to your life personally/
to life today/ to the society you live in? What questions remain in your
mind/ are left unanswered/ after reading the quote?
Lesson Plan 2- Personal writing 2. Make
quite a few copies of the quotes, cut them up and allow pupils to browse
through them for 15 minutes.Then they must choose one quote to focus
on in writing a personal response.
They can relate to any of questions below in their response.
What is the main idea expressed in the quote? Why do you think the
person who is quoted, said the things he/she said. How does the quote make
you feel? Does your quote contain an opinion. If so, do you agree with
that person? Can you relate anything in the quote to your life personally/
to life today/ to the society you live in? What questions remain in your
mind/ are left unanswered/ after reading the quote? What would you like to
say to the person quoted or mentioned?
NOTE: If the quotes are too difficult to be
dealt with without help, the teacher may read some of the difficult ones
aloud, providing the necessary vocabulary. Then the class could be broken
up into groups or the quotes handed out for the writing activity.
"Don't for a minute think that indoctrinating wide-eyed school
children with the lies and slanders against Germans, Slavs, Catholics,
Christians, Europeans, and whites in general isn't a primary purpose of
the Holocaust-mongers. ... The Holocaust is a religion. Its
underpinnings in the realm of historical fact are non-existent -- no
Hitler order, no plan, no budget, no gas chambers, no autopsies of
gassed victims, no bones, no ashes, no skulls, no nothing.... Secondly,
it's a religion for losers.... Suffice it to say that the rise of
religions such as this generally coincides with the decline and fall of
nations which tolerate them." Mark Weber IHR Newsletter, May
1989.
"In Germany, they first came for the
communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't
speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics and I
didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic.
Then they came for me -- and by that time
there was nobody left to speak up." -Martin Niem?ller
"We who lived in concentration camps can remember the
men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their
last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer
sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing:
the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set
of circumstances - to choose one's own way." -Victor Frankl
While the Einsatzgruppen murdered Jews in the Soviet Union, Hitler
constructed death camps to efficiently murder massive numbers of Jews in
the rest of Europe. Hitler gave Himmler the task of creating the death
camps. Six major annihilation camps were established in what is now
Poland: Auschwitz, Chelmno, Belzec, Sobib?r, Majdanek, and Treblinka.
Trains transported Jews, first from the Polish ghettos, and then from
France, Belgium, Holland, Norway, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Denmark,
Greece, and Hungary. Each day, gas chambers killed thousands of Jews,
whose bodies were then burned in huge crematoria and in open pits.
Himmler's perverted logic twisted these unbelievable atrocities into
acts of greatness:
Most of you know what it means when
100 corpses are lying side by side, or 500 or 1000. To have stuck it
out and at the same time--apart from exceptions caused by human
weakness--to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us
hard. This is a page of glory in our history which has never been
written and is never to be written.... Himmler
Rescuers possessed an inner core of unshakable values and beliefs.
Social psychologist Dr. Eva Fogelman describes Hitler's twelve-year
reign in Conscience and Courage: It was a reign
which, nearly half a century later, still challenges our understanding.
Evil was rewarded and good acts were punished. Bullies were aggrandized
and the meek trampled. In this mad world, most people lost their
bearings. Fear disoriented them, and self-protection blinded them. A
few, however, did not lose their way. A few took their direction from
their own moral compass.
Personal accounts by survivors of the Holocaust are powerful. They
connect us, person to person, with an era in history that is difficult,
yet necessary, to comprehend. Survivor testimony translates the
countless unimaginable victims into a single person's feelings and
thoughts.
There are 350,000 survivors of the Holocaust alive
today... There are 350,000 experts who just want to be useful with
the remainder of their lives. Please listen to the words and the echoes
and the ghosts. And please teach this in your schools. --Steven
Spielberg, Academy Award acceptance speech
Exile: Flight in and through Europe
Many survivors either sensed the danger awaiting
them if they stayed in their hometowns accross Europe, or were forced to
leave their homes. For those who left, it often meant that they would
see their friends and relatives for the last time. Life in exile was
full of fear and uncertainty. It consisted of dependence on the charity
of strangers and a lot of luck. One had to keep one step ahead of Nazi
hunger for Lebensraum. So, on August 10, one day before my
birthday, my father and my sister--I had an older sister who did not go
to England because she was too old to go as a child and she would have
had to go as a servant and my father didn't want that--we went to the
railroad station in Berlin. There were maybe 50 or 100, I don't know the
number, other children. All were Jewish. I think we were the only half
Jews on this Kindertransport saying goodbye to their parents.
--Helga Waldman
The chances of surviving the war in any of the Nazi death,
concentration, or labor camps were slim to none. Those who did survive
are the sole witnesses to the horrors put into action behind the barbed
electric fences surrounding Nazi compounds. Their stories remind us of
the atrocities humans are capable of when led to believe those who are
different from them are sub-human or otherwise undesirable.
There are some hopeful and heart-warming stories survivors tell of
rescue at the hands of non-victims. Whether officially recognized as
righteous gentiles or not, these brave souls risked their lives and the
lives of their families in order to preserve a sense of humanity in the
brutal chaos caused by Nazi persecution. Many stories of rescue will
never be told. Their lives (my parents) were saved
by the gentile farmers in that town. There were some very righteous
non-Jewish people who had the courage to speak up. Many, many of
them...Many of them lost their lives...Sometimes not enough is written
about those courageuous non-Jews. --Ernest Dr?cker
Quotes mostly taken from http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/
