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Thank you Commerce Bank and Lakeside Advisors, Inc. for supporting the Holocaust Center!

Teacher Response

We always love to hear feedback from teachers and students who use the teaching trunks and hear from members of our Speakers Bureau!  Today we heard this from one of our  teachers:

"I just wanted to share how thankful we, at West Valley Junior High, are that we were honored to have Peter as our speaker this morning.  Countless students have shared how powerful his words were today, and that it easily has been the most powerful day of education that they have ever had.  I can easily share their viewpoints.  To connect this day with their reading and study of this time period, has made it come alive in a hugely personal way for my students.

Thank you so very much for providing the education trunk that we have been using in our classes, and for providing these services for teachers.  It has been a very special day here at West Valley Junior High."

- Darcie Jamieson
8th grade Language Arts
West Valley Junior High

New Curriculum!

NEW! 
Curriculum now available for the film

With My Own Eyes: Holocaust. Genocide. Today.

A comprehensive curriculum for the film with maps, transcripts, background information and lessons contributed by three master teachers: 

• Photo Anaylsis - By Branda Anderson, Kamiak High School, Mukilteo
• Genocide Studies Handbook: A Resource Tool for Students - By Lindsey Mutschler, Lake Washington Girls Middle School, Seattle
• Lessons from the Holocaust on the Dangers of Scapegoating - Using "With My Own Eyes": A lesson for Jewish schools - By Nance Adler, The Jewish Day School, Bellevue

Special thanks to 4Culture for supporting this project! 

TDHS Visits the Holocaust Center!

On Sunday, students (and their parents) from the 6th grade class at Temple De Hirsch Sinai visited the Holocaust Center!  During their time at the center, they had the chance to interact with Steve Alder, a child survivor of the Holocaust and member of our Speakers Bureau, and to examine our collection of artifacts with the help of our artifacts intern, Mark Mulder.  Personal and hands-on learning about the Holocaust at its finest!  See more photos!

 

    

George Elbaum Blog

One of our Speakers Bureau members, George Elbaum, has a blog to share his travels and teachings with his book, Neither Yesterdays Nor Tomorrows.  The blog includes pictures from the sessions, as well as feedback he has received from the attendees.  Check out the blog here http://neitheryesterdays.com/

"Since my goal at these events is to educate and to “make a difference”, I usually speak to student audiences because they are still open to new information and ideas while the minds of most adults are already set, especially on politically, culturally, or religiously sensitive subjects. Regarding the Holocaust, my personal experience with adults is that this mindset is equally strong at both extremes, ranging from those who know it well because they experienced it first hand to its deniers who even try to convince the survivors that it didn’t happen."   -- George Elbaum


"Throughout your speech you stated that the only reason you survived was sheer luck, but I believe that it was destined to be that way. It was your destiny to survive and eventually one day to tell students just like me about your story, so we may know that no matter how bad things get, we should always have faith and be thankful for what we can be thankful for."  -- Student response

Book Talk: Upon the Head of a Goat

Upon the Head of a Goat, by Aranka Seigal

Starting next week, Book Talk will be moving to an every other week schedule.

The Story

Upon the Head of a Goat is the account of Piri, a 9 year old Jewish girl, who is visiting her grandmother in Ukraine when World War II begins. As the Holocaust creeps closer, her life begins to change. Piri's friends turn their backs on her, and her family is forced to move to the Jewish ghetto. Eventually, she is forced onto a cattle car along with the rest of her family, destined for a concentration camp.

This book is unusual in that its focus is not on the concentration camps, but on the experiences and emotions of Piri and her family before they entered the camps. The turmoil, shame, fear and confusion Piri feels aptly illustrate the effects of Nazi discrimination and destruction during the opening of World War II. Upon the Head of a Goat is based on the writer's own experiences as a Holocaust survivor.

Besides Upon the Head of a Goat, Aranka Seigal has written several books about her experiences during the Holocaust, including one describing her experiences in the concentration camps. Upon the Head of a Goat has won several awards, including a 1982 Boston Globe - Horn Book Award for Nonfiction and a 1982 Newbery Honor Award. It has been published in over 7 languages. Upon the Head of a Goat is aimed at Grades 6-8.

Resources

Check out this lesson plan for Middle School and High School students, which includes daily lessons, activities, multiple choice and short essay questions, homework and tests. Also check out this handout, identifying the story's main characters and providing a map of the areas the story takes place in. In addition, explore these discussion questions from Web English Teacher.

About Me

Leah Kuriluk is the Holocaust Education Resource Center's Library Intern. She is currently pursuing her Masters in Library and Information Science and a certificate of Information Management at Wayne State University. Leah also has a BA in History.

New Books at the Center!

Today we're excited to share that we have some new books in the center!  They include The Sketchbook from Auschwitz (above) and Beautiful Souls (below).  The following is an excerpt from the introduction to Sketchbook from Auschwitz:

Aside from the Sketchbook, no drawings fo the Holocaust itself are extant.  It is the only art work showing the fate of the Jews deported to the camp from the moment of their arrival at the ramp to the killing of the selected persons in the gas chambers.  This makes it a unique illustrative source. ... There can be no doubt... as to the artist's talent and courage.  He endangered himself by committing details fo camp life to paper; when it became clear that he coudl not go on drawing, he concealed his work. The fact that the last scene remains unifished may be a hint that the Sketchbook was hidden in dramatic circumstances.

An excerpt from the front flap of Beautiful Souls: 

Fifty years after Hannah Arendt examined the dynamics of conformity in her seminal account of the Eichmann trial, Beautiful Souls explores the flip side of the banality of evil, mapping out what impels oridnary people to defy the sway of authority and convention.  Through the dramatic stories fo unlikely resisters who feel the flicker of conscience when thrust into morally compromising situations, Eyal Press shows that the boldest acts of dissent are often carried out not by radicals seeking to overthrow the system but by true believers who cling with unusal fierceness to their convictions.





Book Talk: I Never Saw Another Butterfly

I Never Saw Another Butterfly

The Story

I Never Saw Another Butterfly is a moving collection of children's poems and drawings from the Terezin Concentration Camp. In all, 15,000 children under the age of fifteen entered the camp. Less than 100 survived. These drawings and poems were created by the children of Terezin, and through them we see haunting reminders of life in the ghetto. These drawings are all that are left of these children, most of who died before the war was over. 

I Never Saw Another Butterfly allows students to connect with the children of the Holocaust, without being too graphic or adult. It shows the holocaust to students through the eyes of children their own age, allowing them to better understand what the children of Terezin experienced by speaking through their drawings and poetry.

This resource is suitable for a wide range of grade levels, primarily 5-8.

Resources Available

I Never Saw Another Butterfly is a popular teaching tool for Holocaust education, with educational resources widely available. Check out this collection of activities based on the book and play, as well as this guide with activities for several grade ranges. Although many of these resources contain activities and guides for the play, they also incorporate lessons on the book. For resources exclusively devoted to the book, check out this website, designed by a teacher as an accompaniment to I Never Saw Another Butterfly, and this Holocaust education worksheet packet, which contains a worksheet with questions on the book to ask before and after reading.

About Me 

Leah Kuriluk is the Holocaust Education Resource Center's Library Intern. She is currently pursuing her Masters in Library and Information Science and a Certificate of Information Management at Wayne State University. Leah also has a BA in History.

New to our Library!

Unbroken Spirit: a heroic story of faith, courage, and survival, by Yosef Mendelovich. 

"In the Latvian capital Riga after the Second World War, a Jewish boy in the Soviet Union grew up in an atmosphere pervaded by anti-Semitism. After his father was arrested during one of the waves of anti-Semitic persecutions that swept through the Soviet Union his mother died of heartbreak.

That tragedy heralded the beginning of something better. Powerfully drawn into Jewish life, at age 19 he founded an underground organization that struggled for Jewish rights—including the right to study Torah.

At age 22, after his attempts to receive an exit visa were repeatedly refused, he participated in an attempt to hijack a plane to the West— which led to his arrest and sentence of 12 years. This struggle opened the first cracks in the Iron Curtain and eventually brought about the mass exodus of Soviet Jewry and its dramatic aliya to Israel."

-Gefen Publishing

Book Talk: Yossel

Yossel, by Joe Kubert

The story

Yossel is a fictional graphic novel account of a young artist in Poland who is forced to move to the Warsaw ghetto during World War II. He trades his artistic abilities for food and security from the guards, surviving by drawing portraits and comics for them. Eventually, he meets a man from one of the camps, who describes the atrocities happening in the camps. The story ends with the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Although fictional, Yossel's story is based on first person accounts of the Holocaust, as well as letters and documents of family members and survivors. 

Part of what makes this story so compelling is the art. Kubert intentionally uses rough pencil sketches, as if they were drawn by Yossel himself, to create a dark and gritty atmosphere. This book brings the Holocaust to life in an unconventional manner, using strong visuals and narration to convey the tension and dread of living in the Warsaw Ghetto during the war. 

Yossel is considered one of the most influential graphic novels ever written, and has received a lot of critical attention.  It won a spot on Library Thing’s 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written, and received two nominations for the Harvey Award. Yossel has also been nominated for the Eisner Award.

Resources Available

While there are few teaching resources that concentrate specifically on Yossel, there are many that provide guidance for incorporating graphic novels into lessons on literature, politics, sociology and more. Check out the Secret Origin of Good Readers, which includes comics-related activities for the classroom, and this Visual Rhetoric and Visual Literacy Handout from Duke University. In addition, a lesson plan for graphic novels is available from Barker College. Finally, there are many books on teaching and interpreting graphic novels, including Comics & Culture: Analytical and Theoretical Approaches to Comics, by Ann Magnussen,  and Graphic Storytelling and the Visual Narrative, by Will Eisner. Depending on where you are located, these may be available through your local or school library.

About Me 

Leah Kuriluk is the Holocaust Education Resource Center's Library Intern. She is currently pursuing her Masters in Library and Information Science and a certificate of Information Management at Wayne State University. Leah also has a BA in History.

Rare Color Photos of Nazi-Occupied Poland

Life Magazine recently published an article with photographs from the 1930s and '40s by German photographer Hugo Jaeger.  Check out these beautiful -- and haunting, knwoing the eventaul fate of those photographed -- color photos from Nazi-Occupied Poland, here:

The Brink of Oblivion: Inside Nazi-Occupied Poland, 1939-1940

A preview of photos from the article:

                                        

                                                       

Edwin Black: A Teacher's Response

Thank you to everyone who came out to hear our guest speaker, Ediwn Black, at either our luncheon, the CLE lecture for lawyers, or at the public lecture at Temple De Hirsch Sinai on Tuesday!  After the event on Tuesday, we asked teachers what stood out to the most from the lecture and how/if it might effect their teaching.  The following are two examples of responses we received:

Edwin Black’s scholarship was most impressive, and although I had some vague idea that IBM had been involved with the German government, I really had no idea until hearing him speak just how closely IBM worked with the Nazis and how clear the facts are that top executives at IBM were knowledgeable and fully implicated in the ways the company actively played a role in the Holocaust.  The enlargements of several critical documents that he provided proved the extent of the role that IBM played and the fact that everything was not simply known but managed from the top executives including the president and chief counsel of the company.

Mr. Black showed how IBM’s technological innovation and the machinery it developed in the 1930s to read punch cards (the mechanical forerunner to the modern computer) were vital to the Nazis’ program for genocide.  I had a rough sense of how punch cards and those old machines worked, but I did not realize until Mr. Black explained it that IBM had created literally millions of cards over a few years that would be used to collect every type of information imaginable about Jews, based on census data.  What struck me with great force was the amount of information shared between the Nazis and IBM during the entire period of the genocide that showed just how much contact that company had with the daily business of the Holocaust, right down to the fact that each concentration camp had an IBM office with a punch card machine that had to be continually supplied with pre-printed punch card made by IBM.  The evidence Mr. Black offered overwhelmingly showed that IBM did not simply sell a few machines to the German government without knowledge of their purpose and use, but rather that IBM was involved in every step of the process of the Holocaust and that the company played the single key role in making the process so horribly efficient.

In addition to the solid chain of damning evidence of IBM’s role in the Holocaust, the other point that Mr. Black made that was both memorable and directly tied to events taking place today was the fact that IBM’s motive does not really seem to have been anti-Semitism.  Instead, it seems clear that IBM executives were just doing what business leaders always do—focus on profits and keeping shareholders happy.  Helping a murderous regime carry out its work was not really a moral concern at all but simply a smart business deal.  This is significant because it should give all of us today pause for thought about the way multinational corporation are involved today all over the world in business endeavors that bring harm to citizens in many countries, and the fact that governments tend not to hold businesses accountable when profits are up and people are happy.  We should build on Mr. Black’s work about IBM more than half a century ago to think about companies in our own time such as GE, Apple, and many others who make products that are sold to regimes abroad and used against innocent civilians.

Stephen E. Retz

History Department Chair

Seattle Academy

---

When my students study the Holocuast, they often have difficulty understanding why the genocide happened.  They reason that people must have been different "then," more bigoted, less tolerant, more supportive of extremist views.  They believe our democratic institutions would prevent genocide here in the United States and, besides, the people would never allow it.

I anticipate such student reactions and offer information that forces students to consider whether genocide and genocidal policies "just happen" as a result of bigotry, or whether they're exacerbated by self-interested stakeholders.  Edwin Black's investigation into IBM's assistance to Nazi genocide -- indeed, IBM streamlined the process so successfully one wonders whether the Nazis could have achieved such horrific success without IBM's help -- provides documentary proof of a U.S. corporation's complicity in the Holocaust and strongly suggests the complicity of the U.S. government who ignored IBM's actions.  I can have my students access the long-hidden documents Black unearths and ask some hard questions about who shares responsibility for the Holocaust, and about what citizens can and should do to prevent business-as-usual from supporting another genocide.

Susan Andrews-Salmond

Highline High School

---

I thought the presentation was absolutely riveting.  I remember hearing about the book at the time it was written, but just recalled that IBM computers helped to organize the timing of the trains to the concentration camps; I did not know that the entire process of census and identification was included.  Although motion pictures too often tend to depict business as cartoonishly evil (I took our daughter to see The Lorax, and hated the message it conveyed), I am gratified to hear that IBM will be made into a major motion picture, as it is a terrific story.

I teach US and World History, Government, and Social Justice.  It is heaven sent material for the Social Justice course.  I was surprised to learn that there was apparently no motive other than profit; I would have thought anti-Semitism would have played a role, or pro-Nazi/Bund sentiments.   I can very much see doing a unit on the issue, and offering extra credit for going to see the movie, if and when it comes out, or even using the movie in class.

My personal view of teaching history is that we should teach the bad and the good, and take into account what they knew then, which often is not the same as what we know now.  Still, the idea of doing business with a war machine that is trampling Europe, and traveling to Berlin, capital of a country we are at war with, in May 1942, leaves me little room to have sympathy with IBM based on the ‘what they knew then’ measuring stick.  

I did google “IBM and the Holocaust lesson plans,” and came up empty.  If the author is as passionate as he is, and is going to be as wealthy as he will be with the movie deal, he should consider hiring an educator or two to design some on-line lesson plans to encourage the use of this dramatic and compelling piece of history in classrooms nationwide.

Bob Fretz
King's High School, Shoreline

New Reading List

Award Winning Holocaust Books 

Check out our new Award Winners Reading List at the WSHERC Library. Curl up with a good read today!

Book Talk: Parallel Journeys

Parallel Journeys, by Eleanor H. Ayer

When people think of Holocaust accounts, most think of Anne Frank and her journey. However, there are many others whose accounts of their lives during the war provide a moving portrait of the war's devastation and reach. Through a recurring feature called "Book Talk," I'd like to highlight what I think are other interesting and inspiring books on the Holocaust that are available through our library, starting with Parallel Journeys.

The Story

Parallel Journeys is a nonfiction book that contrasts a first person account of Helen Waterford, a young Jewish woman trying to survive the Holocaust, with that of Alfons Heck, a boy who rises through the ranks of the Hitler Youth. Through their personal stories, they illustrate World War II's destructive effects from two different perspectives.

Helen was a university student, recently married, living in Frankfurt, Germany. Because of the new laws preventing many Jews from working, her husband lost his job, and Helen was kicked out of the university. Eventually, they were forced to flee Germany for Amsterdam, Holland, where their daughter was born. When the Nazis invaded Holland, they went into hiding, only to be discovered and sent to Auschwitz. Ultimately, Helen survived, and began the long trek back to Amsterdam to reclaim her life and reunite with her daughter. Through her first person account, Helen provides a window into the horrors of the war, and the suffering of its victims.

Alfons was a very young boy, indoctrinated into the Nazi's Hitler Youth at age 10 in Wittlich, Germany. By age 15, he was an expert glider pilot in the war, eventually achieving the highest rank within the Hitler Youth and commanding 6,000 troops at only 16. Throughout his story, Alfons sees the death and destruction of the war, and he eventually watches as his former bosses go on trial at Nuremberg. His story explains how children were particularly vulnerable to Nazi indoctrination.  

Through this book, the audience becomes aware of two distinct perspectives of the war, and the toll it took on both Helen and Alfons. The book alternates chapters of Helen's and Alfon's experiences to better compare and contrast their lives, as they progress through the war on two different paths. Through Helen and Alfons, the book explores themes of conformity and obedience, as well as genocide, nationalism and human behavior. 

Parallel Journeys has won a number of awards, including ALA Best Books for Young Adults, CBC/NCSS Notable Children's Book in Social Studies, and the Christopher Award. It is aimed at children, grades 7+.

Resources Available

There are a number of resources available to supplement Parallel Journeys, including a discussion guide from its publisher, Scholastic, and a lesson plan, available from South Carolina. A study guide, explaining important terms, people and concepts is available from Brandon Wang. Additional resources concerning both Helen and Alfons' stories are available from the Washington State Holocaust Library's collection.

About Me

Leah Kuriluk is the Holocaust Education Resource Center's Library Intern. She is currently pursuing her Masters in Library and Information Science and a certificate of Information Management at Wayne State University. Leah also has a BA in History.