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

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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

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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.

What is your connection to the Holocaust?

First of all, we would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who either attend or helped with the luncheon yesterday!  It was a great success!

At our luncheon, we asked people to write down how they were connected to the Holocaust.  Below are just a few of the many diverse responses we received:

• My husband lost his entire family in the Holocaust.  I now help him tell the history of who and how this happened -- to educate the generations.
• I studied the Holocaust with my students.  I am drawn, with empathy and compassion, to that time.
• I have several friends whose families were living during the Holocaust.  My friend, George, left Czech. in 1939 and is here today.
• I get to work firsthand with the Speakers Bureau at the Holocaust
• I can think of 6 x 10^6 reasons...
• My Aunt Rivka Almeleh Avzavadel, sister of my father, "Pinky" Pirikas Almeleh, was taken by the Nazis from "Rhodos" -- the Island of Rhodes in the Greek Isles, in 1944.  I never knew my Aunt.
• Many were left behind.  I am grateful to be alive and to tell the story of my brave ancestors.  Both of my parents escaped, searately, and came to the US in 1938 from Germany.
• My grandmother's family, from Poland, were killed, as were my grandfather's parents. My husband also lost many family members.
• I am a survivor
• My mother, uncle, and grandmother were members of la Resistance in Paris and rescuers..
• I was a student of the Holocaust, and today I teach my students about this history.
• My father was in the Norwegian Resistance movement working to help Jews across to Sweden when the Nazis took over his country.
• I am a Jew and a human being
• I donated through my youth Mitzfah fund because I felt that they don't teach this in school.
• Those who survived and those who didn't are in my heart
• I teach my MS students about genocide and the Holocaust. Then my students teach the world!
• I lead tours to Rwanda
• Both my parents survived
• I am on the Board of the Center, and work for equality in my workplace for people of all races, gender, religion, and other areas of diversity.
• I was touched by a speaker!

Tattooed Remembrance: "Proudly Bearing Elders' Scars, Their Skin Says 'Never Forget'"

In a recent article from the New York Times, relatives of Holocaust survivors are sparking controversy by tattooing themselves with the number branded on the survivors in Auschwitz.  While many are shocked and appalled by this new phenomenon, those who have done it explain that it's a way "to live the mantra 'Never forget.'"

To read the full article, click here.


We received the following response from Ray B.:

I've had this thought myself several times. Not sure how Bubbie and Zadie would have felt about this -- I get the impression that they wouldn't have condoned it, that they wanted us to move on. I can imagine Zadie's horror seeing one of his grandchildren's bodies tattooed like this.

However, I think a tattoo like this could speak to more than Auschwitz memory. It would be a constant reminder to treat people with empathy and respect. It could encourage the wearer to always be critical of the increasingly disembodied and industrialized ways humans are treated now.

Thank goodness we have traded work camp labour and killing for Google analytics, but in a lot of ways that tradition of converting human lives to numbers continues. In 70+ years we have moved from labour camps and mass killing to repressing a new group of people -- only now we pay them $1.25/hour and say we are doing them a favour. Those unseen factory workers are the new numbers.

Interesting article, thanks.  – Ray B.

Donor Spotlight!

Thank you Davis Wright Tremain and Alphagraphics for being sponsors of the 2012 Voices for Humanity Luncheon.

Register Now - October 15, 2012 at the Westin Seattle.