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