Accordions - New Artifacts

The donation of two accordions bring musical instruments to our collection. Both instruments were found on the ground at Dachau/Kaufering by General P. when he went in with the 101st Division. They were played by prisoners to entertain the guards, thereby keeping them alive. The General brought them home to Seattle to be played by his musical family.

The small accordion is a 25 key 32 button Sibylla made in Germany in the late 1930's. The celluloid grill is a lovely cutout design. Its light weight would have made it easy for a prisoner with little strength to play.

The larger accordion (pictured above) is a German Hohner with 80 buttons and 34 keys. It is a bit heavier in weight, and is the kind of instrument used to play "folk music".

Both instruments need work before they can be used, but it was a special thrill to hear the sounds that came from these 70 year old accordions that had so many stories they could tell.

An Open Letter from a Teacher in Reardan

Schools today are financially limited in what types of outside materials they bring into their classrooms for their students. Our school in Reardan is no exception.

I wanted to do something with the Holocaust in my English classroom and the Holocaust Center provided the perfect opportunity for me to propose the unit to my school principal. The Writing contest and various articles and series found in the Seattle Times were enough to convince the principal that this program would benefit students in academic content and personal growth and development.

Over the past 4 years, I have utilized Ms. Kennedy and the Holocaust Center to help fill the holes in my Holocaust curriculum and to find ways to stimulate students. From the trunks, the Everyday Objects collections and lesson plans and the speakers bureau students are going beyond learning. So many of my students ask "how" and "why". When they have a chance to make use of the support from the Holocaust Center they gain a larger picture of the world in which they live.

We owe a thank you to the many donors who make the teaching trunks possible. That first year I reserved the teaching trunks and watched my students' interest magnify substantially as they were able to find history beyond the text book.

My students are influenced beyond measure when the speakers and Holocaust survivors have come into our school. Watching them connect and realize that they have a responsibility to share what they know both verbally and through action is a once in a lifetime opportunity for a teacher.

I have had the privilege to take a group of students to Washington DC these last 3 years and because of the Holocaust Center a must stop for my students is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. This year, I had 6 girls, hold hands and pray in the Hall of Remembrance for those taken unjustly, for those who fought to free them, and for those left remembering. They lit a candle under the Auschwitz camp and when I asked them why there...they replied that one of our Speakers, Noemi Ban had loved ones who were taken from her at Auschwitz and they thought about them and Noemi as they progressed through the museum.

Upon leaving the museum, one student from another school said the Holocaust was too depressing to think about. My student replied that it was important to learn from the past and that the museum's purpose was not to make us feel bad but rather remind us that our actions, from little to large can impact the future significantly.

For students looking into the eyes of strong individuals who share their stories, the horror of the Holocaust is not only an event happening across the globe before their lifetime, these atrocities become real and the students a vessel for change. Students become our future and with the help and support of the Holocaust Center they will speak out, they will have a chance to make the right choice and they will never forget. Thank you.

Kristy Koch, Teacher, Reardan Middle School, Reardan

The Jewish Day School, Bellevue

4th grade students in Nance Adler's class at the Jewish Day School studied and researched Jewish partisans during the Holocaust. For their individual projects on Jewish heroes, five of the students chose partisans.

"The kids love learning about the Partisans and it has added a wonderful new aspect to their study of Jewish Heroes," writes Nance Adler.

Nance has attended several professional development programs through the Holocaust Center, including one in January 2011 that focused on Jewish partisans. This particular seminar was offered in conjunction with the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation and Nance encouraged her students to use materials and biographies of partisans from their website.

The culmination of the Jewish Heroes unit was a Heroes Museum.

One student made a mailbox and had letters to and from Partisan Sonia Orbuch with questions to her about her life and then her answers back.

"The classes that came through our museum, as well as parents and other teachers, were really impressed with what the partisans did and for many of them this was the first time that they had heard of them."

The Speakers Bureau is now using Skype!

The Holocaust Center is turning to technology to expand the reach of the Speakers Bureau! This includes using programs like Skype, a software application that allows users to make voice/video calls over the internet. Skype is a great way for speakers to share stories with a broader audience, without having to confront the difficulties of travel. This will be an important resource as time goes on and fewer speakers are able to travel beyond the borders of their home towns.

Armed with a laptop and speakers, Center staff conducted the first Skype engagement in WSHERC history with speaker Magda Schaloum. Typically, Magda's engagements do not venture outside the greater Seattle area. Therefore, when a school in Moses Lake, Washington requested Magda as a speaker, the Center saw a perfect opportunity to test Skype and evaluate its viability as part of the Speakers Bureau.

Jessica Merritt's 11th/12th graders at Columbia Basin Secondary School in Moses Lake were eager participants. Overall, both participants and speaker called the engagement a success. "It was wonderful to hear Magda's story...and great that we were able to use Skype," said Ms. Merritt. "I really think this is something the center should continue to utilize so schools on the eastern side of the state can benefit from the survivors' presentations."

The Center hopes that Skype will provide more opportunities for schools across Washington State and the Pacific Northwest to utilize the Speakers Bureau. We will continue to fine tune this process and hope to see more willing participants use Skype in the 2011-2012 school year.

To learn more about the Speakers Bureau, click here.

East Valley Middle School, Spokane

East Valley Middle School in Spokane hosted Holocaust survivor Noemi Ban this past month.

Each year, teacher Julie Scott invites and makes arrangements for Ms. Ban to visit her students and share her story of hope and inspiration.

From the students:
"I was honored to meet her."

"Inspiring."

"She looked just like an ordinary senior citizen on the outside, but it was like opening up a really extraordinary book that has just an ordinary cover."

"She has a softer, grandma like exterior, but seemed really tough on the inside to handle what she went through."

"Extraordinary."

"There should be a movie made about her story because it would get five stars (out of five)."

East Valley Middle School, Spokane

Peter M., Holocaust survivor and member of the Holocaust Center's speakers bureau, spoke to students yesterday at East Valley Middle School in Spokane.

Their teacher, Julie Scott, has long contributed to the Holocaust Center's programs with her knowledge and teaching experience. Julie is an Alfred Lerner Fellow from the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, a Museum fellow from the USHMM, a member of the Holocaust Center's Education Advisory Committee, and a frequent presenter at the Holocaust Center's programs.

Kamiak High School

Following their unit on the Holocaust, the Human Rights Club at Kamiak High School in Mukilteo, WA planned a "teach-in" on partisans during the Holocaust. Not only did they want to build on their own knowledge, they generously organized the event to support the work of the Holocaust Center. The Human Rights Club arranged a showing of the film "Defiance" and moderated a discussion afterward.

Thank you to teacher and Human Rights Club director Shan Oglesby for sharing these photos and for her great work.

Transcription of Nuremberg Medical Trial - Artifact

The Holocaust Center recently acquired an 81-page transcription of the prosecution’s opening statement in the infamous Nuremberg medical case—U.S.A. v. Karl Brandt et al.

The artifact was donated by Elsie Miller, the niece of Eleanor Still, who worked as a stenographer and legal assistant in the Nuremberg Trial. She told her niece that she had taken these legal documents, in order to prove that she was there, that she had heard the atrocities from the men themselves.

U.S.A. v. Karl Brand et al., also known as the "Doctors’ Trial," led to the U.S.-led indictment of 23 doctors and health administrators on four counts:
1. conspiracy to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity,
2. war crimes,
3. crimes against humanity, and
4. membership in a criminal organization (the SS).

The 22 convictions in this case and the particular charges raised had never before been seen. This case set a precedent for modern day bioethics and medical accountability.

The title page of the document is dated December 9, 1946. The content of the 81 pages range from the professional activities of each defendant to the detailed horrors of Nazi experimentation on thousands of Jews, Gypsies, tubercular Poles, and Russian prisoners of war. Considering its age, the documents are in good condition; the pages are yellowing but there is minimal wear.

We gratefully accept artifacts to our growing collection. We especially value and record the stories told to us by the donors. Please contact Dee Simon, the Holocaust Center's Co-Executive Director at delilas@wsherc.org if you have any items that you think would be a good addition to our collection. On view to visitors and used by the Speakers Bureau, these items are used in educational presentations.

Special thanks to Kelly Miller for researching this artifact and writing up this article.

New resources available to borrow from the Holocaust Center's library! For more information, or to borrow books, please email Janna at admin@wsherc.org.

Would you like to help the Holocaust Center AND purchase a riveting read? If so, please first go to http://www.wsherc.org/ and enter the title or key word into the Amazon search box on the homepage. Amazon will donate a percentage of your purchase to the Holocaust Center.

Be sure to check out some of our new and recommended books for the lazy days of summer!

From Paris to Bergen-Belsen, 1944-1945: Memories of a Deported Child
By Jacques Saurel

The Memoirs of Jacques Saurel, a young boy during the Holocaust, follow his involuntary journey from Paris, to Bergen-Belsen, to the infamous “Ghost Train”, on which half of the 2,000 Jews evacuated from Bergen-Belsen died. From this confrontation with horror at such a young age, Jacques conceived one great passion: life itself.

The Girls of Room 28: Friendship, Hope, and Survival in Theresienstadt
By Hannelore Brenner

Brenner, a Berlin-based journalist, focuses on 10 former child survivors, women in their late 70s, who went through the Theresienstadt concentration camp during the Holocaust. The insights of the survivors and stories of the camp's victims are unforgettable and full of poignant humanity, conveyed through letters, photos, diaries and remembrances.

Stella: One Woman's True Tale of Evil, Betrayal, and Survival in Hitler's Germany
By Peter Wyden

What happened in Nazi Germany to turn a fondly remembered childhood Jewish classmate into a serial murderess and tool of the Gestapo? Seeking answers, Peter Wyden traveled back into his own past. Wyden tells the story of Stella Goldschlag, whom he knew as a child, and her journey to noteriety as a "catcher" in wartime Berlin who hunted down hundreds of hidden Jews for the Nazis. The result is this deeply personal work, a true-life Sophie's Choice, unique in Holocaust literature.

The Entertainer and the Dybbuk
By Sid Fleischman

Motivated to create a personal remembrance of the 1.5 million Jewish children killed in the Holocaust, Fleischman pairs Freddie, a struggling, ex-GI ventriloquist, with Avron, the ghost of one such victim, in a short, provocative tale that leavens the tears with laughter. Avron's wisecracking will counterbalance matter-of-fact accounts of Nazi cruelty for young readers, but it's likely to be older ones who will best appreciate the novel's eloquent "inner voice" of conscience, which takes on a definite symbolic cast and the way in which Freddie's public and private identities shift as the story progresses.

Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust
Edited By Sonja Hedgepeth and Rochelle G. Saidel

These essays, describing experiences of forced sex, "sex for survival," prostitution, sterilization, abortion, and general sexual humiliation, add greatly to what is known about the lives of Jewish women during WWII. Much of the content here is a philosophical extension of first-person accounts of sexual torture. The fact that this exhaustive volume represents the first set of essays on the subject written in English underpins a fundamental truth held by the editors: while English-speaking countries are comfortable discussing these horrors, the fates specific to the murdered women and survivors of sexual assault are considered by many to be too shameful for discourse.

A Partisan's Memoir: Woman of the Holocaust
By Faye Schulman

Faye Schulman was a happy teenager learning to become a photgrapher when the Nazis invaded her small town on the Russian-Polish border. She had a loving family, good friends and neighbours, most of whom where soon lost in the horrors of the Holocaust. But Faye survived, and the photographs she took testify to her experiences and teh persecution she witnessed. Decorated for heroism by several governments, Schulman, now in her eighties, tells an extraordinary story not just of survival but of struggle and resistance against oppression.

Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp
By Christopher R. Browning

Employing the rich testimony of almost three hundred survivors of the slave-labor camps of Starachowice, Poland, Christopher R. Browning draws the experience of the Jewish Prisoners, the Nazi authorities, and the neighboring Poles together into a chilling history of a little-known dimension of the Holocaust. Combining harrowing detail and insightful analysis on the Starachowice camps and their role in the Holocaust, Browning’s History is indispensable scholarship and an unforgettable story of survival.

Against Forgetting - Concert by Choral Arts

Against Forgetting: A Concert of Remembrance for Victims of the Holocaust

Do not miss this moving concert of remembrance, featuring works by Gyorgy Sviridov, Herbert Howells and Leonard Bernstein. The program will also include premieres of commissioned works by Giselle Wyers and Eric Barnum and a performance of John Muehleisen's moving "When All is Done" for chorus and trumpet. Composers will be present for these performances.

Friday, May 20 at 7:00pm
St. Mark's Cathedral, Seattle

Saturday, May 21 at 7:00pm
Bastyr Chapel at Bastyr University, Kenmore

www.choral-arts.org for tickets and more information

Secrets of the Dead: Escape from Auschwitz - tonight on PBS

Secrets of the Dead
Escape from Auschwitz #702

Air: Wednesday, April 27, 8:00 pm on KCTS 9 HDSeattle/Yakima

The Secrets of the Dead website (linked from the KCTS site) always streams the show online.

Broadcast In: English

The truth about the Auschwitz death camp was one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Third Reich. Prisoners who tried to escape were executed in public as an example to other inmates, and very few ever made it out alive. "Escape From Auschwitz" tells the story of two young Slovak Jews, Rudolph Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, who managed to escape by hiding in a woodpile for three days, then fleeing across enemy territory, determined to tell the world about the atrocities being committed by the Nazis at the camp. Hoping to stop the deportations and put an end to the constant stream of victims transported to their deaths, Vrba and Wetzler wrote a detailed account of their experiences in the camp. The report was sent to Allies around the world, but to Vrba's horror, some took ages to arrive in the right hands and the most urgent copy was suppressed by the head of the Hungarian Jewish underground, who worried it would destroy a deal he himself was trying to make with Adolph Eichmann. Ultimately, the delays cost thousands of lives and caused a controversy that raged long after the Holocaust was over. Even so, Vrba's and Wetzler's heroic efforts saved many thousands from the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz.

Run Time: 00:56:46

Rating: TVPG DVS

Visit the Website: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/

Everett Herald - Holocaust Survivors at Everett Community College

Holocaust survivors talk at EvCC

By Muatasim Qazi, Herald Writer

EVERETT -- Some in Amsterdam watched helplessly as Nazis arrested their neighbors and hauled them away to concentration camps. Others were indifferent, peeping from doors of their homes.

Klaas and Roefina Post lived on a small farm in a northern Dutch village called Makkinga. They knew all was not right. Dutch Jews were being killed mercilessly. They couldn't save everyone, but they knew they had to try.

The year was 1940, and spring had already started to give in to summer at a time when most of Europe was under Nazi aggression. Dutch forces had capitulated to the Nazis who prowled the streets of Amsterdam dressed in green uniforms and rounding up the country's Jews. ...Read full article.

Irena Sendler - WWII Warsaw Women Outfox the Nazis SUNDAY on PBS

IRENA SENDLER

In the Name of Their Mothers

In the bombed debris of WWII Warsaw, young Polish Catholic women fight to save the most vulnerable of Poland's Jews -- the children.


Don't miss the moving story of Irena Sendler and a group of young Polish Catholic social workers who smuggled thousands of Jewish children from the Warsaw ghetto and kept them safe until the end of the war. Seven years in the making, this film features the last long interviews Irena Sendler gave before she died in 2008 at the age of 98 in Warsaw.

WINNER
2010 UK Jewish Film Festival Audience Award
OFFICIAL SELECTION
Cinequest International Film Festival 2011

..it is the profoundly committed artistry of filmmaker Mary Skinner that brings the horror, sadness and magnitude of Sendler's story so overwhelmingly to light...appealing not just to the mind, but to the soul..

- Charlie Cockey, Programmer

New speaker Marie-Anne H. in action

New Speakers Bureau member Marie-Anne H. gave her first presentation this past Friday to a group of students at Alternative School No. 1. The presentation was with teacher and Center affiliate Jo Cripps, whose middle school class jumped at the opportunity to hear Marie-Anne's unique presentation.

Marie-Anne tells the story of her grandmother and mother - both part of the French resistance during the Holocaust:

When I was a little girl, I heard stories around the dinner table from family members about what happened during the Nazi German occupation of Paris, home of my mother’s family. My Grandmother has always been my hero, as she helped to save 300 Jewish refugees escape to Free France.

If you would like to learn more about Marie-Anne H. and/or the Holocaust Center's Speakers Bureau, click here.

Holocaust Survivor Forum at Everett Community College

Holocaust Survivor Forum Starts April 13 at Everett Community College

Forum Schedule and Details

With Everett Community College's 12th Holocaust Survivors forums scheduled to start April 13, founder and EvCC humanities instructor Joyce Walker shared why she started the forums and what she hopes students will learn.

In Spring 2000, Walker started the Humanities 150D class, Surviving the Holocaust, and she's taught it every year since. As director of EvCC's Humanities Center, she started the Holocaust forums at the same time as part of the class and has opened the forums to the campus and local community each year.

Walker has long been interested, both professionally and personally, in the history of the Holocaust.

"Stays in Germany in both high school and college caused me to wonder how such a great culture could fall so low in the Holocaust - from the apex to nadir of human civilization," said Walker, who said her Ph.D. in comparative literature includes a major focus on German language and literature.

Walker's class attempts to answer questions like "Why did the Nazis kill?" and "How did people survive such dehumanization?"

"My hope is that by studying the Holocaust, students will resolve to stand up for others in the face of hate speech and hateful acts," she said.

The Holocaust forums start April 13 with Survivor Fred H. Taucher's story. His father was seized during Kristallnacht, and his family was hidden by a high-ranking Nazi Party member until he was arrested and sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Taucher will speak from 12:20-1:50 p.m. in Baker Hall 120.

The Holocaust Center is proud to have worked with Joyce Walker and Everett Community College for many years, providing speakers and professional development opportunities.


About the photo above:
Instructor Joyce Walker, founder of EvCC's Holocaust Forums, examines notes taken Jan. 20, 1942 at the Wannsee Conference, when top German Nazi officials formally announced the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question," the decision to deport and murder the Jews of Europe. The minutes of that meeting, known as the Wannsee Protocol, are preserved in the room where the meeting took place near Berlin, now a Holocaust museum. Walker travelled to Berlin March 17-26 with study abroad students from Fullerton College, a community college in California, at the invitation of her brother, Western Civilization and German professor John Walker. Joyce Walker lectured the Fullerton students on the Holocaust during the trip.