Introduction
Between the years 1933 and 1945, Adolph Hitler organized the murder of six million Jews. In every Nazi-occupied country, at every level of society, there were non-Jews who had the courage to resist. You will be reliving their stories: thrilling, terrifying, and most of all, inspiring.
Task
You will work independently as well as cooperatively with your group members to complete the following tasks:
You will find news articles (newspaper, magazine, Internet) that relate to prejudice. After you read the articles you will journal about it, discussing your thoughts. You must read five articles.
You will go to the Internet site http://library.thinkquest.org/12663/camps/situations.html and read the terrible situations they have listed. Answer the questions and then compare your responses to those of others.
You will receive two different reflections on Esther Ben and Judy Weissenberg Cohen who survived the Holocaust. Pick one of them to read and then write your own personal reflection of the Holocaust.
You will do a book report on I Have Lived a Thousand Years by Livia Bitton-Jackson.
Discuss the setting of the book.
Give a summary of the book by discussing the real person’s/people’s life/lives.
Discuss the character/person’s traits and support them with examples from the book.
Discuss the theme – the message of the book and some interesting facts you learned from this book.
Give your opinion of the book.
Your group will do a prejudice activity. Students with blue eyes will be seen as superior people while brown-eyed students will be considered inferior. We will switch the roles after a day.
You will write a letter to a newspaper in memory of victims or ask that readers remember the lessons of the Holocaust.
You will use geometric shapes or forms to create a Holocaust monument.
You will watch the edited television version of the movie Schindler’s List in order to visually see the events leading up to, during, and specifically the conclusion to the Holocaust.
Process
1. Commandant- You are the leader of your team. It is your duty to see that all tasks are carried out by the allies and the resistance. You will be in charge of making everyone aware of the cause and effects of prejudice behavior and be exposed to the different perspectives surrounding this discriminatory behavior.
2. Resistance- You are responsible for keeping track of all records. You will be in charge of reporting any news and exciting information. You will also relay the information to the rest of the group.
3. Allies- You are the peace maker. You will illustrate and design many things to form a unity. You will also be in charge of making sure the needs of your group members are met.
Conclusion
Through many tasks and activities, you learned about the Holocaust and became aware of the cause and effects of the prejudice behavior that resulted. Society can’t be changed but from believing in the statement that “everyone is equal,” we can make small steps to controlling the prejudice problems in America.
Resources
http://www.fred.net/nhhs/html/beast.htm
A Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust: Student Activities: http://www.fcit.coedu.usf.edu/Holocaust/activity/activity.htm
Anne Frank in the World, 1929-1945 Teacher Workbook:
http://www.uen.org/utahlink/lp_res/AnneFrank.html
Anne Frank: Courage and Responsibility:
http://www.uen.org/cgi-bin/websql/
Name: ________________________
Teacher:
Date Submitted: ____________
Title of Work: ___________________
Criteria
Points
4
3
2
1
Introduction
All questions were answered completely and rationales for the answers were clearly stated.
All questions were answered completely, but rationales for the all the answers were not clearly stated.
Not all questions were answered completely, or greater than 2 rationales for the all answers were not clearly stated.
All questions were not answered completely.
____
Task
All areas of the task were addressed and handled with a high degree of sophistication. The plan followed by the team demonstrated a great deal of thought.
At least one area of the task was not addressed. The plan followed by the team demonstrated a great deal of thought.
At least two areas of the task were not addressed. The plan followed by the team demonstrated a moderate level of thought.
The task is incomplete and/or it is apparent that little effort went into the development of the task.
____
Process: Teamwork
It is evident that a mutual effort and cohesive unit created the final product.
The team worked well together, but could have utilized each other's skills to a better degree.
The team had problems working together. Little collaboration occurred.
The final product is not the result of a collaborative effort. The group showed no evidence of collaboration.
____
Process: Originality
The ideas expressed by the body of work demonstrate a high degree of originality.
The ideas expressed by the body of work are mostly original. The group may have improved upon a previous idea.
The ideas expressed by the body of work demonstrate a low degree of originality.
There were no original ideas expressed in this project.
Grammar, Format , and Spelling
The final body of work was free of grammar, spelling, and formatting errors.
The final body of work had 1 error related to either grammar, spelling, and formatting errors.
The final body of work had 3-5 grammar, spelling, and formatting errors.
The final body of work had major grammar, spelling, and formatting errors.
Nazi Germany Through An Examination of the Holocaust
You are a new staff member of your local newspaper. Your Series Editor (your teacher) has called together a team of writers, researchers and networkers for an important series of stories that is developing. You are delighted to find that you are a key member of that team.
The project is described in a memo from the Managing Editor, as follows:
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The Task
MEMO
FROM: THE MANAGING EDITOR
TO: THE SERIES EDITOR AND RESEARCH-WRITING TEAM
SUBJECT: SERIES ON HOLOCAUST DENIAL MOVEMENT
Recently our newspaper has received a lot of extremist calls and letters, related to an article we ran about events in the Middle East and Israel. These calls and letters include derogatory references to various minority groups and religions, and deny that the Nazi Holocaust-- the extermination of Jews, Catholics, Gypsies and other minorities occurred. Recently there has also been an increase in the number of physical attacks (i.e., smashed windows, arson, bombings) on synagogues, churches and homes of minority groups in our state and elsewhere.
Due to these events, we have decided to produce a special series of stories on The Holocaust, with reference to the "Denialists" and their arguments that the Holocaust did not occur. The series will include photos, interviews, and extensive documentation. The series will address the major issues in this controversy, and provide an objective analysis-- not only of the history of the Holocaust, but with references how it relates to our current situation.
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Your Group Report and Presentation
The final group report is a 10-15 minute presentation to the Series Editor (your teacher and class). The report may take any shape the teacher feels is appropriate. Your group may produce a newspaper style layout, modeled on an actual newspaper. Your group might also simply produce a report, which they present to the class using visual aids. In any event, you will need to make use of technology to support your research, including resource references, pictures, maps, charts, models, and other acceptable means which reflects serious research has been done.
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Resources
Resources on the World Wide Web:
Although there are far more sites related to this area of study available through the SCORE Web Pages, the following will give a basic set of helpful resources to get started.
Nazi Holocaust Unit: Selected Sites of Interest
Institute for Historical Review Pamphlets
http://www.ihr.org/main/leaflets.shtml
A collection of online pamphlets that support the theme that the Holocaust did not occur. Some of these dispute that people were exterminated at Auschwitz, and claim to disprove other "myths" about the Holocaust.
Nizkor Home Page
http://www1.us.nizkor.org/
Gathers and organizes links to major Internet resources about the Holocaust, as well as the contemporary "Holocaust denial" movement.
Other Sites: Promotion of Holocaust Denial and Related Issues
http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/
A collection of sites which promote the idea that the Holocaust did not occur. This is part of the Nizkor site, which explains and teaches about the events of the Holocaust.
Holocaust: Other Related Sites
http://www1.us.nizkor.org/other-sites/
A section of a site dedicated to teaching about the Holocaust, which included links to related sites, including those who deny that the Holocaust occurred.
Perpetrators of the Holocaust
http://www.remember.org/
Letters, speeches and other documents created by the people who conducted the Holocaust: Hitler, Himmler, and other Nazis.
Questions About the Holocaust, No. 1-18
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/36quest1.html
Answers to 36 of the most common questions about the Holocaust. Many interesting and helpful facts are explained here.
Responses to Holocaust Revisionist Arguments
http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=gvKVLcMVIuG&b=394667
The following questions are routinely posed by "Historical Revisionists" in their efforts to deny the existence of the Holocaust. The responses to these arguments are posted here.
Remembering the Holocaust
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~aragorn/holocaus.htm
Six million Jews (and millions of others) perished under Nazi tyranny - perished for no reason other than the fact that they were Jews. This page is a collection of many links on the Internet that offer information about how that happened.
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The Process
Brainstorming:
Before you get started, the following three questions will be brainstormed with the class, to set up the problem, familiarize you with the terminology and historical background. The Series Editor (teacher) will facilitate, making notes, concept-mapping at the chalkboard. The result should be saved, for reference by your group, to remind you of the various aspects of the problem.
What do we know?
What do we need to know?
Where can we find out what we need to know?
Task Definition With the Series Editor (Your Teacher):
Your job as a member of the Series team is to locate and examine the "Denialist" arguments. Then research the facts of history to determine if there is any basis for the "Denialist" claims. You may also note any similarities between the beliefs of the "Denialists" and the perpetrators of the Holocaust (i.e., the Nazis).
You will, of course, need to produce the highest quality documentation for your work. You will be using the Internet/World Wide Web (including the online archives of other newspapers,) as major resources, as well as other electronic and print resources (books, magazine articles) of our library.
Your grade will be based on these criteria:
40% Oral (Final) Report to the Series Editor
40% Written or Multimedia Report
20% Daily Briefings
Time is of the essence, so good planning is very important. Before you get started you will need to create a list of the most effective and useful places to do your research. Make a list of the questions to be answered, and kinds of information you will need to answer them. Keep accurate documentation of your sources, so that they can be checked in the event that you are challenged.
You will be expected to report your progress in our daily editorial briefings, so that we can react to new facts and data that are uncovered.
Assignment into Groups:
Due to the complexity of events related to the Holocaust, you will be assigned to groups. Each of the groups will focus on various aspects of the problem. One will zero in on:
Krystallancht (The Night of Broken Glass)
The Nazi death camps,
Mass psychology of the Nazis
Theory of Aryan Superiority and the “Final Solution”
Reaction of the U.S. and others to Holocaust reports at that time
This approach is used because each group will contribute something special to the total learning experience, and allow you to teach each other, while the teacher guides and coaches from the side.
You are in groups of 4-5, and assigned roles as reporters, writers, researchers, or other related roles. You should all contribute to the project work, and your individual contributions highlighted during the regular briefing sessions.
Briefings:
Regular briefings of the groups by your Series Editor (your teacher) will be used to check and guide your progress. Both the research progress and your approach to the problem will be reviewed, making sure that all students are contributing; that they are making use of the resources, and are focused on the solution of the problem.
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Learning Advice
It is important that your work meets the criteria outlined in the Memo from the Managing Editor, and outlined in the Process section. The basic questions must be answered. Your use of a variety of information resources, the citation of the resources used, and use of technology for presentation must be observed or documented.
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Evaluation
The final group report is a 10-15 minute presentation to the Series Editor (your teacher and class). The report may take any shape the teacher feels is appropriate. Your group may produce a newspaper style layout, modeled on an actual newspaper. Your group might also simply produce a report, which they present to the class using visual aids. In any event, you will need to make use of technology to support your research, including resource references, pictures, maps, charts, models, and other acceptable means which reflects serious research has been done.
Before the final presentation, both the teacher and students need to identify the criteria for a “good” presentation and research process. The product and the processes, procedures, and efforts should be examined with these criteria in mind. From this list of criteria develop a rubric for scoring the presentations and research.
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Reflection
Ask yourself the following questions about the research process and the presentation that you did for the Series Editor
What worked and what didn't?
Was time effectively used?
Were ideas well-presented?
What could have improved their work?
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Conclusion
Now that you have examined the Holocaust and Nazi Germany, and connected it to the Holocaust denialist arguments of today, you should have an opinion about the possibility that it could happen again. What are the forces that produce such events? Are they present today? How do we know? What does one do about preventing it?
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Teacher Notes:
Grade Level/Unit:
Grade 10 Totalitarianism in the Modern World
H/SS Content Standards
10.8 Students analyze the causes and consequences of the Second World War, in terms of:
5.the Nazi policy of pursuing racial purity, especially against the European Jews, its transformation into the Final Solution and the Holocaust resulting in the murder of six million Jewish civilians
Lesson purpose:
Students will be enabled to understand the events of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany in the context of current events and sociopolitical movements (i.e., Holocaust Denialists or revisionists.)
Students will use computers, online databases, and print materials to gather information. They will read, analyze, evaluate, synthesize and present their ideas through multi-media.
Lesson length:
7-10 class hours for research, 3-4 for presentations (plus outside research by students.)
Teacher Resources on the World Wide Web:
Although there are far more sites related to this area of study available through the SCORE Web Pages, the following will give a basic set of helpful resources to get started.
Nazi Holocaust Unit: Selected Sites of Interest
Guidelines for Teaching About the Holocaust
http://www.hmh.org/ed_teaching_guidelines.asp
While this document offers many useful guidelines for the successful teaching of the Holocaust, it also offers an opportunity to obtain an overview of this area of study, and the purposes of such pursuits.
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Teaching Steps:
Introduction
Teacher asks the class to imagine that they work for a local or regional newspaper, in the Editorial Department (where the editors, writers, reporters create the "news" stories.
Teacher introduces the problem (assuming the role of Series Editor), by reading the Memo below, from the Managing Editor to the Series editor and Research-Writing Team.
Introduction (sample):
"You are a new staff member of the local newspaper. Your Series Editor (me) has called together a team of writers, researchers and networkers for an important series of stories that is developing, and you are delighted to find that you are a key member of that team."
The project is described in a memo from the Managing Editor given above.
Help Students Define the Task
Tell students, that their job as members of the Series team is to locate and examine the "Denialist" arguments. Then research the facts of history to determine if there is any basis for the "Denialist" claims. You should also note any similarities between the beliefs of the "Denialists" and the perpetrators of the Holocaust (i.e., the Nazis).
Tell them that they are expected to produce the highest quality documentation for their work. Explain that they will be using the Internet/World Wide Web (including the online archives of other newspapers,) as major resources, as well as other electronic and print resources (books, magazine articles) of our library.
Time is of the essence, so good planning is very important. Before students get started they will need to create a list of the most effective and useful places to do research. Make a list of the questions to be answered, and kinds of information that will be needed to answer them. Keep accurate documentation of sources, so that they can be checked in the event of a challenge.
Brainstorming
The following three questions should be brainstormed with the class, to set up the problem, familiarize students with the terminology and historical background. Series Editor should facilitate, making notes, concept-mapping at the chalkboard. The result should be saved, for reference by the groups, to remind them of the various aspects of the problem.
What do we know?
What do we need to know?
Where can we find out what we need to know?
It may be necessary to reread the Memo document to them, and perhaps post it on a bulletin board, or even make copies for each group to keep.
Discussion
A discussion of problem-based learning may be necessary. The teacher should explain that they will need to work as teams, and will have to report regularly during "briefings" on their progress. This schedule should be set by the teacher, and carefully followed, since many students are unused to group projects. (Teacher can meet separately with the each group, or as a class, or a mixture of both, depending on how their work progresses.
Assignment into Groups
Due to the complexity of events related to the Holocaust, groups focus on various aspects of the problem. One will zero in on Krystallancht, the death camps, while another covers mass psychology of the Nazis, while another reviews the theory of Aryan Superiority or the reaction of the U.S. to Holocaust reports from the scene. This approach is recommended, since each group will contribute something special to the total learning experience, and allow them to teach each other, while the teacher guides and coaches from the side.
Students are assigned to groups of 4-5, and assigned roles as reporters, writers, researchers, or other related roles. They should all contribute to the project work, and their individual contributions highlighted during the briefing sessions.
Briefings
The regular briefings that the groups provide should be used to check their progress. Both their progress and their process should be watched, making sure that all students are contributing, that they are making use of the resources, and are focused on the solution of the problem.
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Product and Evaluation
The final group report is the product, and may take any shape the teacher feels is appropriate. They may produce a newspaper style layout, modeled on an actual newspaper. They might also simply produce a report, which they present to the class using visual aids. In any event, they will need to make use of technology to support their research, including resource references, pictures, maps, charts, models, and other acceptable means which reflects serious research has been done.
It is important that their work meets the criteria outlined in the Memo from the Managing Editor. The basic questions must be answered. Their use of information technology, the citation of resources, and use of technology for presentation must be observed or documented.
The evaluation should be approached by both the teacher and student. Both their product and the processes, procedures, and efforts should be examined. What worked and what didn't? Was time effectively used, ideas well-presented? What could have improved their work? These are the sorts of questions that should be asked.
A central pillar of Jewish belief is that nothing happens in a vacuum. History has meaning, oppression has meaning, suffering has meaning. We are a people whose essence is meaning. It’s the lifeblood of who we are and what we stand for as a nation.
If this is true – and the Jewish people have fought to preserve this truth for 3,500 years – then the Holocaust must have meaning as well. Beneath the suffering and pain of the Holocaust lie the seeds of understanding our unique mission as Jews even today.
This is not to suggest that any one explanation will ever fully help us to come to terms with the persecution and murder of millions of innocent people.
Still, it does mean that we must try to contend with the Holocaust on a number of levels. For with every victim an entire world was lost; (1) with every survivor, a new lesson must be learned. In this light, the meaning of the Holocaust is as varied as the human heart itself.
But we must also wrestle with the Holocaust from a larger perspective, a perspective that includes the history of the Jewish people. For the Holocaust is the story of the Jewish nation under siege. It was a war to destroy the Jewish people and the message we have been trying to bring to mankind from time immemorial.
The Chosen People
"You shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." (2) These are the words that describe the Jewish people’s unique covenant with God. We have been chosen to be a light unto the nations,(3) an eternal people bearing a message of God’s morality: "Love your neighbor as yourself" (4)... "Justice, justice shall you pursue(5)..." "Do not afflict the widow and the orphan(6)..." "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore(7)..."
Being chosen means you are different. Your laws are different, your ways are different, your history is different. Being chosen means holding fast to that message through all the peaks and valleys of history, for all the generations. It means living for the truth of that message and dying for the truth of that message. It means holding ourselves to a higher standard – in the way we think, the way we speak, the way we act, the way we dress, the way we eat.
It means honoring our Creator in the way we conduct ourselves in public as well as in the privacy of our home. In the way we raise our children and take care of our old. In the laws we live by and the values we are trying to impart to the people – and nations – around us.
A World Against Us
Anti-Semitism was born with the birth of the Jewish people. After all, it can be exceedingly irritating to be faced with the voice of human conscience when you yourself have other plans and desires. It is one of the not-so-subtle ironies of the Hebrew language that the word Sinai is closely linked to the word for "hatred" – "sina".
But the essence of anti-Semitism runs much deeper than simply the Jews and their morality standing in the way of the conqueror’s ambition or of mankind’s propensity for lust. Anti-Semitism is part of our destiny as Jews. It is part and parcel of our covenant with God. It is the one mechanism in the collective human psyche that never lets us forget we are Jews, never lets us forget we different, never lets us forget we have a message to bring to mankind.
One of the high points of the Passover seder joyfully testifies to this unique phenomenon of history. With a glass of wine raised high, we declare that in every generation the nations of the world will rise up against us, to try to wipe us out and destroy the message we bear – but to no avail. The Jewish people is eternal, and our message is eternal.(8)
When the Jewish people lives up to its potential as a light unto the nations, the moral fabric of the entire world is improved.(9) The nations of the world will see the beauty of Jewish values and will praise us and want to emulate our ways. (10)
At such times, anti-Semitism may still rear its ugly head, but no power in the world will be able to harm us. And the Almighty Himself will turn over heaven and earth to attest to the fact of this awesome truth.
But if that light is lacking, then the moral fabric of the world quickly sinks into decay. And then it is only a matter of time before the Jews are seen as little more than an irritating reminder of an old-fashioned, restrictive morality, an enemy of the "new world order" that wants nothing to do with the Chosen People and their God.
Such times are times of national tragedy indeed. In place of the miraculous protection that once graced our people, we are left vulnerable to the cruelest whims of humanity. Hunted down, persecuted, put to death in the millions simply because we are Jews.
Such times are times of great suffering, but not of suffering in vain. The nature of our covenant means that even when we are subjected to the unimaginable cruelty of a Holocaust, the message remains the same: There must be a better way. Mankind must be taught to rise above his baser instincts. In that way, the suffering itself becomes the source of the Jewish message to the world.
The Lessons Of The Holocaust
Where was God during the Holocaust? As a people, we declare that God was right there – pleading with us to pay attention, never letting us forget how much work remains to be done in this world.
After the Holocaust, is there a Jew on earth who would choose to be born a Nazi instead of a Jew? After the Holocaust, is there a Jew on earth who does not see the need for a nation of teachers? Who else will help mankind rise above its potential for such cruelty if not the Jews?
More than anything else, the Holocaust was a clarion call to the Jewish people: Remember your covenant, be a light unto the nations. Show the world what it means to be given the gift of life, what it means to be created in the image of God, what it means to live according to the values of justice and mercy, what it means to be a nation dedicated to those goals.
Reflections upon the Holocaust
What YOU are asked to believe
The gassing is not the Holocaust
And the Holocaust is not the gassing. Yet there is a constant confusion that the two are identical. Not only that, there is a confusion with regard to what the Holocaust is, whether it refers to only the Jews or to everyone, whether 6 million are a tragedy and the other 6 million only a footnote.
Despite all of the talk about the Holocaust, it is one of the least defined events in history.
The issue of 12 million deaths
The problem with the deaths is rather more interesting. A long forgotten fact is that, as a result of WW II, 31 million people in the European theater were completely untraceable after the war. Those who look towards the holocaust for an explanation, assign 12 of these 31 million to Nazi extermination programs.
The problem is that every person recorded to have been sent to a camp is accounted for to the limits of record keeping errors.
The issue of gassing
One of the more difficult things to deal with regarding the holocaust is the use of gas for mass extermination. Part of the reason for this is that the details about these gassings are known. Another part of the reason is that the eyewitness reports do not appear to describe the gases they claim were used. I will try to fill in this gap.
The evidence
The impression of the evidence is not the same as the evidence itself. While it is always presented as though it were a cut and dried case in all matters there are far more questions than answers. And we are also asked to believe all of this without the slightest bit of physical evidence.
The Search for the vanished
If they disappeared into the camps, there should certainly have been a search for forensic evidence. Ignoring that, there would certainly have been a search for the remains so a few stars and crosses and appropriate words could be said in the right places. That is the human thing to do and always has been.
No such thing has ever been done.
The Number of the Gassed
"I looked into the name of the holocaust and it's number was six million. Count ye not to twelve but go directly to six."
I found it quite surprising that there are references to the holocaust and six million long predate World War II.
The Pre-World War II Political Situation
As I have come to always expect, history is more complicated, has much more to it, than is found in the average history book. And if I compare my textbook and documentary and specialized reading information I find them all in close enough agreement for the a non-scholar such as myself. But this means the military campaign only.
The holocaust part of it is very different. For years I had only heard about the post 1933 involvement of the Jews and then very little other than their victim status. I was surprised to find otherwise.
The Destruction of European Jewery
It is often bemoaned by Jews that the "rich of life of European Jewry" was destroyed by the Nazis. But that destruction was conceived and started before Hilter was born and continues to this day. The architects of this destruction were and are the Zionists. The Zionists envisioned a Europe free of Jews, Judenrein if a word can be borrowed.
In fact the Zionists and the Nazis collaborated in this destruction. Even at the height of the reported destruction by the Nazis, the Zionists worked to prevent Jews from going to any country other than Palestine. When the Swedish government considered accepting all Jewish Danes in advance of the Nazi occupation of Denmark the Zionists lead the opposition against it.
What were they thinking?
Going through all of this holocaust material I had to keep asking myself just what was going on. It was difficult to assume all of these people were knowingly lying yet they were reporting so many clearly impossible things.
The answer had been in front of me for years. Western Europeans are an abberation upon the normal way in which the human race thinks. Eastern Europeans think in the more traditional way humans think and express themselves.
What witnesses say
The issue of witness testimony is often mis-stated by those who defend the holohaust. They hold that revisionists invent different reasons to reject each type of witness in order to reject the entire story. What they never mention is that is the second step in examining the story.
The first step is to review the statements, which is often sworn testimony, of the witnesses. In that review we discover the witnesses regularly report things ranging from the unlikely to the flat out physically impossible.
Some do not appreciate the significance of reports of the physically impossible. It means the the person could not have witnessed what he reporting. When the substance of the report is predicated on the impossible, there is no reason to take any of report as truthful.
As with the stories of the first gassing, we find that the more detail the witnesses go into the more they tell stories that are mutually exclusive of the stories of other witnesses. Their stories are such that both can not be true at the same time; meaning that all but one of them is lying.
The problem of the Orders
When we view the behavior of Germany we find a very marked difference between those on the Eastern and Western Fronts acting under the same orders and policies.
What our media does not say
Certain subjects are off limits to the US media by choice and in many countries of Europe by law. These subjects center around Israel and the Holocaust. They are the only subjects that are off limits to our media.
Evil Germans and Nazis
It is often suggested that there is something inherently wrong with the German people for having supported the Nazi Party. Today very little is known about the details of that party and why people might have supported it. It certainly turned out that not much good came from it but that does not mean that it was obvious on the face of it.
Debate of the Holocaust is prohibited
While it is clear to anyone that civil discussion of the Holocaust is prohibited people such as Bradley R. Smith have worked for an open debate of the events that have come to be subsumed under the name Holocaust.
If you are a believer
If the very idea that material like this is permitted to exist, if you are a true believer, then you should know there is little you "believe" that is accepted by authorities.
Enter the hated Revisionists
Revisionist is a title given to those who have looked at the absurd claims for the Holocaust and viewed the skeptically but, far worse, have publically spoken or written of it. The third class of Jew that Joseph Sobran writes about will not have it spoken for their own very self-serving reasons.
Revisionist simply do not take the stories on face value.
For the Skeptical
Those skeptical of laying all the blame for this upon the Russians and storytellers, you deserve answers. They are in the last link. What we find is a pattern of old time traditions that existed in those days that have been lost and fogotten today.
The People and events you need to meet
The Witnesses
The Writers
The Defenders
The Events
The Camps
And now for something completely different
There's no business like Shoah Business
Like no business I know.
Everything about it is appealing,
Everything that traffic will allow.
No where can you get that happy feeling
Then when your stealing
There's no business like Shoah business
It's like no business I know
Everything about it is misleading
Everything about it seems a fraud
Can't you hear the rabbis when they're pleading
For more donations to their cause
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Speaking up and speaking out
In this climate there are still people speaking out on what they see as the truth. They are often reviled, harrassed, even brought into court on criminal and civil charges. Their websites recount their efforts and experiences as well as of others.
Human nature is not to surrender to the attacks of others for any reason.
These people do not ask you to like them. These people do not ask you to accept everything they say. These people only ask that you read and decide for yourself.
Ernst Zundel
Committee for Open Debate On the Holocaust
Institute for Historical Revisionism
The Adelaide Institute
John Ball
Arthur Butz
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As we begin to settle into the 21st century, survivors of the Holocaust are gradually passing on. Every year, fewer and fewer witnesses are alive to give the next generation first-hand testimony of their experiences. Consequently, Lawrence L. Langer says we will be “shifting from what we know of the event (the history) to how to remember it (in our imagination and what we are prepared to admit there).” In his book, Admitting the Holocaust, Langer wonders how we will do this because he questions whether, after all these years, we have even admitted the Holocaust into our own national consciousness.
Admitting the Holocaust is a compilation of ten essays Langer has written over the last several decades. The essays cover a wide range of Holocaust issues. Essay titles include “The Literature of Auschwitz”, “Ghetto Chronicles: Life at the Brink”, “Memory’s Time: Chronology and Duration in Holocaust Testimonies”, and “The Americanization of the Holocaust on Stage and Screen”.
I found two themes from the book particularly thought provoking. First, Langer asserts that we have basically watered down the Holocaust in literature because we are uncomfortable with the event itself. We cannot understand how “something like that” could have happened. We are threatened with the idea that we live in “a world in which a relatively small number of men caused the death of so many millions while screening their crimes and remaining themselves unpunished and unreported (for the most part, even after their defeat).” It threatens our “mental comfort” because it is a “world deprived of ethical force, one in which power supplants human concern, and indifference to suffering prevails over practical compassion.” Not only does the Holocaust threaten our “mental comfort”; one could argue it challenges the foundations upon which human civilization rests. Since we cannot rationalize such an evil event, we tend to water it down.
Nazi Germany “plunged the world into moral chaos” but yet the study and the language of the Holocaust is designed to “console instead of confront”. We put up “verbal fences” between the atrocities of the Holocaust and what we are willing (or able) to face. For example, with the word, “liberation”, we see relief, celebration, and even for some, closure as we block out reality (the images); and in doing this, we “condemn only the victims to the memory of loss.” Words, then, are used which neutralize the event, distort the event, and even betray reality. There is a difference between death in literature and mass murder by Nazi Germany.
We have a tendency to try to smooth things over and continually look for ways to “cure” rather than “endure” even though Langer asserts “we must confess that the Holocaust was not an illness from which its ‘patients’ could be cured or a trauma from which victims ‘recover’. Alexandra Zapruder, in Salvaged Pages, refers to the “paradigm by which the Holocaust has been presented in America.” For example, many interpretations of young people’s diaries from the Holocaust, she says, “apply…a hopeful veneer, despite the fact…it obscures the irrevocable atrocity of genocide.”
Since we cannot admit the Holocaust into our consciousness, how can we adequately express it in literary terms? To deal with this, Langer turns to testimony from the victims and survivors as a way to make sure the next generation can capture the “thoroughly disruptive impact of that event.” With testimony and diaries (which he believes gives us a better view than retrospective accounts,) we can begin to “interpret various layers of memory through which the event was experienced by its victims and survivors.” (Alexandra Zapruder calls diaries “broken and unfinished fragments from the Holocaust”. She writes, “at best, for the survivors, they are a record of years denied; at worst, for the perished, they are all that is left from a single life that ended in brutality)."
Our “culture of consolation” must be discarded, for it no longer holds truth in the post-Holocaust era. We must look at the Holocaust’s “naked and ugly face” and acknowledge that “man does not (always) rise to his highest level in adversity and does not always make moral choices” - people are not always good. “The power of domination may be a source of ‘natural’ fulfillment or satisfaction as are charity and love for others.”
This leads to the second theme I found interesting. Langer seems to think that we may finally be ready to discard that "culture of consolation." Langer believes as our society becomes more accustomed to violence, “we are ready to deal more frankly with the grotesque and gratuitous atrocities (of the) Germans.”
He cites the film, Schindler’s List as an example of how attitudes are beginning to change. Langer calls the movie a “manageable version” even though he felt it “did not convey the terror or despair” (of the Holocaust) and did not disrupt our “mental comfort”. However, he points out Steven Spielberg did “eliminate the context of normalcy” from the lives of his victims and “created chaos rather than form” (unlike the movie Sophie’s Choice in which William Styron “pushes the violence to the periphery where it disturbs no one)."
The non-fiction film Shoah, which is a comprehensive testimony of the Holocaust by survivors, would probably be the “truth” Langer feels we need to address. Not only is it raw, graphic, and emotional true-life testimonies from those who experienced the Holocaust first-hand; but with these testimonies, it also illustrates the unraveling of the moral and physical world that we have been reluctant to acknowledge but may be ready to do so now.
What will happen when the names of people, places, and events begin to fade into our historical memory as we shift to how to remember the Holocaust? Langer finishes by saying, “every future generation will have to be educated anew in how to face the Holocaust.” We cannot do this with abstract figures like six million people murdered. Instead, he says, we must do it in graphic detail so it will make an “indelible and subversive impression” and keep the Holocaust from slipping into a “footnote” of history.
As a teacher who has taught the Holocaust for over sixteen years, I found this book a little disturbing. It made me question how and what I teach about the Holocaust. I will never know what it was like for victims and survivors, so have I, too, watered down the Holocaust? Have I emphasized “liberation” and “resistance” instead of focusing on those graphic details of survivors that Langer refers to? Have I contributed to certain attitudes towards the Holocaust that Langer says we must be careful of and constantly re-evaluate? (For example, the old idea that Jews were compliant, did not resist, and went like “lambs to the slaughter” thus, somehow, making them responsible for their own deaths).
The book made me think and I know I will approach the classes I teach in the future more carefully and be more aware of words, attitudes, and the message I am sending. But as educators, we must also be careful about how and when to teach the graphic details that Langer asserts we should.
Admitting the Holocaust made me even more aware of the fact that, in the near future, we are going to have the primary responsibility of keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive. I agree with Lawrence L. Langer when he says we must teach our students that the Holocaust may have been the “central historical moment of our time, perhaps of all time.”
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