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Teaching the Holocaust
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How do we teach the Holocaust in a meaningful way? In a sense, it depends on the question we are asking about it. Some years, I focus on the question of causation: Why did the Holocaust happen, when it did, beginning in Germany? Other years, on the Facing History type issue of the choices that individuals made to be perpetrators, bystanders, or upstanders. Teaching a genocide requires cultivating empathy along with understanding and historical thinking. Thus, we should always use some "story" such as a movie or my grandfather's Holocaust Testimony.

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Of course, one way to tackle both of these questions is through my Weimar and Nazi Germany role-play, which I outline in The Classes They Remember. That approach, however, won't work for everyone, especially if you are short on time. This year I had my students write an essay or create a video explanation of why the Holocaust happened. Here are sources I use to grapple with the historical debate over the causes of the Holocaust:

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Background Sources: These are helpful for students to understand the historiography. They describe essentially five different arguments about the causes: Social psychological, Structuralist, Goldhagen's anti-Semitism thesis, the Intentionalists, and the Functionalists.

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Primary Sources: I use primary sources to "tell the story. " This includes excerpts from Frederic Zeller's When Time Ran Out as well as these primary sources below. I have students attempt to "match" the primary sources to the above historical explanations. For example, do Kristallnacht descriptions and photographs show obedience or anti-Antisemitism as motivations?

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Jewish and non-Jewish Resistance

1) Choose one story of the Righteous among the Nations, those honored by the Holocaust Museum in Israel. Be prepared to discuss: What did s/he do? Why did s/he do it? What are your reactions? What should everyone know? 

2) Read an overall account of Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust. Then, choose three documents to look at from different categories on the Jewish Resistance page. What did you learn? What surprised you? What would you like to know more?

 

Deportations

Source A: Viennese Jews are Forced to Scour the Streets (March/April 1938)

Source C: Josef Meisinger on "Combating Homosexuality as a Political Task" (April 5-6, 1937) 

Document D-Deportation of Stuttgart Jews to Riga, Latvia – Waiting in a Detention Camp on Killesberg Hill, Stuttgart (November 1941)

Source E: A Resident of the Lodz Ghetto is Abused and Humiliated (1942)

Source F: Hungarian Jews Wait in a Clearing before being led to the Gas Chambers at Auschwitz II-Birkenau (May/June, 1944)

Source G: Mass Execution of Lithuanian Jews by Members of the Wehrmacht and the Lithuanian Self-Protection Unit [Selbstschutz] (1942)

 

Kristalnacht 

Source A: Message from SS-Grupenführer Heydrich to all State Police Main Offices and Field Offices:

Source B: The Morning after the Night of Broken Glass [Kristallnacht] in Kassel: The Looted and Destroyed Jewish Community House (November 10, 1938)

Source C: The Morning after the Night of Broken Glass [Kristallnacht] in Berlin: Shattered Shop Windows (November 10, 1938)

Source D: American Consul Samuel Honaker's Description of Anti-Semitic Persecution and Kristallnacht and its Aftereffects in the Stuttgart Region (November 12 and November 15, 1938) 

 

 

Nazi Propaganda 

Source A: NSDAP Mass Rally at the Sportpalast in Berlin (August 15, 1935)

Source B: "For Aryans Only": Official Inscription on Park Benches (1935)

Source C: The Eternal Jew [Der ewige Jude], Film Poster (September 1940)

Source D: Gershom Scholem on the Atmosphere in Munich in the Early 1920s (Retrospective Account, 1977) 

Source E: The Aryan Family (undated)

Source F: Youth League Camp Site (1933)

Source G: Young Girls Post a Notice Advertising the League of German Girls (1934)

Source H: Members of the Hamburg Jungvolk are Instructed in the Use of Carbine Rifles at a Hitler Youth Camp on the Baltic Sea (1938)

 

Early Nazi Germany 

Source A: The Reichswehr Swears an Oath of Allegiance to Adolf Hitler on the Day of Hindenburg’s Death (August 2, 1934)

Source B: SA Members Arrest Communists in Berlin on the Day after the Reichstag Elections (March 6, 1933)

Source E: SA Members in Front of the Tietz Department Store in Berlin (April 1, 1933) 

Source F: Against the Un-German Spirit: Book-Burning Ceremony in Berlin (Image 1) (May 10, 1933) 

Focus on first section: Source C: Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of the People and State ("Reichstag Fire Decree") (February 28, 1933)

Focus on last paragraph/section of 1st page: Source D: Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (April 7, 1933)

 Source G: SS Marriage Order (December 31, 1931) 

Source H: Victor Klemperer’s Diary Entry on the Impending Boycott of Jewish Businesses (March 31, 1933) 

 

Germany's Great Depression 

Source A: Unemployed Stenotypist Seeks Work (December 1931)

Source B: Homeless Men's Shelter (date unknown) (Economics - 1929-1933: Depression)

Source C: Betty Scholem on the Depression (August 1931) 

Source D: Party Platforms for 1932 German Election  

 

Germany after the Great War (Lesson 1)

Source A: Mass Demonstration in Berlin's Lustgarten against the Treaty of Versailles (1919)

Source B: The Destruction of Heavy Weaponry after the Signing of the Treaty of Versailles (1919)

Source C: Butchering a Horse in the Streets of Berlin (1920)

Source D: Family Members Share a Single Sausage for Dinner (c. 1920)

Source E: Line Outside of a Berlin Grocer (1923)

Source F: Wallpapering with Worthless Banknotes (1923)

Source G: Friedrich Kroner, "Overwrought Nerves" (1923) 

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