Teachers teaching about the Holocaust need help - 2022 style

Does anyone have a good pre-reading activities for the book thief or the Holocaust in general? TIA

Looking for an introduction video to the Holocaust that is appropriate for 8th grade. Thank you!
Has anyone taught a Holocaust elective? I would appreciate any materials you're willing to share - pacing, films, readings, etc.

Does anyone have a good visual lesson on the Holocaust that covers more than just Jewish persecution? Maybe some type of image analysis, or video?

School is about to start and #teachertwitter is flying. Many teachers use social media to enhance their professional practice. Often times, teachers request resources planning a Holocaust or Shoah related unit.  Occasionally there is an intellectually challenging request, but typically the questions are of the emergency sort: Help! I have to teach about the Holocaust! Does anyone have any resources? 

In 2019, I wrote an article for EJewish Philanthropy expressing the need for cyber Holocaust educators. The plea was based on educator social media groups where teachers reaching out had little to no knowledge of the Shoah. 

Fast forward several months later and Covid-19 hit; every teacher would become a cyber educator. Our entire craft became virtual, and every social media outlet would be filled with teachers leaning on each other for lessons and ideas. Our vulnerabilities were exposed, and they reflected the same challenge: how do we engage students on unfamiliar platforms during a deadly pandemic while they are experiencing their unprecedented challenges from isolation to trauma with our own families depending on us at home?

Besides addressing that small question, educators also used the era of Covid-19 to openly exchange lesson plans and ask questions about content. Once again I noted that many teachers teach about the Holocaust and know very little about it. I would find myself taking a lot of time to respond to these posts out of a sense of duty.  I still do. However, I am one person in two social media groups, with two children, and a full teaching load. There are so many teachers who could use help, including the teachers that I don’t know about. 

Back to Covid-19 era: In addition, on Twitter, there were parents listening to their children’s lessons and then expressing outrage at their ignorance while teaching Holocaust related lessons. The Tweeters would implore them to call [insert Jewish organization, administrator] and urge them to have the teacher disciplined or fired. When I would read about one of these teachers, I would cringe and wonder if she had posted that week on some teacher group asking, “Can someone help me? I was just brought in to do a maternity leave for a teacher, and I have to teach about the Holocaust.”

Then, in January 2022, my respected colleague, friend, and Holocaust educator and writer, Matt Lebovic, and I came up with a plan. As the founding director of the Holocaust Education Center of StandWithUs, he had shared with me that he successfully Zoomed a lesson with a large public school in Philadelphia, I suggested that I share his offerings with one of my closed history teachers’ group. (The group has several thousand members). After posting, Matt received takers who scheduled him to speak to their classes or referred him to their colleagues who needed his assistance.

Where Matt’s impact could really be felt would be on one of the closed English teachers’ group that has 21,000 members. That post received more than 100 likes, dozens of comments and tags. Matt Zoomed with students from all of the US and Canada.  

I hope that Matt will serve many more teachers and schools. However, I am once again imploring the organizations and museums that educated and inspired me twenty years ago to modernize their outreach to teachers. There are a lot of resources going into the technology of holograms, Tik Tok, and 4D experiences. As much as I admire the innovations, legacy organizations must also focus their energies on outreach to educators who are not Jewish on the platforms in which they are seeking resources. What is the use of excellent content, and there is so much excellent content out there, if those who need it most do not [have or know to] access it? 

While we are all quick to condemn those who are ignorant, we need to be just as fast at offering assistance when it is needed. 

Holocaust 2020

My husbands grandmother, Eva Moises, passed away over a month ago. She was a Holocaust survivor.

The Holocaust, the Shoah evokes images of the unthinkable: concentration camps, death camps, and crematoriums.

It's true, the systematic execution of Jews during the Holocaust and the evil that it took to design the final solution is unimaginable. But truth be told, about half the Jews were killed by their neighbors, not by Aryan men with German accents, but by people whose accents were the same as their own.

This is what happened to my husband's great grandfather. He was killed by his own neighbors in the Iasi pogrom in Romania.

Why did the townspeople turn on the Jews of their town?

If you really want to understand the Holocaust, if you really want to understand why it's so dangerous for a person going to a Covid-19 anti-government protest in Columbus, Ohio with a sign featuring a rat saying it's the Jews causing this, if you really want to understand why everyone needs to be soldiers in the fight against extremism, then watch this.

https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/video/when-there-are-no-bystanders-long-version

Wanted: Holocaust Cybereducators

Please read my post that was published in eJewish Philanthropy a few months back. 

https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/wanted-holocaust-cybereducators/

Semantics, the Holocaust, and suffering children at the border

I apologize if this sentiment has already been written. I’m having trouble keeping up with the 24-hour news cycle.

On June 18, NY Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D) tweeted: The U.S. is running concentration camps on our southern border, and that is exactly what they are. If that doesn’t bother you … I want to talk to the people that are concerned enough with humanity to say that ‘never again’ means something.
On June 19, Yad Vashem (Israel’s Holocaust Memorial) tweeted back: “Concentration camps assured a slave labor supply to help in the Nazi war effort, even as the brutality of life inside the camps helped assure the ultimate goal of ‘extermination through labor.’ Learn about concentration camps."

By June 20, the internet was arguing whether or not the word “concentration camp” was appropriate or not. The yes camp argued what is the point of “never again” if the language of the Holocaust can’t be used to describe the conditions of asylum seekers. The other side wrote that this term is only for what happened in the Holocaust era Concentration camps, and this is another example of Representative Ocasio-Cortez (ACO) being ignorant or worse, antisemtic.

Over the weekend, the internet argued that the semanticians were being ridiculous and not really care about the situation on the border. The other side said that they agreed, they just didn’t like the word “Concentration Camp.”

Here is what's happening:

A chaotic scene of sickness and filth is unfolding in an overcrowded border station in Clint, Tex., where hundreds of young people who have recently crossed the border are being held, according to lawyers who visited the facility this week. Some of the children have been there for nearly a month.

Children as young as 7 and 8, many of them wearing clothes caked with snot and tears, are caring for infants they’ve just met, the lawyers said. Toddlers without diapers are relieving themselves in their pants. Teenage mothers are wearing clothes stained with breast milk.

Most of the young detainees have not been able to shower or wash their clothes since they arrived at the facility, those who visited said. They have no access to toothbrushes, toothpaste or soap.

“There is a stench,” said Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, one of the lawyers who visited the facility. “The overwhelming majority of children have not bathed since they crossed the border.” (New York Times)

…..

So who is right? Do semantics matter? I would argue that they do, but of course they shouldn’t be the focal point of this particular issue. Nevertheless, when Ocasio-Cortez (D) misuses language, she creates these arguments which then distract from the cause in which she is fighting. It’s also hard to argue that language doesn’t matter, when I spend so much time trying to speak to people in a way that will not offend them to honor their identities. I don’t see how people who claim to be liberal can’t see that using the wrong word for the place where suffering children are being held is not important.

So what is the right word or words?

I think it should be called “The United States Child Neglect Abuse Center” This is the place where children are not given enough to eat, proper medical care, basic hygiene, education, often separated from their parents, without access to fresh air. 

This is the place where Lady Liberty goes to cry tears asking what has become of our country? What has become of us?

Read more about the conditions that these children are living in here.

Polish Government Criminalizes History

These are Facebook posts I wrote about Poland criminalizing talking about Polish atrocities during the Holocaust. 


The Polish government is releasing disgusting, sophisticated propaganda to justify their asinine, autocratic, ethnonationalist, backwards law criminalizing discussing Polish atrocities during the Holocaust. No one refutes that the Polish people suffered during WWII. No one refutes that many Poles were righteous among the nations. Also, no one thinks that Poles today need to take responsibility for the atrocities of their ancestors. HOWEVER, that does not change the fact that ordinary Poles indeed committed atrocities against their Jewish neighbors. You can't change history to suit your narrative and these lies spit in the faces of not only those murdered, but the Poles who were righteous. This is a shameful turn in Polish history and portends more bad things to come.

........

The Polish Prime Minister explains that Jews perpetrated the Holocaust to explain criminalizing history. Some Polish people are excited by this! But guess what? That's not news.

To my Polish friends, there were Jews who collaborated with Nazis: Capos and the head of the Judenrat. But they all met the same fate as the people that they betrayed, and if they didn't, they were put on trial for war crimes or exiled from the community. During slavery in the South, there were slaves who supervised other slaves or were the head of the household. Does that mean they weren't slaves? The Jewish collaborators were so few when you think of the 6 million who died. But why is your prime minister's focus on this? Why does he have no problem calling out these problematic figures, yet he supports a law that criminalizes mention of Polish atrocities during the Holocaust. There is no such laws about discussing or learning about Judenrat or Capos in Israel or anywhere else in the world that is democratic. When your leader and your people feel the need to distort history, you are heading down a very dark path. I hope that the people of Poland have the courage to confront their leaders and leave the past in tact, for better or worse.

Selfies and Death Camps

Good evening!

I've had an article published in eJewish Philanthropy about the role of the educator on trips to Poland.

Click here to read it. Let me know what you think!

I've published a few articles there. Take a look if you are interested. 

What celebrities and athletes can learn from Miep Gies

The article is in oychicago: http://www.oychicago.com/blog.aspx?id=5202&blogid=142

Will the FB generation teach the Holocaust?

My article for Oy Chicago. I won't forever write about the Holocaust, it's just I'm studying it a lot and taking a group there in July.

Letter to Muslims and Arabs about Holocaust

Dear Muslims and Arabs from around the world who are enraged about the situation in Gaza,

Whether I agree or disagree is not the point. The point is STOP COMPARING THE SITUATION IN GAZA TO THE NAZI HOLOCAUST. They are not comparable or similar. When you do so, you sound like a bunch of crazies with no legitimate claims.

Worse, when your leaders and professors make up lies about the Holocaust, or even when you publish lies about the Holocaust, you are doing a disservice to your own people as well as those who perished at the hands of their Nazi persecutors. How can anyone trust anything you say when you begin your argument with fictitious accusations?

Holocaust denial has caused more harm to the Muslim world than good. Your causes are viewed with little sympathy because you sound unreasonable and irrational.

Let’s start with the truth. Demand it from your leaders. Demand it for your teachers. Demand it from yourselves and then the conversation can go from there.

Until then, I don’t know how you can expect to get anything accomplished for the Palestinians from human rights to statehood.

I would tell you the article that I read that led to this posting, but the web site doesn't deserve the publicity and neither does the author.

Unsaintly

The question that is being asked around the world is should Pope Pius the XII be granted sainthood by the Catholic Church?

The canonization is being opposed by Jewish groups given Pope Pius the XII’s seemingly lack of intervention on behalf of Europe’s Jews during the Holocaust.

The Times (England) has published a letter submitted by six Catholic and three Jewish scholars asking the Catholic Church to continue to postpone the canonization process of Pope Pius XII.

The scholars write that they are: "deeply concerned about the impact of beatification/canonization on the remaining survivors of the Holocaust, making the rush to canonization seem inappropriate."

In Israel, the notion of the canonization has caused great protest from Holocaust survivors and scholars. This is no surprise given that Pope Pius XII is deemed by a plaque at Yad Vashem (Israel's Holocaust museum) as a bystander who did nothing to protect Rome's Jewish community members when they were deported to death camps.

The Catholic and Jewish scholars suggest, as many have, that the Vatican open its archives from the time period to study "whether the Pope did all he could and whether he did it soon enough."

Although I understand the response by Holocaust survivors and other Jews to the possible canonization, I think it's unnecessary. If the Catholic Church, with declining numbers, wants to remain relevant to its own, it must come to this decision from within, ignoring outside influence.

The evidence, as available thus far, is that Pope Pius XII's failed to use his vast power to try to act to protect Jews during the Holocaust, turning a blind eye to massacres even in predominantly Catholic countries.

The blind eye mentality also could be the cause of great Catholics suffering. Isn't it possible that this paradigm led to great inaction by Church leaders in response to revelations of sex abusing priest until victims began bringing law suits against the Church?

Unless the archives are opened, and unless they show that Pope Pius XII did indeed made a concerted effort to help Europe's Jews, the canonization of the Pope is not just a slap in the face to those who suffered under the Nazis, but more importantly to those who have suffered from clergy abuse.

It is an assertion that the Church still rewards those who stood by while others suffered, despite the assurances by leaders that the Church has turned a new leaf.

By not opening the archives, the Church is embracing the same culture of secrecy that led to priests abusing children for decades.

This is not an issue of dogma, this is not an issue of theology. To make this Pope a saint is to embrace a template of inaction in the face of evil.

Unless an examination of the archives proves differently.

sources: Letter from Scholars

Article about letter


An Israeli newspaper's coverage of the issue

......

Here is a poem/song written during the Holocaust. It was running through my head as
I researched and wrote this piece.

Dona

On a wagon bound for market
There's a calf with a mournful eye.
High above him there's a swallow
Winging swiftly through the sky.

How the winds are laughing
They laugh with all their might
Laugh and laugh the whole day through
And half the summer's night.

"Stop complaining," said the farmer
"Who told you a calf to be?
Why don't you have wings to fly away with
like the swallow so proud and free?"

Calves are easily bound and slaughtered
Never knowing the reason why.
But whoever treasures freedom,
Like the swallow must learn to fly