young voices young choices 2017

February 15-16, 2017 Museum of Tolerance

Understanding the Voices and Choices of Young People During the HolocaustFACING HISTORY AND OURSELVES & THE MUSEUM OF TOLERANCE

Dear Teacher:I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw

what no man should witness:Gas chambers built by learned engineers.

Children poisoned by educated physicians.Infants killed by trained nurses.

Women and babies shot and burned by high school and college graduates.

So I am suspicious of education.My request is: Help your students become human. Your

efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, educated Eichmanns.

Reading, writing, arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human.

Facing History and Ourselves: Scope & Sequence

Facing History Pedagogy

Facing History & Boston Public Schools:Facing History’s Case Studies

•The individual and society•The power of difference

•Difficult moments in history•The fragility of democracy•Choices & human behavior

•Multiple perspectives •Moral & ethical dilemmas•Civic participation today

» ICE BREAKER STRATEGY: CIRCLE WITHIN A CIRCLE/LINE DANCE

» What brings you to this workshop?

» What is your personal connection to this history or to the study of this history?

» Given the new year, what do you hope for most moving forward as an educator?

Contracting

Our Norms 1.Think with your head and your

heart.2.If you don’t understand

something, ask a question. 3.Listen with respect. 4.Share the talking time.

Session: Understanding Youth Identity During the HolocaustWhat are the complex factors that contribute to a person's identity?

What are the different parts of your identity?

Journal

Identity ChartsWhat words or phrases would you use to describe yourself?

How do our identities - or awareness of our identities - shift based on circumstance or context?

The Danger of a Single StoryA Ted Talk by Chimamanda Adichie

Do others see us the way we see ourselves?

Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adichie describes the effects that labels can have on how we think about ourselves and others:…Years later, I thought about this when I left Nigeria to go to university in the United States. I was 19. My American roommate was shocked by me. She asked where I had learned to speak English so well, and was confused when I said that Nigeria happened to have English as its official language. She asked if she could listen to what she called my “tribal music,” and was consequently very disappointed when I produced my tape of Mariah Carey. She assumed that I did not know how to use a stove. What struck me was this: She had felt sorry for me even before she saw me. Her default position toward me, as an African, was a kind of patronizing, well-meaning pity. My roommate had a single story of Africa: a single story of catastrophe. In this single story, there was no possibility of Africans being similar to her in any way, no possibility of feelings more complex than pity, no possibility of a connection as human equals.

But I must quickly add that I too am just as guilty in the question of the single story. A few years ago, I visited Mexico from the U.S. The political climate in the U.S. at the time was tense, and there were debates going on about immigration. And, as often happens in America, immigration became synonymous with Mexicans. There were endless stories of Mexicans as people who were fleecing the healthcare system, sneaking across the border, being arrested at the border, that sort of thing.I remember walking around on my first day in Guadalajara, watching the people going to work, rolling up tortillas in the marketplace, smoking, laughing. I remember first feeling slight surprise. And then, I was overwhelmed with shame. I realized that I had been so immersed in the media coverage of Mexicans that they had become one thing in my mind, the abject immigrant. I had bought into the single story of Mexicans and I could not have been more ashamed of myself. So that is how to create a single story, show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.

Inside/Outside Identity Chart

I’m Still Here - Salvaged Pages

19

Young Voices and Choices1.Break into groups to read a bio and journal entry excerpt

from the following young people:a.Elsa Binderb.Ilya Gerberc.Yitskhok Rudashevskid.David Rubinowicze.Elisabeth Kaufmannf. Klaus Langerg.Peter Feigl

2.Create an identity charta.Include 1-2 key passages from their diary entries that

connects to an aspect of their identity which becomes pronounced or emphasized as a result of their experience in the Holocaust.

Museum of Tolerance Tour ExperienceIncludes shortened Holocaust, Prejudice, History Wall with Focus on Children, Civil Rights

Personal Journal

After experiencing the museum tour, what are you thinking about? What is coming up for you?

Page 5 of the journal has a space for reactions and reflections.

Readings from Holocaust and Human Behavior Resource Book

Session: Turning Neighbor Against NeighborGoing deeper into Human Behavior, examining choices made by ordinary German Citizens in the 1930's

Essential Questions

How does identity influence the choices made?

What other factors influenced choices?

Why and how does neighbor turn against neighbor?

What is the universe of obligation?

Universe of obligation…the name Sociologist Helen Fein has given the

circle of individuals and groups “toward whom obligations are owed, to whom rules apply, and whose injuries call for amends.”

Accounting for Genocide, 1979

Instructions Each group has been assigned a reading that looks at the effects of Hitler’s consolidation of power in the 1930’s on the lives of ordinary Germans. The following is a list of selected readings from Holocaust and Human Behavior:

“Controlling The Universities” (chapter 5)“No Time To Think” (chapter 5)“Isolating Homosexuals” (chapter 5)“Do You Take The Oath?” (chapter 5)“The Birthday Party” (chapter 6)“Even If All Others Do – I Do Not!” (chapter 6)

InstructionsStep 1: Read the assigned text as a groupStep 2: Discuss the following questions:

A.What is the dilemma/decision presented in the reading?B.How does this dilemma/decision challenge this person’s

universe of obligation?C.What is the range of choices/options that the individual

faces?D.What is the ultimate decision that person makes?

Step 3: Based on your discussion in your group, create a visual representation of the moral dilemma in your reading. (You can all have the same visualization within your group, just make sure you have your own copy/version of it.)

Example Visual Representation from “Fear”

Give One Get OneYou will now circulate the room and meet someone who had a different reading (moral dilemma) than you. Take a couple of minutes to describe your reading and the moral dilemma your subject faced. Share your image.

After you have “given” your story, you will “get” another example a moral dilemma from your partner. What common threads are you noticing?

When you hear the signal, thank your partner and find someone in the room with a story different from yours or your partner’s for another round of “Give One Get One.”

Questions to Consider

What struck you about your reading or one of the readings that you heard during Give One Get One?

What connections are you making to our earlier session on identity?

Teacher Lens: What skills are addressed in this activity? How might you use elements of this activity in your classroom?

A Survivor's VoiceMuseum of Tolerance

Exit Card

ConnectionsDay Two

Conformity and Consent: What are the pressures influencing behaviors of

conformity and consent in society?

Journal

What measures do we use to influence the behavior of young people?When is it appropriate?When is it manipulative?

Under what circumstances do we relinquish our judgment and give over our moral decision making to someone else?

Heil Hitler! Confessions of a Hitler Youth

What are the factors that shaped Alfons Heck’s sense of identity influenced his decisions?

“The experience of the Hitler Youth in Nazi Germany constitutes a massive case of child abuse. Out of millions of basically innocent children, Hitler and his regime succeeded in creating potential monsters.

Could it happen again today? Of course it can. Children are like empty vessels, you can fill them with good, you can fill them with evil, you can fill them with hate, you can fill them with compassion. So the story of the Hitler Youth can be repeated because despite Auschwitz, the world has not changed for the better all that much.”

~ Alfons Heck

As you read, consider the following questions:●What are the pressures children face to conform to Nazi ideology?

●What choices to the young people in your reading make and how do they come to them?

●What impact can you see or infer on young people in your reading?

Jig-Saw and Found Poem

Pairs and Themes(A) Making exceptions for individuals while condemning the group

○ Learning to Be a Good German○ Can a National Socialist Have Jewish Friends?

(B) Dissent○ Rejecting Nazism○ Disillusionment in the Hitler Youth

(C) Coercion and pressure○ Models of Obedience○ Youth on the Margins

(D) Socialization and Indoctrination○ Schooling for the National Community○ “Heil Hitler!”: Lessons of Daily Life

After reading - creating poems

1.With your partner, create a found poem for the paired readings:a.Identify key words, phrases and passages

from both readings that help illuminate your theme

b.Rearrange and determine an order of words and phrases to create a poem

After reading - sharing poems -

1.Find three other pairs that looked at different readings. In your group of 8, you should have representation of all readings: A, B, C, D

2.Share your found poems with each other, then discuss:a.What similarities do you see across your

poems? What differences?b.What key ideas did you discover in your

readings?c.What new images of young people during the

Holocaust do you now have?

Synthesizing Our Learning About the Holocaust

Essential Question:

How does the new scholarship confirm and/or challenge our understandings of human behavior during the holocaust?

The Content: What’s New?

• Understanding Motivation: new focus on consensus, collaboration and opportunism

• Race and Space: integrating the war and the Holocaust, ideologically and chronologically

• Civilian Experiences: new emphasis on people in occupied countries beyond ghettos and camps

Essential Question

How does the new scholarship confirm and/or complicate our understandings of human behavior during the Holocaust?

Race and Space (chapter 8)According to historian Doris Bergen, the Nazi policies concerning “race” and “space” were closely related:Hitler was obsessed with two notions: that humanity was engaged in a giant struggle between “races,” or communities of “blood”; and that “pure Germans,” members of the so-called Aryan race, needed space to expand . . . Any race that was not expanding, he believed, was doomed to disappear.

As we watch the Video, consider how this clip confirms and/or challenges our understandings of human behavior during the holocaust.

Jigsaw Directions• In groups of three, examine three areas of

new scholarship: The Role of the U.S. in the war, The Role of Women in Nazi Germany, The Role of Self-Interest in Germany

• Read your scholar quote and reading• Summarize readings for your group

members• Together discuss how these readings

reinforce and/or complicate our understanding of human behavior during the Holocaust

Readings “Reaping the Benefit of War” (chp 8)“A Report on The Murder of Jews” (chp 9)“Proving Oneself in the East” (chp 9)

HHB Digital Edition • All readings on the website in a new

digital format– Organized by chapter– Organized by subtopics– Paired with related video and other content

• Ebook• Downloadable pdf

Refugee Nation

Exploring the Choices of Young People During Critical Historical Moments

Human Barometer

In the documentary Witness to the Holocaust, Miles Lehrman, a Holocaust survivor, writes, "A perpetrator is not the most dangerous enemy. The most dangerous part is the bystander because neutrality always helps the killer."

Choosing to ParticipateExploring the Choices of Young People During Critical Historic Moments

What does this all mean for other historical moments and for our young people today?

What knowledge, skills and dispositions are needed to be an upstander?

Strategies Used in this Workshop

Facing History is launching a new partnership with the Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC), which offers a structured and flexible approach to planning literacy instruction. The strategies shared during this webinar can be found both at facinghistory.org/commoncore and Facing History’s Mini-Task Collection on the Literacy Design Collaborative CoreTools library: coretools.ldc.org

Facing History and Ourselvesand the Literacy Design CollaborativeFacing History and Ourselvesand the Literacy Design Collaborative

Facing History and Ourselvesand the Literacy Design Collaborative

Where do we go from here?

● Follow-up

● Professional Development Opportunities

● Access Resources

● Evaluation