centre for holocaust education€¦ · esther brunstein, holocaust survivor. title: slide 1 author:...
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Centre forHolocaust Education
Resistance
How can the story of resistance be told?
Aims
To start thinking about the meaning of ‘resistance.’
To consider how context and circumstance may or may
not have influenced the capacity to resist.
In narrating a story of resistance, to be able to counter
the myth that Jews ‘did not fight back.’
In groups either:
Construct a definition of ‘resistance’
or
Note words or phrases you would associate with the
term ‘resistance’
What does ‘resistance’ look like?
What does ‘resistance’ look like?
‘Resistance’
disobeying instructions
destroying something
aggressivejustice
fighting
confrontation
brave
killing someone
violence
desperation refusing to comply
being defiant
masculine?
being heroic
What does ‘resistance’ look like?
Detail from model of Auschwitz at IWM
Cover from book written on the Warsaw Getto
Uprising written in Hebrew (1947)
Passive victims, active fighters, or something else?
Contexts
Context: People
Can you guess what
nationality are these
people?
Are they religious? How
can you tell?
What is the relationship
between them, do you
think?
What may have stopped
theses people from
‘fighting back’? What
obstacles or barriers did
they face to take up arms?
Context: Knowledge, understanding,
conception
‘In front of the building there were pots of geraniums and a
sign saying “Hackenholt Foundation”, above which there
was a Star of David. The building was brightly and
pleasantly painted…
I do not believe that the people who had just arrived had
any idea of what would happen to them.’
SS Lieutenant-Colonel Wilhelm Pfannenstiel
Context:
What were people resisting against?
‘This is a page of glory in our history, which has never
been written and is never to be written.’
Heinrich Himmler
October 1943
Context: What did it mean to 'resist'?
Dear Finder
Search everywhere, in every inch of soil. Tens of
documents are buried under it – mine and those of
other persons – which will throw light on
everything that was happening here.
Great amounts of teeth are also buried here. It
was we, the Sonderkommando, who have strewn
them all over the ground, as many as we could, so
that the world should find material traces of the
millions of murdered people.
We ourselves have lost hope of being able to live
to see the moment of liberation…
Telling the story of resistance
What do these case studies do?
What do they reveal to us?
How do you tell the story of resistance?
What is the story that you want
to tell?
Which case studies help you
tell this story?
Choose up to five case studies
What knowledge will your
visitor go away with?
Father helping his son take off his shoes before
entering the gas chambers at Treblinka (2002)
Samuel Willenberg, Survivor of the Treblinka Death
Camp
Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, Warsaw, Poland
(1948). Sculpted by Nathan Rappaport, who fled to
the Soviet Union when the Nazis invaded, and
returned at the end of the war.
How are these memories of resistance similar or
different, and why? What are they saying about
how we might think about ‘resistance’?
What does 'resistance' mean?
‘To have survived one day under those conditions
and retain one’s values was a great act of
resistance.’
Esther Brunstein, Holocaust survivor