How could a Holocaust Survivor write about his/her experience?

Much of what occurred during the Holocaust seems too horrible to imagine. Indeed, for many years following the end of World War II, survivors were extremely hesitant to speak of their personal experiences. They focused instead on rebuilding their lives. Following Adolf Eichmann's trial in the 1960s, Holocaust survivors finally began to speak and write about their traumatic ordeals. For each survivor, the act of recounting the Holocaust experience is a personal struggle. Many share their painful memories in an effort to understand or accept the Holocaust with the urgent hope that such a dark age of human history will never be repeated. The content of a written survivor memoir, whether presented as fact or transformed into fiction, is often harrowing and gruesome. Still, biographies and personal narratives can help to personalize historical events and establish real faces in the overwhelming sea of facts and statistics. Elie Wiesel has been credited as the first to break the nearly twenty years of silence with his remarkable semi-fictionalized memoir, Night, a work inextricably associated with Holocaust literature.

Night by Elie Wiesel

This highly regarded novel, first of the three part series called The Night Trilogy, tells of Elie Wiesel's teenage experiences at various Nazi camps. One of the most gripping autobiographical ordeals in literature, it carries the reader into the hell of Nazi perversity to the death camps intended to rid the German Reich of its Jews.

At Auschwitz, Elie and his father were separated forever from his mother and sister. Fifteen-year old Elie struggled to maintain his religious faith in the face of Nazi brutality. He finally despairs of both God and humanity, yet juxtaposed against the atrocities is the story of his enduring relationship with his father. This emotional, imaginative, and thought-provoking memoir deals with the issues of survival, loss, death, and faith.

The Holocaust

• Create a document in Google Drive that you will keep in your LA10 folder titled "The Holocaust." Freewrite on the following question:

What do you already know about the Holocaust? What have you heard? Have you seen any movies or read any stories? Do you, by chance, have any personal connection?

The Holocaust… as defined by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial

Museum• A specific genocidal event in twentieth-

century history: the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945.

• Jews were the primary victims—6 million were murdered; Gypsies, the handicapped, and Poles were also targeted for destruction or decimation for racial, ethnic, or national reasons.

• Millions more, including homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war, and political dissidents, also suffered grievous oppression and death under Nazi tyranny.

Unit Terminology

• Assimilation: To accept the culture of another group while giving up one’s own

• Ghetto: A section of the city in which Jews were required to live, surrounded by walls.

• Genocide: Total annihilation of a race or ethnic group (coined after WWII as a direct result of how some nationalities/ethnic groups were mistreated during the war).

Unit Terminology• Holocaust: Greek root means “burnt

hole”; destruction of 6 million Jews and approx. 6 million non-Jews during 1933-1945.

• Aryan Race: The pure Germanic race, used by the Nazis to suggest a superior, non-Jewish Caucasian typified by height, blonde hair, blue eyes.

• Third Reich: The 3rd Republic of Germany which began with Hitler’s rule in 1933, and ended with his defeat in 1945.

Unit Terminology• SS (Shutzstaffel: "Protection Squadron"):

est. 1929 as Hitler’s black-shirted bodyguards; became elite guards of Nazis, trained in brutality and put in charge of concentration camps.

• Gestapo (abbreviation of Geheime Staatspolizei, "Secret State Police"): Secret police, organized in 1933, to uncover and undermine political opposition.

• The Final Solution: plan devised in 1941 to speed up the system of killing the Jews and “undesirables” (gas chambers, crematories)

Unit Terminology

• Selection: Term used when the SS forced prisoners to line up for inspection and decided which prisoners would live and which would be killed.

• Allied Powers: Nations fighting Nazi Germany, Italy, and Japan (primarily U.S., Britain, and Soviet Union).

• Axis Powers: Nazi Germany, Italy, and Japan

Unit Vocabulary Terminology

• Concentration Camps: Est. 1933 by Nazis; for the imprisonment of all “enemies” of their regime (all political opponents e.g. communists, socialists, monarchists), Jehovah’s Witnesses, gypsies, homosexuals, and other “a-socials”

– Beginning in 1938, Jews were specifically targeted (before then, only Jews fitting the above criteria were interned in camps).

– First 3 camps established: Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen

Unit Terminology

• Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"): Hitler’s 1923 autobiographical book, written while he was imprisoned for a failed Nazi political takeover in Munich. In it, he proclaims his ideas for Germany: Germans having a “superior race,” and accusing Jews of being the source of all evil. – People who read the book (except his

admirers) didn’t take it seriously – it was considered the ravings of a maniac

Unit Terminology• Nuremburg Laws: 2 anti-Jewish

statutes enacted in 1935 during the Nazi Party’s national convention in Nuremburg, taking away Jews’ civil rights.– Deprived German Jews of citizenship and

related rights, outlawed marriage of Jews and non-Jews, forbade Jews from employing German females of childbearing age, and displaying the German flag

– Carefully defined Jewishness based on bloodlines (even if you had a Jewish grandparent, you would face discrimination)

Unit Terminology (Jewish Terms)

• Torah: Primary source in the Jewish religion is the Hebrew bible – 24 books in 3 sections (the first 5 books of the Bible)

• Talmud: A collection of teachings of early rabbis from the 5th and 6th centuries.

• Cabbala: Hasidic Jews also read this commentary on the Torah (more mystical).

Unit Terminology (Jewish Terms)

• Rosh Hashanah: Marks the new year of the Jewish calendar.

• Yom Kippur: The holiest day of the Jewish calendar, the day in which every individual is judged by God.

• Passover: An eight-day festival commemorating the freeing of the Israelites from Egyptian bondage.

Holocaust History Timeline

1933:

- Nazi party takes power in Germany. Adolf Hitler becomes chancellor,or prime minister of Germany.- Nazis 'temporarily' suspend civil liberties

- The Nazis set up the first

concentration camp at Dachau. The first inmates are 200 Communists.

- Books with ideas considered dangerous to Nazi beliefs are burned.

1934

• Hitler combines the positions of chancellor and president to become 'Fuhrer' (leader) of Germany.'

• Jewish newspapers can no longer be sold in the streets.,

1935

• Jews are deprived of their citizenship and other basic rights.

• The Nazis intensify the persecution of political people that donÕt agree with his philosophy.

1936

• Nazis boycott Jewish-owned business.

• The Olympic Games are held in Germany; signs barring Jews are removed until the event is over.

• Jews no longer have the right to vote.

1938• On Kristallnacht, the 'Night of Broken

Glass,' Nazis terrorized Jews throughout Germany and Austria - 30,000 Jews are arrested.

• Jews must carry id cards and Jewish passports are marked with a "J."

• Jews no longer head businesses, attend plays, concerts, etc.;

• all Jewish children are moved to Jewish schools.

• Jewish businesses are shut down; they must sell businesses and hand over securities and jewels.

• Jews must hand over drivers's licenses and car registrations.

• Jews must be in certain places at certain times.

1939

• Germany takes over Czechoslovakia and invades Poland.

• World War II begins as Britain and France declare war on Germany.

• Hitler orders that Jews must follow curfews; Jews must turn in radios to the police; Jews must wear yellow stars of David.

1940• Nazis begin deporting German

Jews to Poland.

• Jews are forced into ghettos.

• Nazis begin the first mass murder of Jews in Poland.

• Jews are put into concentration camps.

1941

• Germany attacks the Soviet Union. • Jews throughout Western Europe

are forced into ghettos.• Jews may not leave their houses

without permission form the police.

• Jews may no longer use public telephones.

1942

• Nazi officials discuss the 'Final Solution' - their plan to kill all European Jews to the government officials.

– Jews are forbidden to: subscribe to newspapers; keep dogs, cats, birds, etc; keep electrical equipment including typewriters; own bicycles; buy meat, eggs, or mild; use public transportation; attend school.

1943

• February: About 80 to 85 percent of the Jews who would die in the Holocaust have already been murdered.

1944• Hitler takes over Hungary and

begins deporting 12,000 Hungarian Jews each day to Auschwitz where they are murdered.

1945

• Hitler is defeated and World War II ends in Europe.

• The Holocaust is over and the death camps are emptied.

• Many survivors are placed in displaced persons facilities.

1946

• An International Military Tribunal (Judicial assembly) is created by Britain, France,the United States, and the Soviet Union.

• At Nuremburg, Nazi leaders are tried for war crimes by the above Judicial assembly.

1947• The United Nations establishes a

Jewish homeland in British-controlled Palestine, which becomes the State of Israel in 1948.

Dachau

Buchenwald

Auschwitz

Birkenau