1. The Holocaust
It was a defining moment of the 20th century

2. What was the Holocaust?
The systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.
Holocaust is a word of Greek origin and it means sacrifice by fire. The Nazis who came to power believed the Germans were “racially superior” and that the Jews were inferior and unworthy of life.
The Nazis targeted other groups because of their perceived “racial inferiority”
Two out of every three European Jews were killed as part of Hitler’s “Final Solution”

3. Why Study the Holocaust?
Was a major event in world history
Understand ramifications of prejudice, racism, stereotyping
Explore the dangers of remaining silent
Demonstrates how a modern nation can use technology to implement destructive policies from social engineering to genocide
Learning about the history of the Holocaust encourages students to investigate human behavior and reflect upon moral and ethical questions. Students begin to understand the ramifications of prejudice, racism, and stereotyping that takes place in any society, while raising questions about fairness, justice, individual identity, peer pressure, conformity, obedience, and the dangers of being silent in regards to the indifference and suffering of others.
Students will examine the use and abuse of power and the roles and responsibilities of individuals, organizations, and nations when confronted with moral issues and civil rights violations. Through their study of the historical, religious, social, and political factors that all converged to cumulatively result in the events of the Holocaust, they will learn that it is a citizen's responsibility in a democratic society to recognize the danger signals and know when to react.

4. Why Study the Holocaust?
Think about use and abuse of power
Think about roles and responsibilities of individuals, organizations, and nations
Gain insight into historical, religious, political, and economic factors that cumulatively resulted in the Holocaust
It is a citizen’s responsibility in a democratic society to recognize the dangers signals and know when to react.

5. Denying the Holocaust Some believe the Holocaust never happened.
Impossible for a group to commit the murder of six million people.
Enormous amount of evidence that it did happen
Some people deny that the Holocaust ever happened. They claim that it was impossible for any group of people to have committed the murders of six million Jews.
There is an enormous amount of evidence that the Holocaust did happen. The Nazis took many photos to document this event and we will look at some of this primary documentation.
There are also survivors who tell their stories of the horror of life under the Nazi’s. Most of the survivors who are alive today were children when the Holocaust took place so some say their accounts are not accurate, especially as they get older and their memories fade. Because of this, there has been a race to document as much of this history as possible, before it fades.

6. More than any other photo, this photo captures the essence of the horrors of the Holocaust. Warsaw April 1943, a little Jewish Boy, dressed in short trousers and a cap, raises his arms in surrender with lowered eyes, as a Nazi soldier trains his machine gun on him.
This photo has come to symbolize the suffering of the entire Jewish people during the Holocaust. Who was this little boy? Did he survive World War II?
Analyze the photo:
Notice the armband on the woman framed in the doorway with her hand raised. This armband features the Star of David. There is also a faded star sewn to the coat of the small boy, just above his heart.
Why is the uniform of the soldier standing in the doorway different from the uniforms of the soldiers on the right? (The soldiers on the far right are regular German army, while the man in the doorway was a Nazi officer. Note that the Nazi uniform is more highly decorated)
Where are the young men? The father’s and older brothers? (sent to labor camps. Another factor was the Nazi tactic of separating families to keep people more docile. Another factor is that this is a final roundup- those young who remained to the end in the Warsaw Ghetto maily died in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising)
Discuss the feelings of the people in the photograph. (What do you notice about their eyes? What do they expect will happen to them next? You can tell they are frightened.
These are Jews who are holding their hands in the air because they are being charged with a crime. They are guilty of being Jewish and this is a crime that was punishable by death.
Who took this photograph and why? (The photographer may have been documenting what happened for his superiors, or he may have been a soldier taking the photograph as a future momento, or he may have been a member of the press)
This photo was selected as evidence at the Nuremberg Trials. Why do you think it was selected?
After the war, this photo appeared in files, exhibitions, magazines, books, newspaper articles and in television documentary programs.
Over one million children under the age of sixteen died in the Holocaust. They were plucked from their homes and stripped of their childhoods. They lived and died during the dark years of the Holocaust and were victims of the Nazi regime. Persecution, arrests, and deportations were directed against all members of Jewish families regardless of age. The children witnessed the murder of parents, siblings, and relatives and they faced starvation, illness, and brutal labor, until they were taken to the gas chambers.
What happened to this little boy?
Millions of people were brought to believe that the frighened little boy of this photograph was murdered too. As Washington Post commented: The photgraph goes right to the heart- no doubt the boy, like millions of other Jews, were killed by the Nazis…

7. Dr. Tsvi C. Nussbaum
After several decades, the boy was found- Tsvi C. Nussbaum, a physician living in Rockland County in upstate New York, USA, was the then seven year old little boy. He told how he and his aunt were arrested in front of a Warsaw hotel, where Jews with foreign passports had gathered to find a way to escape Poland. He remembered the date, July 13, 1943, and how he was told to put his hands up: I remember there was a soldier in front of me, he told the newspaper, recalling the picture, and he ordered me to raise my hands.
Nussenbaum’s story is an especially tragic one, most notably because his parents had immigrated to then Palestine in But they found life too difficult there, and returned to the town of Sandomierz, Poland in Nussbaum’s parents were murdered before the Jews were deported, and his brother simply disappeared. He and his aunt went to Warsaw and managed to live there as gentiles for over a year. When caught, they were deported to the KZ camp, Bergen-Belsen in Germany
A few days before the liberation, Tsvi almost died, but a doctor, a German doctor, stayed to keep him alive. The little Jewish Boy miraculously survived the Holocaust.
In 1945, Nussbaum went to Palestine and spent the next eight years in what became the state of Isreal. Then in 1953, he went to America. He arrived not knowing a word of English, and excelled in science. He went to medical school, and became an ear, nose, and throat specialist, largely motivated by the desire to help his uncle, who has a speech defect as a result of a larynx damaged in the concentration camps.
He got married, had four daughters and two grandchildren. He kept that famous photograph, with another one of himself at that age, on the wall of his waiting room. In a recent interview he said: I feel a trememdous guilt… why did I survive?
What happened to the Nazi soldier on the right with the gun? Who was he? What happened to him?
Today we know his fate, too. His name was Josef Oskar Blosche, a vicious and sadistic man known in the Ghetto as Frankenstein. He was born on Feb. 5, 1912 in Friedland and was an SS-Rottenfuhrer-SS no during World War II. He was awarded the War Service Cross 2nd Class for his service during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. After the war he fled, but was recognized in the Soviet zone of Germany by survivors from the Ghetto, put on trial and convicted of murder. He was executed for his crimes.

8. Poem: The Little Polish Boy
view the Poem: The Little Polish Boy
Explain to students that the poet was a hidden child during the Holocaust.
Discuss with students the poet’s use of repitition of lines for emphasis.
Why would the author make a painting ten million miles high? Would it be possible to avoid seeing a painting that large? What message would the size of the painting convey? What effect would it have on the viewer?
When the author states, “I’ll make this painting so bright that it will blind the eyes of the world who say nothing,” is he expressing a desire to memorialize the boy as well as a desire to punish the perpetrators and bystanders?
Any Holocaust study recognizes three elements: Perpetrators, victims, and bystanders. How are they all represented in the poem? In the picture?
To whom is the author referring in the lines, “the world who said nothing.” “who saw nothing,” “who heard nothing”? Why did the author repeat those lines? What effect did the repetition have on you?
During the Holocaust, what actions could have been taken by individuals? By groups? By governments? How might history have been changed if more individuals, groups, and governments would have taken those actions? What actions were taken by those entities in Finland and Denmark?
The author remembers vividly his World War II experiences as a child hidden in an apartment on the fifth floor… remaining alone in a dark room, totally silent,while others found refuge in the basement during Allied bombings of Bedapest. In his poem, how does he reveal the child’s stark terror of being alone to face the interminable pounding of tons of bombs? In addition to being killed by a bomb, what other fears did the child suffer? What mark would that leave on the psyche and on the world?
How does the author assure the little boy that now the world will see, hear, and commiserate with his sufferings?
Does the author reveal a desire to exact a pound of punishment on those who said, saw, heard, and did nothing? If so, where is that revealed in the poem?
A cruel absurdity of human injustice is revealed in both the poster and the poem. The photo was taken to show how the Jews were rounded up and terminated. It was to be sent to Adolf Hitler for his birthday. How is that an unspeakably cruel irony?

9. Us and Them
How we define ourselves often determines how we define others.
Read “The Bear That Wasn’t”
“All the people like us are we, and everyone else is they”
Rudyard Kipling
What does the title “The Bear That Wasn’t” mean?
Why didn’t the factory officials recognize the Bear for what he was?
Why did it become harder and harder for him to maintain his identity as he moved through the bureaucracy of the factory?
What is Tashlin suggesting about the relationship between an individual and society? About the way a person’s identity is defined? About the way powerful individuals and groups shape the identity of those with less power and authority.
How does our need to be a part of a group affect our actions? Why is it so difficult for a person to go against the group? Have you ever experienced a similar problem to that of the Bear? How did you deal with it? Were you able to maintain your independence? How difficult was it to do so?
“Who am I?” is a question that each of us asks at some time in our life. As we search for the answer, we begin to define ourselves.
Create an identity chart or an identity box. If you do an identity box, the outside should reflect what others see and the inside should reflect how you view yourselves.

10. Prejudice Define prejudice Video: Little Things Are Big
Adolf Hitler did not invent prejudice, it has always existed. The word prejudice comes from the Latin root word judicium which means judgement and the prefix is prae which means before. The Webster’s New World Dictionary defines prejudice as “to judge before knowing”
In what environment might a child learn prejudice? Who teaches him or her? Would a lack of knowledge and understanding about a person or group add to that prejudice?
What are some examples of discrimination, prejudice, and racism today? What can you do to open a window to understanding and tolerance in your corner of the world?
Go to session 1
Go to Reading Little Things are Big
In the 1950’s, segregation and ideas about race shaped the way Americans in all parts of the nation saw one another as well as the way they same themselves. As writer Jesus Colon discovered on a subway ride in New York City, those ideas also influenced decisions people made about one another.
Jesus Colon believed that racism kept him from making the choice he would have liked to make. It has also played an important role in the choices other people have made.
Discrimination occurs when prejudices are transformed into actions.

11. The In Group Video: Eve Shalen: The In Group Go to pre-work session
Go to Reading: The In Group
How important is peer pressure to the way we see ourselves and others?
How did Eve Shalen’s need to belong shape her identity? How did it affect the way she responded when another girl was mocked? Why does her response still trouble her? How do you think you would have responded to the incident?
Hatred begins in the heart and not in the head. In so many instances we do not hate people because of a particular deed, but rather we find that deed ugly because we hate them.” How do Shalen’s experiences support the statement?
Assignment: Online post: “Often being accepted by others is more satisfying than being accepted by oneself, even though the satisfaction does not last.” What does she mean? How is her story like that of the Bear in the The Bear that Wasn’t? How is it different?
How did Hitler teach prejudice to the Youth? (The Poison Mushroom, math problems in school, etc.)
How did Hitler play on people’s need to belong? (Hitler Youth Group, Groups for Girls, Discriminate against those who were different)
Could this discrimination occur today? Could it occur in the United States? View Not in Our Town clip from the Facing History website.

12. Closure What does the word Holocaust mean to you and why?
Why is it important to study the Holocaust?
Why do some people insist the Holocaust never happened?