Tuesday, June 26, 2018

History Shows: Kids Never Change


I THINK I GOT SOME OF THE BEST RESULTS in my class by emphasizing at the start of every year that history was the study of people.

My first lesson every year focused on that concept, that nothing human is alien to our own experiences.  (Here, I was quoting the Roman poet Terrence.) The excitement of the 49er striking gold would be recognizable to anyone winning a Super Bowl bet today. A pioneer woman wrote about overhearing an argument coming through the canvas of another wagon in the circle after a long day crossing the prairie. The youthful soldier facing combat at Bull Run could identify with the fears of the youthful soldier, often female today, driving down a dusty road in Iraq looking for IEDs. Young people fell in love in 1720 the same as they do three hundred years later. 

Even Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were spurned.

I’m retired now, but still interested in education—and some of these examples might be of use to young teachers. In my class, for example, when we talked about the Puritans we looked at entries from the diary of Samuel Sewall. This one always touched off an interesting discussion. Sewall is talking about his young son, Joseph:

November 6, 1692:  Joseph threw a knob of Brass and hit his Sister Betty on the forehead so as to make it bleed and swell...I whipp’d him pretty smartly.  When I first went in...he tried to shadow and hide himself from me behind the head of the Cradle.


If you wanted to spend a little time, you could ask students if they’d ever thrown anything at their brothers or sisters. Almost everyone wanted to join that discussion. I still remember the young man who informed us that after an argument his brother got even with him by filling his deodorant dispenser with cream cheese.

That one made me laugh so hard, I couldn’t continue for a moment.

In any case, I’m convinced young people have never really changed (or old people), even if society changes around them. Even the ancient Greeks complained about “kids today.” Aristophanes wrote in jest:

Come listen now to the good old days when the children,
               strange to tell
          Were seen not heard, led a simple life, in short were brought
               up well.                                                      


The following pictures from Cosmopolitan magazine, Volume XLII, in 1906, might serve to start a discussion with students:











Even the great political thinker, John Locke, was baffled by the behavior of young people in his day. In setting down his ideas on education for a friend to consider, Locke noted the great need parents had for guidance:




THE TOUCHSTONE OF MY CLASS, every year, was this. We can feel what others feel if we grasp the true meaning of history. We can cultivate empathy, if you will. 

We can understand the human race. 

Terrence said it best and I always made sure, as best I could, that my students understood what he meant two thousand years ago, when he said:





Thomas Jefferson's Slave Son, Madison Hemings, Tells His Story


The following article first appeared in the Pike County Republican, an Ohio newspaper, March 13, 1873. 


The author, Madison Hemings, claimed to be the son of President Thomas Jefferson and his slave, Sally Hemings.

For more than a century, his claims were ignored.

(I have changed paragraphing in places in the interest of readability.)

The author of this blog poses at Monticello, on the way to bicycling across the United States.

*

I never knew of but one white man who bore the name of Hemings; he was an Englishman and my great grandfather. He was captain of an English trading vessel which sailed between England and Williamsburg, Va., then quite a port.

My [great] grandmother was a fullblooded African, and possibly a native of that country. She was the property of John Wales, a Welchman. Capt. Hemings happened to be in the port of Williamsburg at the time my grandmother was born, and acknowledging her fatherhood he tried to purchase her of Mr. Wales, who would not part with the child, though he was offered an extraordinarily large price for her. She was named Elizabeth Hemings.[1]

Being thwarted in the purchase, and determining to own his flesh and blood he resolved to take the child by force or stealth, but the knowledge of his intention coming to John Wales’ ears, through leaky fellow servants of the mother, she and the child were taken into the “great house” under their master’s immediate care. I have been informed that it was not the extra value of that child over other slave children that induced Mr. Wales to refuse to sell it, for slave masters then, as in later days, had no compunctions of conscience [no moral objections] which restrained them from parting mother and child of however tender age, but he was restrained by the fact that just about that time amalgamation [race mixing; combination of races] began, and the child was so great a curiosity that its owner desired to raise it himself that he might see its outcome. Capt. Hemings soon afterwards sailed from Williamsburg, never to return. Such is the story that comes down to me.

Elizabeth Hemings grew to womanhood in the family of John Wales, whose wife dying she (Elizabeth) was taken by the widower Wales as his concubine, by, whom she had six children—three sons and three daughters, viz: Robert, James, Peter, Critty, Sally and Thena. These children went by the name of Hemings.[2]

Williamsburg was the capital of Virginia, and of course it was an aristocratic place, where the “bloods” [bluebloods] of the Colony and the new State most did congregate. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, was educated at William and Mary College, which had its seat at Williamsburg. He afterwards studied law with Geo. Wythe, and practiced law at the bar of the general court of the Colony. He was afterwards elected a member of the provincial legislature from Albemarle county. Thos. Jefferson was a visitor at the “great house” of John Wales, who had children about his own age. He formed the acquaintance of his daughter Martha (I believe that was her name, though I am not positively sure,) and intimacy sprang up between them which ripened into love, and they were married. They afterwards went to live at his country seat Monticello, and in course of time had born to them a daughter whom they named Martha.

About the time she was born my mother, the second daughter of John Wales and Elizabeth Hemings was born. On the death of John Wales, my grandmother, his concubine, and her children by him fell to Martha, Thomas Jefferson’s wife, and consequently became the property of Thomas Jefferson, who in the course of time became famous, and was appointed minister to France during our revolutionary troubles, or soon after independence was gained.

About the time of the appointment and before he was ready to leave the country his wife died, and as soon after her interment as he could attend to and arrange his domestic affairs in accordance with the changed circumstances of his family in consequence of this misfortune (I think not more than three weeks thereafter) he left for France, taking his eldest daughter with him. He had sons born to him, but they died in early infancy, so he then had but two children—Martha and Maria. The latter was left home, but afterwards was ordered to follow him to France. She was three years or so younger than Martha. My mother accompanied her as a body servant. When Mr. Jefferson went to France Martha was a young woman grown, my mother was about her age and Maria was just budding into womanhood. Their stay (my mother’s and Maria’s) was about eighteen months. But during that time my mother became Mr. Jefferson’s concubine, and when he was called back home she was enciente [pregnant] by him.

He desired to bring my mother back to Virginia with him but she demurred. She was just beginning to understand the French language well, and in France she was free, while if she returned to Virginia she would be re-enslaved. So she refused to return with him. To induce her to do so he promised her extraordinary privileges, and made a solemn pledge that her children should be freed at the age of twenty-one years. In consequence of his promise, on which she implicitly relied, she returned with him to Virginia. Soon after their arrival, she gave birth to a child, of whom Thomas Jefferson was the father. It lived but a short time. She gave birth to four others, and Jefferson was the father of all of them. Their names were Beverly, Harriet, Madison (myself), and Eston—three sons and one daughter. We all became free agreeably to the treaty entered into by our parents before we were born. We all married and have raised families.[3]

Beverly left Monticello and went to Washington as a white man. He married a white woman in Maryland, and their only child, a daughter, was not known by the white folks to have any colored blood coursing in her veins. Beverly's wife’s family were people in good circumstances.[4]

Harriet married a white man in good standing in Washington City, whose name I could give, but will not, for prudential reasons. She raised a family of children, and so far as I know they were never suspected of being tainted with African blood in the community where she lived or lives. I have not heard from her for ten years, and do not know whether she is dead or alive. She thought it to her interest, on going to Washington, to assume the role of a white woman, and by her dress and conduct as such I am not aware that her identity as Harriet Hemings of Monticello has ever been discovered.

Eston married a colored woman in Virginia, and moved from there to Ohio, and lived in Chillicothe several years. In the fall of 1852 he removed to Wisconsin, where he died a year or two afterwards. He left three children.

As to myself, I was named Madison by the wife of James Madison, who was afterwards President of the United States. Mrs. Madison happened to be at Monticello at the time of my birth, and begged the privilege of naming me, promising my mother a fine present for the honor. She consented, and Mrs. Madison dubbed me by the name I now acknowledge, but like many promises of white folks to the slaves she never gave my mother anything. I was born at my father's seat of Monticello, in Albemarle county, Va., near Charlottesville, on the 18th day of January, 1805. My very earliest recollections are of my grandmother Elizabeth Hemings. That was when I was about three years old. She was sick and upon her death bed. I was eating a piece of bread and asked if she would have some. She replied: “No, granny don’t want bread any more.” She shortly afterwards breathed her last. I have only a faint recollection of her.

Of my father, Thomas Jefferson, I knew more of his domestic than his public life during his life time. It is only since his death that I have learned much of the latter, except that he was considered as a foremost man in the land, and held many important trusts, including that of President. I learned to read by inducing the white children to teach me the letters and something more; what else I know of books I have picked up here and there till now I can read and write. I was almost 21 1/2 years of age when my father died on the 4th of July, 1826.[5]

About his own home he was the quietest of men. He was hardly ever known to get angry, though sometimes he was irritated when matters went wrong, but even then he hardly ever allowed himself to be made unhappy any great length of time. Unlike Washington he had but little taste or care for agricultural pursuits. He left matters pertaining to his plantations mostly with his stewards and overseers. He always had mechanics at work for him, such as carpenters, blacksmiths, shoemakers, coopers, &c. It was his mechanics he seemed mostly to direct, and in their operations he took great interest. Almost every day of his later years he might have been seen among them. He occupied much of the time in his office engaged in correspondence and reading and writing.

His general temperament was smooth and even; he was very undemonstrative. He was uniformly kind to all about him. He was not in the habit of showing partiality or fatherly affection to us children. We were the only children of his by a slave woman. He was affectionate toward his white grandchildren, of whom he had fourteen, twelve of whom lived to manhood and womanhood. His daughter Martha married Thomas Mann Randolph by whom she had thirteen children. Two died in infancy. The names of the living were Ann, Thomas Jefferson, Ellen, Cornelia, Virginia, Mary, James, Benj. Franklin, Lewis Madison, Septemia and Geo. Wythe. Thos. Jefferson Randolph was Chairman of the Democratic National Convention in Baltimore last spring which nominated Horace Greeley for the Presidency, and Geo. Wythe Randolph was Jeff. Davis’ first Secretary of War [during the American Civil War] in the late “unpleasantness.”

Maria married John Epps, and raised one son—Francis.

My father generally enjoyed excellent health. I never knew him to have but one spell of sickness, and that was caused by a visit to the Warm Springs in 1818. Till within three weeks of his death he was hale and hearty, and at the age of 83 years walked erect and with a stately tread. I am now 68, and I well remember that he was a much smarter man physically, even at that age, than I am.

When I was fourteen years old I was put to the carpenter trade under the charge of John Hemings, the youngest son of my grandmother. His father’s name was Nelson, who was an Englishman. She had seven children by white men and seven by colored men—fourteen in all.

My brothers, sister Harriet and myself, were used alike. They were put to some mechanical trade at the age of fourteen. Till then we were permitted to stay about the “great house,” and required to do such light work as going on errands. Harriet learned to spin and to weave in a little factory on the home plantation. We were free from the dread of having to be slaves all our lives long, and were measurably happy. We were always permitted to be with our mother, who was well used. It was her duty, all her life which I can remember, up to the time of father’s death, to take care of his chamber and wardrobe, look after us children and do such light work as sewing, and Provision was made in the will of our father that we should be free when we arrived at the age of 21 years.

We had all passed that period when he died but Eston, and he was given the remainder of his time shortly after. He and I rented a house and took mother to live with us, till her death, which event occurred in 1835.

In 1831 I married Mary McCoy. Her grandmother was a slave, and lived with her master, Stephen Hughes, near Charlottesville, as his wife. She was manumitted [set free legally] by him, which made their children free born. Mary McCoy’s mother was his daughter. I was about 23 and she 23 years of age when we married. We lived and labored together in Virginia till 1836, when we voluntarily left and came to Ohio. We settled in Pebble township, Pike County. We lived there four or five years and during my stay in the county I worked at my trade on and off for about four years. Joseph Sewell was my first employer. I built for him what is now known as Bizzleport No. 2 in Waverly. I afterwards worked for George Wolf Senior. and I did the carpenter work for the brick building now owned by John J. Kellison in which the Pike County Republican is printed. I worked for and with Micajah Hinson. I found him to be a very clever man. I also reconstructed the building on the corner of Market and Water Streets from a store to a hotel for the late Judge Jacob Row. [6]

When we came from Virginia we brought one daughter (Sarah) with us, leaving the dust of a son in the soil near Monticello. We have born to us in this State nine children. Two are dead. The names of the living, besides Sarah, are Harriet, Mary Ann, Catharine, Jane, William Beverly, James Madison, Ellen Wales. Thomas Eston died in the Andersonville prison pen, and Julia died at home. William, James and Ellen are unmarried and live at home in Huntington township, Ross County. All the others are married and raising families.[7]

A slave owner could afford fancy silverware
(Picture taken at Andrew Jackson's home; the Hermitage).



[1] In the original article, Madison Hemings says his grandmother was a fullblooded African in one sentence; he clearly means here, his “great-grandmother.” His actual grandmother was half white.
[2] This would mean Sally Hemings was three-fourths white. As late as 1983 the State of Louisiana listed anyone with one-sixteenth African-American blood as “colored,” the old term for “black” or African-American.
            Susie Guillory Philips, a white woman in her own view (fifteen-sixteenths white) sued the state to force a change.


[3] Madison and his siblings would then be one-eighth black.
[4] With so many laws aimed at limiting the rights of African-Americans, it was not uncommon for mixed-race individuals to “pass” as white. Those of darker complexion might claim to be Italian or Native-American. Beverly’s children would be one-sixteenth African American.
[5] In his will, Jefferson set Sally Hemings’ children free; no other slaves were freed when he died. By comparison, George Washington made it clear in his will that his 123 slaves would be freed upon the death of his wife, Martha, which occurred in 1802. Slaves owned by his wife were not freed and were passed down to her grandchildren.
[6] Like most “free states,” Ohio limited the rights of free blacks. The Ohio Constitution denied blacks the vote. They could not serve on juries or testify against whites. They could not join the militia. Originally, Ohio provided no schools for African American children and they were not allowed to attend white schools. A free black had to show documents proving he or she was free before settling in the state. In 1807, lawmakers added a requirement that a free black person find two whites willing to “guarantee a surety of five hundred dollars for the African Americans’ good behavior.”
[7] Hemings’ son served in the Union Army during the Civil War. For a fuller picture of life in that prison, see The Diary of John Ransom, available at my TpT website.


Thursday, June 21, 2018

Scars from the Civil War and Scars Today


 It is estimated that 50,000 limbs were amputated during the war. The New York Times reports, (6/20/18), on a discovery at the battlefield for Bull Run, probably from the second fight in 1862. 

The remains of two soldiers are uncovered as well as the partial remains of eleven other men. Forensic evidence indicates the soldiers fought for the Union. The Times reports:


One skeleton, of a Caucasian male in his late 20’s, still had a .577 caliber Enfield bullet—which was deployed almost exclusively by the Confederate Army during the battle —lodged sideways in his upper thighbone. Scientists believe the bullet slowed and rotated after passing through his cartridge box.

The second skeleton is of a male in his 30’s, believed to have died from rounds that struck his shoulder, groin and lower leg. Those remains were found with Union Army jacket buttons.

Partial remains show cut marks—and shattered bones indicate why surgeons of that era had no choice but to amputate.

 “When you’re looking at shattered limbs,” one expert observes, “it takes you out of the overall concept of troop movements and into the personal stories of individual men.

“We’re seeing the trauma of what was undoubtedly the worst moments of their lives.”

And here a note to teachers: always try to humanize the men (and increasingly) women who fight in any war.



I tried to insure my students never thought war was glamorous.


Partial remains show cut marks—and shattered bones indicate why surgeons of that era had no choice but to amputate.


The picture below is from the authors collection.

Bone saw and medical kit used during the Civil War.


Retired U.S. Army First Lieutenant Melissa Stockwell.
First female to lose a limb in combat in Iraq.
Now a Paralympics Games swimmer.

Pearl Harbor survivor Houston James hugs former Marine S/Sgt. Mark Graunke, Jr.
The Marine lost a hand, leg and eye in combat in Iraq.

*

I have a good writing prompt for students involving wounded soldiers (including a female) from the Battle of Gettysburg.

There are several other readings on the period, including firsthand accounts by Sam Watkins (free), Frank Wilkeson, John Ransom and Elisha Rhodes, on the First Battle of Bull Run and the fight between the Monitor and Merrimac.


Feel free to visit my site at TpT: Middle School History and Tips for Teachers.


Thursday, June 14, 2018

Holocaust Ideas for Teachers


IF YOU TOUCH ON THE HOLOCAUST in class here are a few photos (mostly from the internet), a few ideas I used in class, and a few stories I have encountered since I retired and would try to use if I was still teaching.

(Use whatever you can.)

First, you might be surprised, as I was, if you address the topic in class. By the time I left the classroom in 2008, I was running into students occasionally who no longer recognized the man below.


Hitler fought bravely in World War I and won the Iron Cross.
How would history have been altered if a bullet had killed him in 1915 or 1916?
(Photo owned by author; feel free to use it.)

Hitler walks with Helga Goebbels, the daughter of his propaganda minister.


IN MY CLASS WE BEGAN a Holocaust unit by focusing on “dehumanization.” The Nazis, I explained, referred to Jews and others as “vermin.” 

I suggested to students that most people are at times guilty of “labeling” others, or “seeing all members of a group as the same.” 

I said it was easier to hate people you “labeled” because you never thought about them as individuals. 

For this lesson, I had to be careful. But when I asked kids if they could think of any “labels” people used examples always came pouring out: kike, fag, gook, nigger, retard and many, many more.

It made students uneasy to realize that when they were sometimes guilty of dehumanizing others, for instance, when they called classmates “nerds” or “losers.” 

One of the most powerful moments I ever experienced in a classroom came when, near the end of this very discussion, just as my fourth bell class was about to end, a young lady held up her hand. I called on her; and in an anguished voice she announced, “Mr. Viall, the other kids label me. They call me a ‘dog.’”

I think her peers were stunned to recognize their own guilt and I waited for someone to offer explanation.

No one dared utter a word and I had to fight back tears, myself. Then the bell rang for lunch and the class filed out in complete silence. I think they had looked in a mirror, as it were, and had not liked the image they saw reflected.

I stopped the young lady before she could leave and told her she was one of my favorite students.

What is the boy in the cap thinking? What is his mother thinking?
What are those Nazi soldiers thinking?

Pages from the diary of Anne Frank.
Trouble for the Jews in Germany began as soon as Hitler came to power.
Here party members call for a boycott of this Jewish-owned store in 1933.
"Kauft nicht bei Juden"
means "Do not buy from Jews."

Jews were required to wear yellow stars.
In the camps homosexuals wore pink triangles.

I tried to point out to my students that the yellow star was just a kind of label. You saw it, you need not think about the person.

This made hating easier.


This Jewish family in the Netherlands was wiped out.

Some were lucky.
Leo Goldberger (second from right) and his family were helped to escape by boat from Denmark.
They found safety in Sweden, a neutral nation.
He was 13 at the time.

His story can be found here.


Selection: Upon arrival Jews and other prisoners were sorted according to their usefulness.
Healthy young men and women might make good slave laborers.
Most young children would be taken to the gas chambers immediately.

TELL THEM I WAS NOT AFRAID

I would use this story for reasons I think are clear.... 


Bret Stephens, writing in the NYT (6/9/18) takes offense to the words of a German right-wing politician Alexander Gauland. “Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of bird shit in over 1,000 years of successful German history.”

Stephens’ maternal grandmother, born Rachel Westerman was born in the Latvian port town of Liepaja (or Libau) in 1919. She died 96 years later in Israel. She left behind a book about her life which he long feared to read. In it she describes a happy Jewish childhood, he says.

“When the Soviets took over in 1940 she was living in Riga, the capital, studying and acting and being wooed by a journalist and playwright named Grisha, her future husband.
“The Russian occupation brought midnight arrests and deportations. The Nazis, who invaded the following June, brought mass slaughter and enslavement.
“Raya’s father, Shmuel, was arrested along with the other Jewish men on his street in Liepaja on July 14. He ‘kissed my mother and took his walking stick with him to the jail,’ Raya wrote. ‘Later the men were taken to the lighthouse and shot.’
“Raya’s older brother, Abrasha, was arrested on Oct. 1 and murdered about a week later, most likely by Germany’s Latvian henchmen. ‘Bye, my girl, I hope we meet again,’ were his last words to Raya. His wife, Zina, was murdered as well.
“Grisha’s entire family—his green-eyed mother, Bella, his older sister, her three children—were murdered in Riga ‘in the first days of the German occupation.’
“Raya’s mother, Haya, and two of her sisters, Becka and Ethel, survived a little longer. On Monday, Dec. 15, 1941, they and thousands of other Jews were taken to the women’s prison in Liepaja. From there, in the freezing cold, they were marched to a nearby beach called Skede, forced to strip to their underclothes, taken to the edge of a trench, made to strip naked, and shot in groups of 10. After three straight days of methodical slaughter, 2,749 Jews—mostly women and children—had perished.
“The victims were photographed in their final moments….
“What about Raya? She and Grisha had barely escaped Riga under heavy German fire. They wound up in Samarkand, in what is now Uzbekistan, where he enlisted in the Red Army and was badly wounded in action. In 1945 they were reunited in Riga, and Raya set about discovering what had happened to her family.
“One of the handful of Jewish survivors of Liepaja (out of the original population of 6,500) had known Raya’s mother and had tried to help her. ‘I brought your mother a work certificate attesting that she was working and did not need to go with the rest,’ the survivor told Raya.
“‘I begged here to take the paper, but she told me, “I will not take it. My husband is already gone. My sister, Becka, is terrified, and we will go together. Just know that I am not afraid.”’
“She added this:
“‘If you meet any of my children, tell them I was not afraid. Tell them to continue living knowing that I was not afraid.’
“In 1972, Raya emigrated to Israel, which is where I came to know her. She had taken her mother’s words to heart and had the steady gaze of a woman who feared nothing because she had seen the worst.”



Arriving in a camp.


EVERY DECISION DURING SELECTION could make the difference between life and death; notes from another story:


In a NYT book review of KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, the reviewer cites the case of Moritz Choinowski, a Polish-born Jew who survived six years in the camps, 1939 until the end of the war. His tour of Hell included stops at Buchenwald, Auschwitz, Gross-Rosen and Dachau.

Primo Levy: “Trains heavily laden with human beings went in each day, and all that came out was the ashes of their bodies, their hair, the gold of their teeth.”

Hans Loritz, SS, who took over one camp explained, “In regards to discipline, I am a swine.”

Rudolph Hoss had been wounded in WWI; he rose in the ranks and took over at Auschwitz in 1940. Female prisoners worked as tailors and hairdressers for his wife. “Every wish of my wife, of my children, was met,” he explained.
The first use of Zyklon-B, there in 1941, dispatched a group of Russian POW’s. “One could see that these people had scratched and bitten each other in a fit of madness before they died,” one witness admitted.
Hoss was pleased with this new method of killing—sparing his SS soldiers the trauma that followed mass shooting bloodbaths.

At Auschwitz some prison doctors decided it was best to kill newborns and therefore spare the mothers. Olga Lengyel arrived at the camp with her son. When asked by an SS physician, Dr. Fritz Klein, how old the boy was she made sure to tell him he was under 13, and only looked older. This was her way, she hoped, of sparing him a life of hard labor. At Auschwitz nearly all prisoners under age 14 were gassed, her son among them. After the war she still wondered, “How should I have known?”



What would these prisoners be thinking when they arrived at the camp?

I CREATED A DETAILED and horrifying reading for my students. Here I describe how guards lured prisoners to their deaths. 

At camps like Auschwitz and Treblinka:

…victims arrived by the trainload, to be gassed in large chambers disguised as showers. Sometimes guards told new arrivals to tie their shoes together so they could find them after their “bath.” There were numbered hooks for hanging clothes and signs in many languages saying: “Showers.” One guard encouraged victims to move faster. “Hurry,” he lied. “Coffee is waiting. Coffee is ready in camp.” 

At another camp, flowers were planted round the gas chambers. Meanwhile a band of pretty Jewish girls in white blouses and navy-blue skirts entertained those about to die. The music they were ordered to play was always merry.


Suitcases at Auschwitz.

For more than seventy years this mug kept its secret.
Beneath a false bottom a Jewish family, headed for a concentration camp,
had hidden a gold ring and necklace.
Usually the camp guards looted all valuables. This time they missed them.

The story is told in more detail here.


Regina Feldman survived the Holocaust in part because she could knit.
She and her family were sent to Sobibor in 1942.
Her parents, three brothers and a sister were gassed.

You can read more about her by clicking this link.


Feldman buried her mother’s wedding ring (shown below )so guards wouldn’t steal it The ring was found decades later by archaeologists studying the camp.




Each ring would represent a love affair terminated by poison gas.
II might ask students to do a writing assignment about the story behind one ring.

Twins Eva and Miriam Mozes.
They survived the Holocaust, in part, because Dr. Josef Mengele
often chose twins for hideous medical experiments.
Mengele became known as "The Angel of Death."

Dr. Josef Mengele, center.


Hate comes easy if you dehumanize your victims.
The Germans referred to prisoners by numbers, not names.

In general, it was easier to shoot people in the back of the head.
Looking into a victim's eyes was often hard.

IN THE EARLY DAYS of the war the Germans sent out special military units to round up and shoot Jews and other “undesirables.” Thousands of men, women and children were sometimes mowed down in a few hours.

In a letter to his wife, one German soldier described what it was like to perform such bloody duty. “All we did was shoot Jews, shoot Jews all the time,” he said. “My arm hurt from shooting.”   

Intent on making sure my students could grasp the horror, I created a reading for my classes called Hitler’s Black Harvest. I wanted them to feel the Holocaust in their hearts and souls, not to pass over it in a history book. 

The only real problem I had was that the reading made students cry. 

Here’s another sampling:

            Hermann Graebe [a German officer who did not approve] witnessed one mass killing. Even though he took no part, what he saw turned his soul to ice. Trucks were bringing in victims. Guards were hustling them off. Whips cracked in the air as prisoners undressed: shoes in one pile, coats in another, underwear in a third. Graebe was surprised by how little crying he heard. People “stood about in family groups, kissed each other, said farewells and waited for a sign.” Then they moved to the edge of the pit where they would be shot. 

A family caught his eye:

An old woman with snow-white hair was holding a one-year-old child in her arms and singing to it and tickling it. The child was cooing with delight. The parents were looking on with tears in their eyes. The father was holding the hand of a boy about ten years old and speaking to him softly; the boy was fighting his tears. The father pointed to the sky, stroked his head and seemed to explain something to him.


Then a guard counted off twenty prisoners, including the old woman and her family. They stepped closer to the pits and were cut down in a storm of bullets.

 Hitler's Black Harvest is for sale on TpT.


Czeslawa Kwoka, 14, was sent to Auschwitz in December 1942.

You can read more about her here.


Marina Amaral recently colorized the girl's photo to bring her "back to life." 


PRISONERS WHO COULD BE OF USE, even in the death camps, were sometimes able to survive. Wilhelm Brasse, a photographer, took the two pictures above. As long as he could do his work he had a chance.

Marcel Nadjari was part of the unit that disposed of all the bodies at Auschwitz. He left a written account of life in the camp, stuck it in a thermos, put the thermos in a leather pouch and buried it in 1944. 

It was found many years later.

“We all suffer things here that the human mind can not imagine,” he explained.


His story is told here.


Some prisoners were spared to perform slave labor.
At Buchenwald prisoners were tied to a cart loaded with stone and sand
and forced to pull it, singing as they went.
Guards called them "singing horses."

Russian prisoners of war were forced to do work for the Nazis
or starved and murdered by the hundreds of thousands.

Prisoners at Mauthausen had to work in a stone quarry.
If you were too weak to work you were sent to the gas chambers.
It was hard to survive on a diet of only 1,000 calories a day.
Karl Peterik remembered eating oats meant for a horse he was tending.

Women chosen for slave labor; some worked in factories or on farms for the Germans.


HERE ARE A FEW NOTES I took on a story about women in the camps:

“Remember the Women,” in NYT book review, 4-12-15; story of Ravensbruck camp

Germans had 980 concentration camps; 30,000 camps for slave labor; 1,150 Jewish ghettos, 500 brothels where women served as sex slaves. Ravensbruck opened in 1939, for women, at first, “asocials,” prostitutes, “race defilers,” and criminals, including political prisoners and Roma (Gypsies). At this camp the killings usually involved workers who could no longer serve, who were sick or weak from hunger. Polish “rabbits” were subjected to medical experiments, including breaking their legs to work on repair procedures, insertion of contaminated material to study treatments for German soldiers. Russian army women tried to resist—refused to make munitions—tried to hold onto uniforms—after, were sometimes sent to Siberia, on false charges of having collaborated with the Germans. Killing became a way to make room for healthier arrivals.

Himmler’s mistress had a baby at a clinic not far from the camp and he took a special interest in the camp. Siemens and Daimler-Benz both used slave labor and sent prisoners back to the camps when they could no longer work. With the Russians approaching, Dr. Carl Clauberg continued to sterilize prisoners. Rudolf Hoss, commandant at Auschwitz and then Ravensbruck, admitted later, in the words of author Sarah Helm, that the urge to kill “was nurtured for so long in the Nazi psyche that it eventually ran of its own volition, impossible to extinguish.”

Gandhi called Hitler’s regime “naked ruthless force reduced to an exact science.”

Gypsies were also considered "undesirable" by the Nazis.
They were also slaughtered.

A serious "problem" for the Germans was disposing of all the bodies of their victims.
Mass grave shown at the end of the war.

Corpses at Bergen-Belsen

The Germans experimented with all kinds of methods to burn bodies.
American officers, including General Dwight D. Eisenhower (third from left, front row),
examine the evidence.

The Hungarian Jews were saved from a train headed for the concentration camps
in the spring of 1945.
 

These children survived at Auschwitz.

Female survivors.

A BRIEF NOTE:

NYT (1-2-16) Marceline Rozenberg was arrested in 1943, in France, and deported to Auschwitz in 1944.
She was a teen at the time and went with her father, Szlhama (Schloime) Froim Rozenberg. Awaiting transport, he told her, “You will come back, perhaps, because you’re young, but I will not come back.”

She has since done films about the Holocaust; in one she has an actor stretch out on a bed and speak the words she said to her father: “I love you so much that I was happy to be deported with you.” (Her parents had moved to France in 1919, from Poland, because they wanted greater freedom. France failed the Jews in many ways, she feels, helped them in others.)

A survivor: What is he thinking?
What would he say about his experiences in such a hell?

Prisoners were never well-fed.
Many grown men were reduced in weight to as little as 75 pounds.



PRISONERS WERE PACKED packed into barracks, three, four, and even six to a bunk, sleeping on filthy straw. 

Many were covered with lice until “their clothing looked as if it had been sprinkled with poppy seeds.”

Having been rescued by Allied troops, two camp survivors help tally the dead.
What kind of nightmares would such men and women have?

Lucky to be alive.

A survivor accuses a Nazi guard of being a murderer.


I SAW THIS STORY ABOUT A GUARD on trial years later; his story might be worth following up in detail:

San Francisco Chronicle; 4-22-15, “Concentration Camp Guard Testifies at Trial”

SS Sgt. Oskar Groening told a German court he helped guard thousands of Jews at Auschwitz as they left the cattle cars and headed for the gas chambers. At age 93, he is charged with 300,000 counts of “accessory to murder.” He admitted seeing another guard silence a crying baby by bashing its head against a truck. He says he requested a transfer; when it was not granted he began drinking vodka heavily. “I share morally in the guilt but whether I am guilty under criminal law, you will have to decide,” he told the judges. He volunteered for the SS in 1940; worked at the camp 1942-1944; says his main task was to “help collect and tally money as part of his job of dealing with the belongings stolen from people arriving;” the presiding judge asked him what his opinion of this money being sent back to Berlin.
In his opinion, Groening responded, it belonged to the state. “They didn’t really need it anymore,” he told the court, to the shock of Auschwitz survivors watching. He could get 15 years in jail.


Seventy years later, survivors went back to the camps to remember.
What would they want to remember?

The slogan over the gate reads: "Work shall set you free."

A ring owned by Hitler was pocketed by a U.S. soldier in 1945 when Berchtesgaden,
his mountain retreat, was captured.
Silver, plated in gold, with a large ruby in the center,
it was expected to sell for almost $100,000 when it went up for auction in 2013. 


Read more about the ring 
here.


Hitler at his mountain retreat.

Gandhi called Hitler’s regime 

“naked ruthless force reduced to an exact science.”