Resistance During the Holocaust - Oregon Jewish Museum

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RESISTANCE DURING THE HOLOCAUST | AUGUST 2021 | PAGE 1

Grade Level: 7th grade - High School Length of Lessons: One and a half 90 minute block periods, Three 50-55 minute block periods

Rationale

To study genocide is to study human behavior — to analyze the range of actions or inactions of people when confronted with extreme hatred towards others. When done correctly, studying resistance during the Holocaust offers opportunities for rich, nuanced analysis on the complexity of human behavior. It allows us to reflect on how relationships and a sense of belonging in a community can change in times of uncertainty and crisis. It creates space for us to examine and challenge how people are categorized into specific roles. It compels us to consider the relationship between power, authority, opportunity, and oppression.

This lesson begins with students reflecting on how superheros’ decisions to resist are oversimplified. They then transition to a jigsaw activity where students first learn about an example of resistance during the Holocaust before shifting to mixed groups where they share out and discuss factors that contribute to an individual or group’s ability to resist systemic oppression. The lesson concludes with a four corners activity where students consider how a person can move from the role of perpetrator, collaborator, bystander, victim, and resister to a different role, or be in multiple roles at the same time.

Resistance during the Holocaust was exceptional and as such should be placed within the context of the history. We strongly encourage you to use this lesson after your students are introduced to the trauma, persecution, and devastation of the Holocaust. This will help place into perspective the opportunities and obstacles for people to resist. Further, this lesson should not be used to justify the fate of victims or compare experiences of pain and trauma. For example, students should not conclude their study of rescue and resistance during the Holocaust thinking that those who died did so because they did not try hard enough to resist and live, or that those who resisted as part of the American Civil Rights Movement had it easier than resisters during the Holocaust. Be mindful of how you ask students to compare. If done correctly, a comparative analysis can lead students to consider how context, geography, etc. contributed to a successful resistance effort. On the contrary, asking students to rank resistance efforts by effectiveness is subjective and decontextualizes the situation.

Essential Questions

• How can a government use its authority to create “in” and “out” groups in order to marginalize and oppress people? On the contrary, how can a government use its authority to protect people and create inclusivity?

Resistance During the Holocaust

http://www.ojmche.org

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• What factors contribute to an individual or group’s ability to resist systemic oppression?

• How does power differ from authority when it comes to an individual or a group’s ability to resist systemic oppression?

• How can the role of perpetrator, collaborator, bystander, victim, and resister be fluid? How can a person move from one role to another, or be in multiple roles at the same time?

Holocaust and Other Genocides (SB664) Learning Concept

• Stimulate students’ reflection on the roles and responsibilities of citizens in democratic societies to combat misinformation, indifference and discrimination through tools of resistance such as protest, reform and celebration.

• Provide students with opportunities to contextualize and analyze patterns of human behavior by individuals and groups who belong in one or more categories, including perpetrator, collaborator, bystander, victim and rescuer

• Preserve the memories of survivors of genocide and provide opportunities for students to discuss and honor survivors’ cultural legacies

Oregon Department of Education Social Studies Standards for 7th grade and High School

7.25 Identify issues related to historical events to recognize power, authority, religion, and governance as it relates to systemic oppression and its impact on indigenous peoples and ethnic and religious groups, and other traditionally marginalized groups in the modern era.

7.27 Critique and analyze information for point of view, historical context, distortion, propaganda and relevance including sources with conflicting information.

7.26 Analyze cause and effect relationships within the living histories of ethnic groups, religious groups and other traditionally marginalized groups in the Eastern Hemisphere.

7.29 Assess individual and collective capacities to take informed action to address local, regional, and global problems, taking into account a range of possible levers of power, strategies and potential outcomes.

7.30 Construct arguments using claims and evidence from multiple sources and diverse media, while acknowledging the strengths and limitations of the arguments.

HS.61 Analyze and explain persistent historical, social and political issues, conflicts and compromises in regards to power, inequality and justice and their connections to current events and movements.





HS.65 Identify and analyze the nature of systemic oppression on ethnic and religious groups, as well as other traditionally marginalized groups, in the pursuit of justice and equality in Oregon, the United States and the world.

HS.68 Select and analyze historical information, including contradictory evidence, from a variety of primary and secondary sources to support or reject a claim.

HS.69 Create and defend a historical argument utilizing primary and secondary sources as evidence.

Lesson Objectives

• Students will compare different secondary sources in order to identify multiple different strategies of resistance to the Nazi’s systemic oppression of Jewish people in Europe from 1933 - 1945.

• Students will compare different secondary sources about resistance during the Holocaust in order to draw conclusions about how the Nazi government used its authority to create “in” and “out” groups in order to disempower, marginalize and oppress people systematically.

• Students will analyze secondary sources to construct an understanding of individual and collective capacities to take informed action.

Teaching Strategies for Reading Comprehension

• Jigsaw

• Close Reading

• Think.Pair.Share

Materials

• Resister Profiles Readings

• Powerpoint presentation

• Jigsaw Group Placards

• Essential Questions Worksheet

• Four Corners Biographical Information Key





Preparation

1. Review and familiarize yourself with the secondary sources provided about resistance during the Holocaust and the Powerpoint presentation.

2. Prepare photocopies

a. four copies of each resister profile

b. one Essential Questions Worksheet for each student

3. Make three sets of placards with the following information:

a. Group 1: Denmark, Primo Levi, The Diplomats

b. Group 2: Le Chambon, Oneg Shabbat, Protests in Germany

c. Group 3: Leslie Aigner, Marion Pritchard, Henryk Ross, Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

4. Prepare signs that read “Perpetrator,” “Bystander,” “Resister,” and “Collaborator” for the four corners activity.

Activity

1. For the first 3 - 5 minutes, have the students engage in a Think. Pair. Share exercise where they identify and define a fictional character that fought against some overwhelming force in order to save others, even humankind. You may want to include the following guidelines to prompt the students:

• Identify who thet character is

• Identify who the oppressive “bad person” was

• Explain what power they used to resist

• Explain what motivated that character to resist rather than be a bystander.

Teacher’s Note: Hopefully students will identify and define characters like Harry Potter, Katnis Everdeen from The Hunger Games, Iron Man or other Avengers characters, etc.

2. Explain to students: “Today we are going to examine different historical accounts of those who resisted Nazi systemic oppression. The first important point that we all need to understand is that these individuals and groups are exceptional, and that resistance was not a common response during the Holocaust. We will learn that decisions made to resist the Nazis was a very complicated journey. Those who chose to resist are not like superheroes in Marvel action films; instead they were complex individuals making very difficult, moral decisions. There is no pattern or model for what motivates someone to resist. Therefore, we must take into consideration the power and authority they possessed and the opportunities available and obstacles faced to help us understand why an individual or group resisted or did not.”





3. Hand out the reading assignments to each group (View .zip folder for documents). Provide students at least 20 minutes to independently examine the source and organize their written responses either in a journal or Google Document.

Teacher’s Note: Please note that the readings have been ordered in difficulty.

• Denmark

• Le Chambon

• Leslie Aigner

• Primo Levi

• Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

• Marion Pritchard

• The Diplomats

• Oneg Shabbat

• Henryk Ross

• Protests in Germany

Day 2 for 55 minute block

4. After the students have completed their reading and questions, use the placards to place the students into discussion groups. You can find the groupings below or on slides 5–7 of the Powerpoint.

Teacher’s Note: There should be at least one student who read the Resister Profile in each group, for a total of 3–4 students. Depending on your class size, you may have multiples of each grouping.

Grouping #1 Grouping #2 Grouping #3

Denmark Le Chambon Leslie Aigner

Primo Levi Oneg Shabbat Marion Pritchard

The Diplomats Protests in Germany Henryk Ross

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

In these discussion groups, provide 10 minutes for students to each explain and report their resister profile to other students. Students can use the following questions (also provided on slide 8) as a guide for sharing.





• Identify and define what actions resisters took?

• How did the resistance you read about confront or challenge systemic oppression?

5. Next, provide students with the “Essential Questions Worksheet” and present the instructions on slide 10. The duration of the class period should be devoted to students completing the worksheet in preparation for the socratic seminar when the class meets next.

Teacher’s Note: The instructions mandate that students use two secondary sources to explain their response to the essential questions. This requires students to select evidence and defend their response using more than just their own resister profile, meaning they will have to continue to report and compare information with each other. Here are the essential questions:

• How can a government use its authority to create “in” and “out” groups in order to marginalize and oppress people?

• How can a government use its authority to protect people and create inclusivity?


• How does power differ from authority when it comes to an individual or group’s ability to resist systemic oppression?

Day 2 for 90 minute periods/Day 3 for 55 minute periods

6. Tell the students, “Today we will begin with an activity called Four Corners. You can see that I’ve placed four roles around the room.” Point out each role and review definitions if necessary. Sample definitions are provided below. Then explain, “I am going to show you some information about a person and after reading the bullet points, I want you to go to a corner that you believe best describes their role during the Holocaust.“ After the students decide and move, give them an opportunity to share why they chose that role.

Teacher’s Note: There are four examples for you to choose from. Depending on time and grade level appropriateness you may choose to do one, two, three, or even all four. You may also want to review vocabulary of relevant terms.

Perpetrator – a person who commits a harmful, illegal, or immoral act

Collaborator – a person who cooperates, supports, or works with a perpetrator

Bystander – a person who is present when something happens but does not take part

Resister – a person who refuses to accept or comply with something and/or takes steps to confront or challenge an action





7. Then, summarize the information found in the “long bio” section of the Four Corners Biographical Information Key. After students listen to your summary, ask them, “How would you categorize this person now using the roles around the room?” In this stage of the activity, students will question and examine different historical figures’ roles during the Holocaust as perpetrator, collaborator, bystander, and rescuer/resister. As a result, students should construct an understanding of the complexity and difficulty of classifying these people into static roles. Provide students the opportunity to physically move to a new corner, or place themselves between corners, if their thinking has changed. Allow students the opportunity to explain why they moved. You may want to conclude this activity by saying, “As we can see, people are complex beings, and can shift between or co-exist in multiple roles.”

8. Conclude the lesson with a Socratic Discussion based on their responses from the Essential Questions Worksheet they previously completed. Now that students have participated in the four corners activity, they may add additional insights into the discussion.

Teacher’s Note: If you are unfamiliar with a Socratic Discussion we recommend Facing History and Ourselves model found here: https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/teaching-strategies/socratic-seminar

The Socratic Discussion should require approximately 30 minutes from start to finish and focus on further exploring and unpacking the essential questions:

• How can a government use its authority to create “in” and “out” groups in order to marginalize and oppress people? On the contrary, how can a government use its authority to protect people and create inclusivity?


• How does power differ from authority when it comes to an individual or group’s ability to resist systemic oppression?

• How can the role of perpetrator, collaborator, bystander, victim, resister be fluid? How can a person move from one role to another, or be in multiple roles at the same time?



https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/teaching-strategies/socratic-seminar

https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/teaching-strategies/socratic-seminar



Learning Accommodations/Differentiation

One option for the Essential Question Worksheet, is to provide sentence starters for students for their responses. Examples are provided below.

a. The Nazi government uses its authority to create “in” and “out” groups in order to marginalize and oppress people.

i. One source that shows this is….

ii. Another source that shows this is….

b. Two ways that individuals or groups resisted Nazi authority were...

c. I learned there is a difference between government authority and people’s use of power to resist from this lesson.

i. One source that showed me the difference was…

ii. Another source that showed me the difference was...

Another option for the Essential Question Worksheet is to have students do a 1-2-1 writing activity. This can also be facilitated well using Flipgrid or another audio/video application. One suggested way to organize your 1-2-1 activity is the following:

• 1 response to one essential question from the lesson

• 2 examples from the readings that support that response

• 1 unresolved question or confusion you may have

Remote Learning Adaptations

We suggest you remove the mixed group component of the Jigsaw activity. Instead, separate students into breakout rooms, having each breakout room read and reflect on a different profile. When students return to the main room, ask them to summarize their profile and share any insights or information that interest them.

For the four corners activity, we suggest using a PearDeck or Polling in Zoom in order to have students move virtually to different corners.





Extension Resources for each Resister Profile

1. Denmarka. We Share the Same Sky podcast by USC Shoah Foundation

b. Number the Stars written by Lois Lowry

c. The Power of Conscience: The Danish Resistance and the Rescue of the Jews directed by Alexandra Isles

2. Le Chambona. Weapons of the Spirit directed by Pierre Sauvage

3. Les Aigner a. Listen to his oral history https://www.ojmche.org/oral-history-people/aigner-les

4. Primo Levia. Survival in Auschwitz written by Primo Levi

5. Marion Pritcharda. View a short video clip with Marion from Facing History and Ourselves

https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/video/life-or-death-netherlands

6. The Diplomatsa. The Rescuers: Heroes of the Holocaust directed by Michael W. King

b. Watch a short video clip about Chiune Sugihara created by Holocaust Museum Houston https://hmh.org/education/rescue-resistance-chiune-sugihara/

7. Oneg Shabbata. Read Who Will Write Our History written by Samuel D. Kassow

b. Watch Who Will Write Our History directed by Roberta Grossman *The film is heavy and graphic. Please be sure to preview it before showing it to students.

c. Listen to What a Secret Archive Taught the World, episode of 12 Years That Shook The World Podcast https://www.ushmm.org/learn/podcasts-and-audio/12-years-that-shook-the-world/what-a-secret-archive-taught-the-world-transcript

d. Watch The Incredible and Moving Story of Oneg Shabbat, a short video from UNESCO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqcLlTbSXUg

8. Henryk Rossa. The collection of Ross’s photographs can be found here: http://agolodzghetto.com



https://www.ojmche.org/oral-history-people/aigner-les

https://www.facinghistory.org/resource-library/video/life-or-death-netherlands

https://hmh.org/education/rescue-resistance-chiune-sugihara/

https://www.ushmm.org/learn/podcasts-and-audio/12-years-that-shook-the-world/what-a-secret-archive-taught-the-world-transcript

https://www.ushmm.org/learn/podcasts-and-audio/12-years-that-shook-the-world/what-a-secret-archive-taught-the-world-transcript

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqcLlTbSXUg

http://agolodzghetto.com



9. Warsaw Ghetto Uprisinga. The Pianist directed by Roman Polanski

b. Watch a 3 minute video clip of Survivor Ben Meed recalling the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/oral-history/benjamin-ben-meed-describes-the-burning-of-the-warsaw-ghetto-during-the-1943-ghetto-uprising?

c. View a video, lesson plan, and graphic novel developed by the POLIN Museum https://www.polin.pl/en/educational-resources

10. Protests in Germanya. The White Rose directed by Michael Verhoeven (German film with English subtitles)

b. Resistance of the Heart: Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse Protest in Germany written by Nathan Stoltzfus



https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/oral-history/benjamin-ben-meed-describes-the-burning-of-the-warsaw-ghetto-during-the-1943-ghetto-uprising?

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/oral-history/benjamin-ben-meed-describes-the-burning-of-the-warsaw-ghetto-during-the-1943-ghetto-uprising?

https://www.polin.pl/en/educational-resources



#1 - Denmark: A Nation Takes Action1

By 1943, anyone in German-occupied Europe who wanted to know was aware of what was happening to Jews. Few in occupied countries acted to protect Jewish residents. Many government officials in the occupied countries turned over documents that allowed Germans to quickly identify Jews, and local police often helped Germans find and arrest those Jews. The exception was in Denmark.

After the Germans conquered Denmark in 1940, Danish people and the government were angry at the occupation of their country, and some fought back. In 1943, the Nazis responded.

They limited the power of King Christian X, forced the government to resign, and removed the Danish army. They also ordered the arrest of a number of Christian and Jewish leaders.

A few weeks later, Danish people learned that the Germans were planning to remove the nation’s entire Jewish population. That news came from Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz, A Nazi government official in Denmark. In the early 1930s, Duckwitz joined the Nazis’ because he agreed with their ideas. However, as the Nazis became more violent, he questioned them. And when the Germans took over Denmark, he sympathized with the challenges Danish people faced. When Duckwitz learned in late September of secret orders to prepare four cargo ships for transporting Danish Jews to Poland, he immediately passed on the information to leaders in the Danish resistance. They, in turn, informed the Danish people.

When leaders of the Danish church were told of the Germans’ plan, they sent an open letter to German officials. On Sunday, October 3, 1943, leaders of the Danish church read the letter in churches around the nation. They said that it was the responsibility of Danish people to protect Jewish people. They believed people should be free to practice their religion, and they would fight to protect Jewish people’s freedom.

Danish people responded in the following weeks with a plan to keep Jews from being taken by the Nazis. They hid them until it was safe to escape to nearby Sweden, a neutral nation. It was a national effort—organized and paid for by hundreds of private citizens. Fishermen, many of whom could not afford to lose even one day’s pay, were paid to transport the Jews to Sweden. The money was also used for bribes. It was no accident that all German patrol ships in the area were docked for repairs on the night of the rescue.

Not every Jew was able to leave. Some were captured as they waited for a boat, while others were picked up at sea. But, in the end, the Nazis were able to capture only 580 of Denmark’s 7,000 Jews, and force them to go to the Terezín camp-ghetto. The Danish government hoped that if they constantly asked how the Danish Jews who were in Nazi control were, that they wouldn’t be harmed. In the end, no Danish Jews were shipped to a death center, and with the exception of a few who died of illness or old age in Terezín. All of them returned safely to Denmark after the war.

1 Adapted from Facing History and Ourselves, “Denmark: A Nation Takes Action.” https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-9/denmark-nation-takes-action



https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-9/denmark-nation-takes-action

https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-9/denmark-nation-takes-action



Key words

• Occupied country: A country that was occupied by the German military and/or Nazi party officials during the Holocaust.

• Resign: to no longer be in a position of authority

• Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz: A Nazi government official in Denmark

• Sympathized: a feeling of pity or sorrow for someone else’s misfortune

• Open letter: a letter that is shared publicly

• Neutral: to take no position in a conflict

• Transport: to physically move

Guided Reading Questions

1. Who was involved in the effort to save the Jews of Denmark? What motivated this effort?

2. What did the letter from the Danish church say? How did this letter help the resistance effort?

3. Why was the Danes’ effort to rescue Danish Jews so successful?





#2 - Primo LeviThe following is from Primo Levi’s book, Survival in Auschwitz.

“I must confess it: after only one week of prison, the instinct for cleanliness disappeared in me. I wander aimlessly around the washroom when I suddenly see Steinlauf, my friend aged almost fifty...scrub his neck and shoulder with little success (he has no soap) but great energy. Steinlauf sees me and greets me, and...asks me severely why I do not wash. Why should I wash? Would I be better off than I am? Would I live a day, an hour longer? I would probably live a shorter time, because to wash is an effort, a waste of energy and warmth. Does not Steinlauf know that after half an hour with the coal sacks every difference between him and

me will have disappeared? The more I think about it, the more washing one’s face in our condition seems a stupid feat...We will all die, we are all about to die: if they give me ten minutes between the reveille and work, I want to dedicate [that time] to something else…[to] merely to look at the sky and think that I am looking at it perhaps for the last time...

But Steinlauf interrupts me. He has finished washing and is now drying himself with his cloth jacket which he was holding before wrapped up between his knees and which he will soon put on.

[He said] we must not become beasts; that even in this place one can survive, and therefore one must want to survive, to tell the story, to bear witness; and that to survive we must force ourselves to save at least the skeleton...of civilization. We are slaves deprived of every right, exposed to every insult, condemned to certain death, but we still possess one power, and we must defend it with all our strength for it is the last—the power to refuse our consent. So we must certainly wash our faces without soap in dirty water and dry ourselves on our jackets. We must polish our shoes, not because the regulation states it, but for dignity… We must walk erect, without dragging our feet...to remain alive, not to begin to die.”2

Key words

• Instinct: a reaction to one’s environment key to one’s survival

• Severely: strongly

• Reveille: an alarm, typically used by the military to wake everyone up in the morning

• Condemned: to be sentenced to a certain punishment, typically death

• Consent: to give permission

• Regulation: a rule created by a government authority

2 Primo Levi,Survival in Auschwitz:The Nazi Assault On Humanity. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), 40 - 41.






1. What lesson did Primo Levi learn from Steinlauf?

2. How can the smallest of daily habits such as polishing shoes or washing hands be considered a form of resistance?





#3 - The Diplomats3

Diplomats stationed in Europe during World War II sometimes had unique opportunities to rescue vulnerable people from Nazi annihilation. As representatives of their countries’ governments, they had various tools available, including the power to issue or approve the papers Jews needed to enter other countries. Perhaps the most famous diplomat rescuer was Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish special envoy in Hungary, who is credited with saving tens of thousands of Jews by creating false papers and exit visas to allow them to emigrate, as well as establishing safe houses and a ghetto in Hungary to protect Jews from deportation. For Wallenberg and several other diplomats, opportunities to help involved serious risk, yet they chose to break the rules they had been asked to uphold and used their official status to find ways to help Jews and other victims escape.

In 1940, Chiune Sugihara was the Japanese consul in Lithuania. Like other international diplomats, he was based in Kaunas. Kaunas was also home to a large Jewish population, which grew with the arrival of refugees fleeing persecution in Poland after the German invasion in 1939. As the Nazi army pushed across Europe in summer 1940, the Soviet Union ordered all foreign consulates and embassies to close down and move their diplomats to Moscow. At the same time, stateless Jewish refugees were asking these diplomats to help them get the necessary papers to flee to safety.

Amid this wartime confusion, Sugihara asked the Soviets for permission to stay in Lithuania a month longer. He was a striking exception: other diplomats obeyed the Soviet orders and quickly left. Sugihara received the extension and immediately put it to good use. He had been directed by the Japanese government not to issue any visas to Jews who lacked the proper documentation, but he decided to defy this order. Sugihara worked with a Dutch businessman and diplomat named Jan Zwartendijk, who provided the documents needed for travel to the Dutch-controlled island of Curaçao in the Caribbean. Sugihara then wrote thousands of transit visas that allowed people to travel out of Europe and pass through Japan en route to the island.

Sugihara’s wife, Yukiko, was with him in Kaunas. She later described how her husband came to the decision to help refugees escape:

At first my husband refused. “Japan is Germany’s ally and we cannot do this,” he said. The representatives of the refugees were persistent. “Our lives are in danger,” they said; “maybe it will be possible to issue some entry visas.” My husband consulted me and afterwards said that he would try and send a telegram to the Japanese Foreign Office, although he was sure that nothing would come out of it. “We will see what happens,” he said and sent the telegram. So my husband sent the telegram, but, as we had predicted, the answer was a flat no. “Negative, do not issue visas.”

3 Adapted from Facing History and Ourselves, “Diplomats and the Choice to Rescue.” https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-9/diplomats-and-choice-rescue



https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-9/diplomats-and-choice-rescue

https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-9/diplomats-and-choice-rescue



. . . I said to my husband that in spite of everything we must help these people. We could not sleep at night. We kept thinking and thinking what to do. In addition to that, I had a baby, we had three young children. If my husband issues the visas contrary to the Foreign Office instructions, then when we return to Japan, my husband would for sure lose his job. Or even worse, we might be in danger from the Nazis ourselves: they might arrest us, or we might have to flee from them because we had helped Jews. My husband, myself and the children.

We were thinking and thinking what to do. But the representatives of the refugees begged and begged: “Please give us the visas.” Anyway, now there are only a few hundred, but thousands of Jews will arrive. My husband and I thought: these are the lives of thousands of human beings.

Over the course of 29 days, Sugihara worked around the clock to hand-write the transit visas. He was directly involved in the rescue of more than 3,000 Jews. His actions cost him his job and his pension; for a period after the war, he had to find work as a porter and door-to-door salesman before reestablishing himself in another career.

Key words

• Diplomat: an official representing a country abroad

• Annihilation: complete destruction

• Special envoy: a messenger or representative, especially one on a diplomatic mission

• Emigrate: leave one’s own country in order to settle permanently in another

• Deportation: the action of deporting (expelling, evicting) a foreigner from a country

• Consul: an official appointed by a government to live in a foreign city and protect and promote the government’s citizens and interests there

• Refugees: people who flee a country because of war, civil unrest, or political persecution

• Consulates and embassies: the official offices of consuls and ambassadors, generally located in the capital city of another country

• Telegram: a message sent by telegraph and then delivered in written or printed form

• Pension: a retirement plan that provides a monthly income in retirement.

• Porter: a person employed to carry luggage and other loads, especially in a railroad station, airport, or hotel






1. What dangers and obstacles did the Sugiharas consider before making their decisions to help rescue Jews? What finally persuaded them to act? What consequences did they face as a result of their choices?

2. Where is the line between duty and conscience? When should ethical considerations take precedence over diplomats’ duties to carry out their governments’ policies?

3. What circumstances or personal qualities may lead one person and not another to do the right thing, regardless of the consequences they may face?





#4 - Oneg Shabbat: Voices From the Ghetto4

In ghettos, the struggle simply to avoid death could be all-consuming. Yet even as Jews labored to find food, fend off sickness, and avoid deportation, many also sought ways to defy their German overlords. Some residents took great risks to smuggle food, supplies, and information into ghettos; some attempted to sabotage production at their slave-labor factory jobs. Others, especially younger people and those without children, were able to escape from ghettos; some went into hiding and others found ways to join armed resistance groups, known as “partisans,” that were active in eastern Europe

beginning in 1941. Jews organized armed resistance in over 100 ghettos—most famously in the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943.

In the degrading, dehumanizing system of the ghettos, the struggle to maintain a sense of identity, dignity, faith, and culture was also a form of defiance, known today as “spiritual resistance.” In many ghettos, Jews organized secret schools, prayed and observed religious holidays, participated in clubs and cultural life, and worked with organizations set up to help others in the ghetto.

In the Warsaw ghetto, from 1940 to 1943, a group called Oyneg Shabes (meaning “joy of the Sabbath” in Yiddish, a reference to the group’s practice of meeting on Saturdays) conducted research and secretly assembled an archive that documented both Nazi crimes and also residents’ brave efforts to maintain life in the face of death. Gustawa Jarecka, a member of Oyneg Shabes, wrote: “The record must be hurled like a stone under history’s wheel in order to stop it. . . . One can lose all hopes except the one—that the suffering and destruction of this war will make sense when they are looked at from a distant, historical perspective.” Under the leadership of historian Emanuel Ringelblum, the group gathered writings, assembled statistics, and collected artwork, photographs, and objects of daily life, over 35,000 pages in all. Historian Peter N. Miller describes the archive:

“We find samples from the underground press, documents, drawings, candy wrappers, tram tickets, ration cards, theater posters, invitations to concerts and lectures. The archive preserves copies of complex doorbell codes for apartments housing dozens of tenants, and also restaurant menus advertising roast goose and fine wines. There were hundreds of postcards from Jews in the provinces about to be deported into the unknown, and there was the ghetto poetry of Wadysaw Szlengel and Yitzhak Katznelson. There is the entire script of a popular ghetto comedy called “Love Looks for an Apartment.” There are long essays on ghetto theaters and cafes alongside school primers and reports from orphanages. The first cache of tin boxes also contained photographs, seventy-six of which survived, showing street scenes, starving children, Jewish police, the building of the walls, smugglers throwing sacks of flour over the walls, people listening to loudspeakers in the street, and so on. Last inserted were German posters announcing the deportation . . .

4 Adapted from Facing History and Ourselves, “Voices from the Ghetto” https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-8/voices-warsaw-ghetto



https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-8/voices-warsaw-ghetto

https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-8/voices-warsaw-ghetto



In the Oyneg Shabes Archive, the individual remains intact and central, unobscured and unvarnished. This is a record of human beings, with human voices, in an inhuman existence. There are many essays in the archive written by parents memorializing their dead children. What on this earth could be more personal than that?”

Collected in tin boxes and aluminum milk crates, the documents were buried secretly in the ghetto in 1942 and 1943, in three places known only to a few people. Miller describes the burial of the first set of documents:

On August 3, 1942, with the Germans only a block away from the building at 68 Nowolipki Street, under which he was to bury the first cache of the archive, Israel Lichtenstein hurriedly deposited his testament—and in that instant gained his eternity. “I do not ask for any thanks, for any memorial, for any praise. I only wish to be remembered. . . . I wish my wife to be remembered, Gele Sekstein. . . . I wish my little daughter to be remembered. Margalit is 20 months old today. . . . She too deserves to be remembered.” Working with him were two teenagers, David Graber and Nahum Grzywacz. They, too, left little reminders of themselves in the archive that they were burying. Grzywacz was eighteen years old, and when he heard that the Germans had blockaded his parents’ building, he wrote, “I am going to run to my parents and see if they are all right. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me. Remember, my name is Nahum Grzywacz.” (The emphasis is in the original.)

Of approximately 60 people who worked with Oyneg Shabes, only three survived. After the war, they worked with other survivors to find the buried archives. Two sets of documents were uncovered, in 1946 and 1950. The third has never been found.

Key words

• Ghettos: sections of a town or city where people are restricted to live

• Deportation: the action of deporting (expelling, evicting) a foreigner from a country

• Overlords: rulers

• Smuggle: to move goods illegally into or out of a country.

• Sabotage: deliberately destroy, damage, or obstruct (something), especially for political or military advantage

• Degrading: demeaning, humiliating

• Archive: a collection of historical documents or records providing information about a place, institution, or group of people

• Cache: a collection of items of the same type stored in a hidden or inaccessible place

• Unvarnished: raw, plain

• Testament: something that serves as a sign or evidence of a specified fact, event, or quality






1. Why, in a time of such desperation and struggle, would the members of Oyneg Shabes devote precious energy and resources to creating an archive?

2. What was the value of creating the archive for the members of Oyneg Shabes? What is the value of the archive for students and historians today?

3. What type of network was involved in creating the archive?





#5 - Warsaw Ghetto Uprising5

In 1942, about 300,000 Jews had been deported from the Warsaw ghetto to the Treblinka killing center. Only 55,000 remained, mainly men and women without children because children and the elderly had been deported. Some of the “remnants,” as they called themselves, formed the Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa (ZOB), or Jewish Fighting Organization. They reached out to other resistance groups for weapons. They received very few weapons but were determined to do as much as possible with what they had.

When a new round of deportations began in January 1943, the ZOB fired on German troops and helped ghetto residents into hiding places. Nazi commanders retaliated by executing 1,000 Jews in the main square of the ghetto, but they also briefly stopped the deportations. Surviving Jews made preparations for a major revolt.

April 19, 1943, was the first day of the Jewish holiday of Passover and also the eve of Hitler’s birthday. German General Jürgen Stroop arrived in Warsaw ready to wipe out all opposition within a single day as a birthday gift to Hitler. Stroop had 2,100 soldiers with 13 heavy machine guns, 69 handheld machine guns, 135 submachine guns, several howitzers, and 1,358 rifles. The approximately 750 Jewish resisters had two submachine guns, a handful of rifles, and homemade explosives. But the resisters were able to fight off Stroop’s soldiers for the first few days, and they were able to hold out under siege for four weeks.

Simcha Rotem, a survivor, later told filmmaker Claude Lanzmann: “During the first three days of fighting, the Jews had the upper hand. The Germans retreated at once to the ghetto entrance, carrying dozens of wounded with them.”

On April 23, Mordechai Anielewicz, commander of the ZOB, wrote: “What happened exceeded our boldest dreams. The Germans fled twice from the ghetto. One of our companies held its position for forty minutes, while the other one lasted—upwards of six hours . . . My life’s dream has become a reality. I have seen the Jewish defense of the ghetto in all its strength and glory.”

On April 26, Stroop reported to his superiors in Berlin: “The resistance put up by the Jews and bandits could be broken only by relentlessly using all our force and energy by day and night. … I therefore decided to destroy the entire Jewish residential area by setting every block on fire.”

Rotem described what happened once Stroop’s men began to destroy the ghetto block by block: “The whole ghetto was ablaze. . . . I don’t think the human tongue can describe the horror we went through in the ghetto. . . . Besides fighting the Germans, we fought hunger and thirst. We had no contact with the outside world; we

5 Adapted from Facing History and Ourselves, “Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.” https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-9/warsaw-ghetto-uprising



https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-9/warsaw-ghetto-uprising

https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-9/warsaw-ghetto-uprising



were completely isolated, cut off from the world. We were in such a state that we could no longer understand the very meaning of why we went on fighting. We thought of attempting a breakout to the Aryan part of Warsaw, outside the ghetto.”

The Nazis finally put down the uprising on May 16 by destroying the ghetto and sending any survivors to death or labor camps. Anielewicz did not survive. Rotem and Marek Edelman were among the few to escape through the sewers to the “Aryan” part of Warsaw. Others took their own lives before the Nazis could reach them.

More than 70 years later, Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum told Edelman and Rotem that he and other historians had concluded that “resistance meant all but certain death for all within the ghetto . . . and the only issue was how to face the reality of impending death.”

“Professor,” Edelman resplied, “resistance was a choice with how to live in the moments before we died. Death was a given. How to live in the interim was not.”

Key words

• Ghetto: a section of a town or city where people are restricted to live

• Deported: to be removed from your home by force

• Retaliated: to fight back

• Passover: The Jewish holiday that celebrates the freedom of Jewish people from slavery in Egypt

• German General Jürgen Stroop: the German army commander who destroyed the Warsaw Ghetto

• Siege: a war strategy where people are trapped, cut off from supplies, and are forced to surrender

• Simcha Rotem: a member of the Jewish resistance during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising

• Relentlessly: constantly and oppressively

• Aryan: a race of people that Hitler incorrectly attributed to German people as a “master race’

• Marek Edelman: a member of the Jewish resistance during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising

• Impending: a threatening event about to happen

• Interim: a time in between two events occurring






1. What motivated members of the ZOB and other Jews in the Warsaw ghetto to take part in the armed resistance?

2. Compare and contrast the accounts of the uprising given by General Jürgen Stroop and survivor Simcha Rotem. How do they differ? How would our understanding of these events be different if we had only Stroop’s report?

3. Scholar Michael Berenbaum wrote that for those who resisted, “Death was a given.” With such terrible odds against them, why did so many Jews participate in the Warsaw ghetto uprising? Did their resistance matter?





#6 - Le Chambon: A Village Takes A Stand6

In Le Chambon, a village in southern France, the entire community became involved in rescuing Jewish people. Its residents turned their tiny mountain village into a hiding place for Jews from every part of Europe. Between 1940 and 1944, Le Chambon and other nearby villages provided safety for more than 5,000 people fleeing Nazi persecution, about 3,500 of whom were Jews. Magda Trocmé, the wife of the local minister, explained how it began.

“Those of us who received the first Jews did what we thought had to be done—nothing more complicated. It was not decided from one day to the next what we would have to do. There were many people in the village who needed help. How could we refuse them… We had no time to think. When a problem came, we had to solve it immediately. Sometimes people ask me, ‘How did you

make a decision?’ There was no decision to make. The issue was: Do you think we are all brothers or not? Do you think it is unjust to turn in the Jews or not? Then let us try to help!”

Almost everyone in the community of 5,000 took part in the effort. Even the children were involved. When a Nazi official tried to organize a Hitler Youth camp in the village, the students told him that they see no difference between Jewish and Christian children because the Bible said so.

The majority of the Jewish refugees were children. The villagers provided them with food, shelter, and fake identity papers. They also made sure that those they sheltered were involved as much as possible in the life of the town, in part to protect them from suspicion from visitors. Whenever residents of Le Chambon learned of an upcoming police raid, they hid the Jews they were protecting in the surrounding countryside. The values of the village were perhaps expressed best by its minister, André Trocmé, who concluded his sermons with the words, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind and with all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself. Go practice it.”

In February 1943, the police arrested André Trocmé and his assistant, Edouard Theis. Although they were released after 28 days, the Nazi police continued to harass them. In summer 1943, the Nazi police offered a reward for André Trocmé’s capture, forcing him into hiding for ten months. Many knew where he was, but no one turned him in.

The rescuers of Le Chambon also drew support from people in other places. There were many sympathizers throughout the region who could be called upon for help. Jewish rescue organizations brought Jewish children to the area for protection. Church groups helped fund their efforts. A group known as the Cimade led hundreds of Jews across the Alps to safety in Switzerland.

6 Adapted from Facing History and Ourselves, “Le Chambon: A Village Takes A Stand.” https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-9/le-chambon-village-takes-stand



https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-9/le-chambon-village-takes-stand

https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-9/le-chambon-village-takes-stand



When Magda Trocmé reflected on her choices years after the war, she said, “When people read this story, I want them to know that I tried to open my door. I tried to tell people, ‘Come in, come in.’ In the end I would like to say to people, ‘Remember that in your life there will be lots of circumstances where you will need a kind of courage, a kind of decision on your own, not about other people but about yourself.’ I would not say more.”

Key words

• Persecution: to inflict harm on a group of people

• Hitler Youth: a Nazi program created to teach children ages 10 and above Nazi beliefs

• Refugees: people who flee a country because of war, civil unrest, or political persecution

• Suspicion: being the target doing something wrong

• Sermons: a religious speech given by a religion leader

• Sympathizers: people who felt pity or sorrow for the misfortune of others


1. What do you think allowed the people of Le Chambon to help Jews even though, as Magda Trocmé says, they had “no time to think”?

2. Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, has said, “Let us not forget, after all, that there is always a moment when the moral choice is made. Often because of one story or one book or one person, we are able to make a different choice, a choice for humanity, for life. And so we must know these good people who helped Jews during the Holocaust. We must learn from them, and in gratitude and hope, we must remember them.” Why do you think Wiesel thinks we should remember these stories? What were the stories Jewish people may have told that might have inspired the people of Le Chambon to act?





#7 - Leslie AignerLeslie was born in 1929 in Czechoslovakia. In the early 1940s his family moved to Budapest, Hungary in the hope of escaping Nazi oppression. In 1943 the Nazis forced Leslie’s father into a slave labor camp and his sixteen-year-old sister was taken to a factory to do forced labor.

In 1944 Leslie, his mother, and his eight-year-old sister were taken from their home to the Budapest Ghetto. From there they were taken to Auschwitz, where his mother and sister were sent directly to the gas chambers. Les stayed in Auschwitz for five months.

From Auschwitz, Leslie was shipped to Landsberg, Germany, a sub camp of Dachau, where he was forced to perform hard labor on Nazi war machinery. Later he was relocated to the Kaufering concentration camp where he

contacted Typhus and barely survived. From Kaufering he was shipped to Dachau on the “death train” which got its name because it arrived with more dead passengers than alive. By the time the train reached Dachau, Leslie weighed just 75 pounds. He was liberated in Dachau by American troops on April 29, 1945. Doctors treated him for over a month before he could walk on his own. After liberation he returned to his home in Hungary to find that most of his family members had been murdered in the Holocaust.

Leslie married his wife Eva in 1956 in Hungary. Later that year they escaped from Communism with the great desire to build a family in a free country. They settled in Portland, Oregon and became the proud parents of two wonderful children and four grandsons. After local Holocaust deniers became vocal in the late 1980s, Leslie and Eva began sharing their story with hundreds of thousands of audience members.

When being interviewed by a student in March 2018, Les said the following:

“When I was a prisoner in the camps, the day would start with a 4 am wake up and gathering at the side of the barrack where I was housed with 800 other people. The Nazi commanders would come to do a head count between 6 or 7 am. During this time, we would stand and wait… no matter what the weather or temperature, for a couple of two, three hours. It was winter and rainy and we would stand 5 abreast with our backs to the barrack. We huddled close together to stay warm. When the man in front got too cold, the man from the back rotated forward, this way everyone got their turn to be in the middle. After head count, we had breakfast, which consisted of black “coffee,” terribly bitter, with pine needles brewed into it, and a piece of dark bread. 8 men received a brick-like loaf of hard, dark bread. In order to have breakfast, we had to climb back into our bunks, because there was not enough floor room for 800 people to stand in the barrack. … I was fortunate to have found a knife in the mud. With this contraband knife, I was sought after to cut the bread for the others. Those who didn’t have a knife had to break the bread apart into crumbled pieces, and try to make piles of the same size for each person. Every day a different person in your group of 8 got to be the first to pick their pile of bread. When I used my knife, everyone got an equal amount of bread. I was “the kid with the knife.” I hid it in my shoe. My payment for use of the knife was to gather the morsels for myself. It helped me to survive.





Key words

• Oppression: cruel or unjust treatment


• Auschwitz: one of the six death centers for Jews during the Holocaust

• Typhus: a potentially fatal contagious disease caused by unsanitary living conditions

• Liberation: to be freed

• Deniers: those who refuse to believe something is true despite evidence


1. Identify the discrimination and oppression was Les resisting?

2. How can splitting bread into even slices to share with others be a form of resistance?

3. How does Les’s experience make you rethink your understanding of resistance?





#8 - Marion Pritchard: Deciding to Act7

In 1942, Marion Pritchard was a graduate student in German-occupied Amsterdam. She was not Jewish, but she observed what was happening to the Jews of her city. One morning, while riding her bicycle to class, she witnessed a scene outside an orphanage for Jewish children that changed her life:

The Germans were loading the children, who ranged in age from babies to eight-year-olds, on trucks. They were upset, and crying. When they did not move fast enough the Nazis picked them up, by an arm, a leg, the hair, and threw them into the trucks. To watch grown men treat small children that way—I could not believe my eyes. I found myself literally crying with rage. Two women coming down the street tried to interfere physically. The Germans heaved them into the truck, too. I just sat there on my bicycle, and that was the moment I decided that if there was anything I could do to thwart such atrocities, I would do it.

Some of my friends had similar experiences, and about ten of us, including two Jewish students who decided they did not want [to] go into hiding, organized very informally for this purpose. We obtained Aryan identity cards for the Jewish students, who, of course, were taking more of a risk than we were. They knew many people who were looking to . . . “disappear,” as Anne Frank and her family were to do.

We located hiding places, helped people move there, provided food, clothing, and ration cards, and sometimes moral support and relief for the host families. We registered newborn Jewish babies as gentiles . . . and provided medical care when possible.

The decision to rescue Jews often led to other difficult choices. Pritchard described what happened when she agreed to hide a Jewish family:

“The father, the two boys, and the baby girl moved in and we managed to survive the next two years, until the end of the war. Friends helped take up the floorboards, under the rug, and build a hiding place in case of raids. . . . One night we had a very narrow escape.

Four Germans, accompanied by a Dutch Nazi policeman came and searched the house. They did not find the hiding place, but they had learned from experience that sometimes it paid to go back to a house they had already searched, because by then the hidden Jews might have come out of the hiding place. The baby had started to cry, so I let the children out. Then the Dutch policeman came back alone. I had a small revolver that a friend had given me, but I had never planned to use it. I felt I had no choice except to kill him. I would do it again, under the same circumstances, but it still bothers me. . . . If anybody had really tried to find out how and where he disappeared, they could have, but the general attitude was that there was one less traitor to worry about. A local undertaker helped dispose of the body, he put it in a coffin with a legitimate body in it. . . .

7 Adapted from Facing History and Ourselves, “Deciding to Act.” https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-9/deciding-act



https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-9/deciding-act

https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-9/deciding-act



Was I scared? Of course, the answer is “yes.” . . . There were times that the fear got the better of me, and I did not do something that I could have. I would rationalize the inaction, feeling it might endanger others, or that I should not run a risk, because what would happen to the three children I was now responsible for, if something happened to me, but I knew when I was rationalizing.”

In reflecting on her choices and those made by others during the war, Pritchard was troubled by a “tendency to divide the general population during the war into a few ‘good guys’ and the large majority of ‘bad guys’. That seems to me to be a dangerous oversimplification . . . The point I want to make is that there were indeed some people who behaved criminally by betraying their Jewish neighbors and thereby sentencing them to death. There were some people who dedicated themselves to actively rescuing as many people as possible. Somewhere in between was the majority, whose actions varied from the minimum decency of at least keeping quiet if they knew where Jews were hidden to finding a way to help when they were asked.”

Key words

• Occupied country: A country that was occupied by the German military and/or Nazi party officials during the Holocaust.

• Interfere: to prevent a process or activity from continuing or being carried out properly

• Heaved: to lift, drag, or pull with great effort

• Thwart: to prevent someone from accomplishing something

• Aryan: a race of people that Hitler incorrectly attributed to German people as a “master race’

• Ration cards: a card issued by a government to allow the holder to obtain food or other items that are in short supply during wartime or in other emergency situations

• Gentiles: a person of a non-Jewish nation or of non-Jewish faith; especially a Christian

• Undertaker: a person whose business is preparing dead bodies for burial or cremation and making arrangements for funerals

• Rationalize: attempt to explain or justify (one’s own or another’s behavior or attitude) with logical, plausible reasons, even if these are not true or appropriate






1. What dilemmas did Marion Pritchard face? What choices did she make?

2. In his study of rescuers, Ervin Staub states, “Goodness, like evil, often begins in small steps. Heroes evolve; they aren’t born. Very often the rescuers made only a small commitment at the start—to hide someone for a day or two. But once they had taken that step, they began to see themselves differently, as someone who helps. What starts as mere willingness becomes intense involvement.” What inspired Marion Pritchard’s willingness to help Jews? How did that willingness become “intense involvement”? Do you consider Pritchard a hero? Why or why not?

3. What range of behaviors does Pritchard identify in her account? In what ways is Pritchard’s own story difficult to categorize? What other stories of individuals or choices have you read that are also hard to categorize?





#9 - Henryk Ross8

One of the most impressive picture collections that survived WWII was created secretly by the Jewish photographer Henryk Ross. Ross was born in 1910. Before the war he had been a sports photographer for a newspaper in Warsaw, Poland.

When the Lodz Ghetto was sealed by the Germans in May 1940, Ross was forced to move into the ghetto. He managed to get a job as one of the official photographers in the ghetto. Along with his colleague Mendel Grossman, Ross was in charge of producing identity and propaganda photographs for the Department of Statistics in the Lodz Ghetto. Due to his task, Ross had access to film and

processing facilities in the ghetto. He used these to secretly document the conditions in the ghetto, the suffering of the Jews there, and the brutality of the Germans. Ross risked his life in order to take pictures that were not officially approved, often doing so by hiding his camera underneath his coat, opening it slightly, and snapping photographs. In this fashion, he accumulated thousands of pictures that tell us what life was like in the Lodz Ghetto.

When the liquidation of the ghetto began in 1944, Ross buried his archive in the ground of the ghetto, so it could be dug up and could bear witness to the persecution of European Jewry after the war.

“Just before the closure of the ghetto (1944) I buried my negatives in the ground in order that there should be some record of our tragedy, namely the total elimination of the Jews from Lodz by the Nazi executioners. I was anticipating the total destruction of Polish Jewry. I wanted to leave a historical record of our martyrdom.”

Henryk Ross stayed behind in the ghetto as part of the clean-up commando. He survived the Holocaust, and located and dug up the documentary material after the war.

About his collection

Ross’s collection is exceptional. It portrays Jewish life in the ghetto through the eyes of a professional and skillful Jewish photographer who clearly loved and appreciated the capturing of people and social interactions. Ross felt compelled to do what he could in order to document Jewish life and by that to defy the Nazis’ goal to annihilate the Jewish people and culture. The collection contains about 3,000 negatives and other ghetto records. Ross’s “records of the tragedy” were used as evidence in the Eichmann trial in 1961.

Like Mendel Grossman’s images, Ross’s photographs depict familiar scenes of hunger, despair and death; some 20% of the inhabitants of the ghetto died of starvation. However, his collection also includes

8 Adapted from Yad Vashem, “The Jewish Photographer Henryk Ross.” https://www.yadvashem.org/articles/general/the-jewish-photographer-henryk-ross.html



https://www.yadvashem.org/articles/general/who-took-the-pictures.html

https://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/holocaust/eichmann_trial/pdf/eichmann_trial.pdf

https://www.yadvashem.org/articles/general/the-jewish-photographer-henryk-ross.html

https://www.yadvashem.org/articles/general/the-jewish-photographer-henryk-ross.html



photographs that strike us as unfamiliar in the context of the Holocaust and challenge our visual memory of the ghettos. Henryk Ross managed to find beauty even among the suffering that the ghetto population faced every day. He captured those moments whenever he had a chance. He photographed scenes such as a couple kissing behind a bush, birthday parties, ghetto receptions, love between women and their children, the joy of children playing, and the happy moments of ghetto residents. The people in these pictures smile, they are handsome and dressed nicely, and they seem healthy and happy.

These photographs are beautiful images, but they are disturbing at the same time. They were taken in the midst of destruction, humiliation, starvation, and murder. It is hard to believe that pictures like this were taken in the Lodz ghetto. They are deceptive. They make it seem as though the conditions in the ghetto could not have been so terrible if these well-fed, well-dressed, healthy and happy people were enjoying life and celebrating. If one doesn’t know the context, the history and the deathly reality of the Lodz ghetto, one could be deceived into believing that these images represent the daily life of all inhabitants. Thus, it is important to emphasize that these photographs stand in stark contrast to the reality that the majority of the ghetto inmates faced.

It is unclear why Ross took these private pictures and what kind of a relationship he had with the people depicted in them. It is possible that he was paid to take pictures for them; it is possible that he was friends with them; it is possible that he simply wanted to commemorate these beautiful scenes and social interactions.

Key words


• Propaganda: information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view

• Brutality: great cruelty

• Liquidation: killing, typically by violent means

• Persecution: hostility and ill-treatment, especially because of race or political or religious beliefs

• Jewry: Jewish people collectively (as a whole group)

• Negatives: a photographic image made on film

• Martyrdom: the suffering of death on account of adherence to a cause and especially to one’s religious faith

• Commando: a soldier specially trained to carry out raids

• Compelled: a feeling of being irresistibly driven or urged to do something

• Annihilate: to destroy completely



http://www.foto8.com/reviews/V3N3/resources/lodz1.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_azWmV5p47Rs/TJhzlyaZsBI/AAAAAAAADXU/R4tRZ8k0MlU/s1600/Lodz+Ross+-+kids+party.jpg

https://monicavaciu.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/henryk_ross_lodz2.gif



• Deceptive: giving an appearance or impression different from the true one

• In stark contrast to: very different from

• Commemorate: to show respect for


1. What motivated Henryk Ross to take photographs? What risks were involved?

2. How might our understanding of the Holocaust be different if photos like those taken by Henryk Ross had not been preserved?

3. How does Henryk Ross challenge your understanding of resistance?





#10 - Protests in Germany9 Some of the first Germans to speak out against Nazi injustices were a group of students at the University of Munich. In winter 1942, Hans Scholl, his sister Sophie, and their friend Christoph Probst formed a small group known as the White Rose. Hans, a former member of the Hitler Youth, had been a soldier on the eastern front, where he witnessed the mistreatment of Jews and learned about deportations. In 1942 and 1943, the White Rose published four leaflets condemning Nazism. The first leaflet stated the group’s purpose: the overthrow of the Nazi government. In the second leaflet, the group confronted the mass murders of Jews:

“We do not want to discuss here the question of the Jews, nor do we want in this leaflet to compose a defense or apology. No, only by way of example do we want to cite the fact that since the conquest of Poland three hundred thousand Jews have been murdered in this country in the most bestial way. Here we see the most frightful crime against human dignity, a crime that is unparalleled in the whole of history. For Jews, too, are human beings—no matter what position we take with respect to the Jewish question—and a crime of this dimension has been perpetrated against human beings.”

In February 1943, the Nazis arrested the Scholls and Probst and brought them to trial. All three were found guilty and were guillotined that same day. Soon afterward, others in the group were also tried, convicted, and beheaded.

Although the Nazis were able to destroy the White Rose by executing its members, they could not keep its message from being heard. Helmuth von Moltke, a German aristocrat, smuggled the group’s leaflets to friends in neutral countries. They, in turn, sent them to the Allies, who made thousands of copies and then dropped them over German cities. As a lawyer who worked for the German Intelligence Service, von Moltke had been aware of the murders for some time but had taken no action. By late October, he was asking, “May I know this and yet sit at my table in my heated flat and have tea? Don’t I thereby become guilty too?”

By 1944, it was clear to many Germans that their country was losing the war, and opponents of the regime began to take bolder action. Helmuth von Moltke, who had smuggled White Rose leaflets in 1943, gathered a group of prominent Germans for secret meetings at his country estate. There they plotted how to overthrow Hitler. Von Moltke did not support assassination, saying, “Let Hitler live. He and his party must bear responsibility.”

But by summer 1944, other members of von Moltke’s circle were ready to act. On July 20, a member of the group, Claus von Stauffenberg, tried to kill Hitler and his top aides by placing explosives in their conference room. The plot failed.

9 Adapted from Facing History and Ourselves, “Protests in Germany.” https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-9/protests-germany



https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-9/protests-germany

https://www.facinghistory.org/holocaust-and-human-behavior/chapter-9/protests-germany



Hitler and his staff retaliated by arresting and executing suspected conspirators and cracking down on anyone believed to oppose the regime. About 1,000 people either were executed by the Nazis or committed suicide before they could be arrested in the aftermath of the failed coup attempt.

Key words

• Injustices: lack of fairness or justice

• Hitler Youth: a Nazi program created to teach children ages 10 and above Nazi beliefs

• Deportations: the action of deporting (expelling, evicting) a foreigner from a country

• Leaflets: a printed sheet of paper, containing information or advertising and usually distributed free

• Condemning: express complete disapproval of, typically in public

• Conquest: defeat; conquering; overpowering

• Beastial: animal-like

• Dignity: worthy of honor and respect

• Unparalleled: without likeness; having no equal

• Dimension: size

• Perpetrated: to carry out

• Guillotined: beheaded

• Neutral: not on one side or another

• Regime: a system or planned way of doing things, especially one imposed from above

• Conspirators: a person who takes part in a conspiracy

• Coup: a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government


1. Why might the actions of the White Rose have made other Germans feel “ashamed,” as Reck-Malleczewen suggests? Why do you think so few Germans spoke out against the Nazi regime?

2. Helmuth von Moltke asks, “May I know this and yet sit at my table in my heated flat and have tea? Don’t I thereby become guilty too?” Why would von Moltke mention his heated flat and cup of tea? What do his words suggest about the responsibility of bystanders?

3. What is the responsibility of those who learn about atrocities taking place today? Is this question more complicated now than it was in the 1940s?





Resistance During the Holocaust: Essential Questions Worksheet

Instructions

Use evidence from at least two resister profiles to provide a paragraph response to each essential question below. In your explanation, do your best to identify the resister profiles that helped you answer the question. For example: “In the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, the Nazis used their authority to...

Essential questions

• How can a government use its authority to create “in” and “out” groups in order to marginalize and oppress people?

• How can a government use its authority to protect people and create inclusivity?


• How does power differ from authority when it comes to an individual or a group’s ability to resist systemic oppression?

Name: ________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________

Date: ________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________

Resister Profile: ______________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________





Four Corner Biography 1: Eduard Rügemer

Abbreviated Bio

Eduard Rügemer was born on March 27, 1883 in Nuremberg, Germany. He served as a Major in the German Army on the Eastern Front. He was specifically stationed in the Ukranian city of Tarnopol. During his time there, executions of Poles and Jews were common, although he was not in command of those units. He survived the war and died in Germany in 1955.

Expanded Bio

Eduard Rügemer was born on March, 27, 1883 in Nuremberg, Germany. He served as a Major in the German Army on the Eastern Front. He was specifically stationed in the Ukranian city of Tarnopol. While there, he saw a young 19-year-old Polish woman faint while working in a munition’s factory. The 60-year-old Rügemer took pity on the young blond girl, who also spoke excellent German. He arranged a job for her in a dining room for military officers and she also became his housekeeper. Her name was Irene Gut and she also smuggled 12 Jews into the large house occupied by Major Rügemer. During the day, Irene would lock the front door and the 12 Jews would come out from hiding to help Irene with her chores. When the Major returned at night, they would return to the basement and hide. One day while in town, Irene and other pedestrians were forced into a large square by German soldiers and watched the hanging execution of a Jewish family and the Christian family that had been hiding them. She was so upset that she forgot to lock the front door to the Major’s house when she returned. Major Rügemer came home unexpectedly, walked in on everyone, and realized that Irene had been hiding Jews in his home. Instead of turning her in, he made a deal. The price of his silence would be that she would become his mistress. Irene and those she hid survived, as did Rügemer. Rejected by his family for the affair and for being complicit in hiding Jews, he was taken in by Ida and Lazar Haller, two of the Jews who had been hiding in his home. Rügemer even became the godfather of their son, Roman, who had been conceived during their time in hiding. Roman called Rügemer “Zeyde,” yiddish for grandpa. Rügemer lived with the Hallers for eight years before his death in 1955. Yad Vashem recognized him in 2012 as a Righteous Among the Nations.

* Irene Gut Opdyke ended up immigrating to the United States after the War. She wrote a memoir In My Hands: Memoirs of a Holocaust Rescuer. Irene’s daughter, Jeannie, is a member of the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education’s Speaker Bureau and shares her mother’s story to many audiences.





Four Corner Biography 2: Kazimierz Sakowicz

Abbreviated Bio

Kazimierz Sakowicz was a Polish journalist who moved to Ponary, Lithuania. During the war, he kept a detailed journal documenting the crimes and atrocities happening outside his home, often distinguishing between Jewish, Polish, and Communist victims. He died in 1944.

Expanded Bio

Kazimierz Sakowicz was a Polish journalist who moved to Ponary, Lithuania. During the war, he kept a detailed journal documenting the crimes and atrocities happening outside his home, often distinguishing between Jewish, Polish, and Communist victims. Sakowicz took a grave risk in commiting to paper his meticulous chronicle of the unspeakable crimes he witnessed: the genocide being perpetrated by the Nazis and their Lithuanian collaborators. In order to continue writing, Sakowicz needed to act normally among his neighbors and in front of soldiers. Discovery of his diary would have cost him, and perhaps his family their lives. His last known entry is November 6, 1943. He died in 1944.

* Kazimierz Sakowicz’s diary was published and is titled Ponary Diary, 1941 - 1943: A Bystander’s Account of a Mass Murder. This book includes graphic detail about mass murder and not recommended for younger audiences.





Four Corner Biography 3: Oskar Schindler

Abbreviated Bio

Oskar Schindler was born on April 28, 1908 in Czechoslovakia to a prominent family. Schindler took control of a Jewish-owned enameled-goods factory, Deutsch Emailwaren Fabrik, close to the Jewish ghetto in Krakow, Poland. He mainly employed Jewish workers from the ghetto. Schindler eventually came to see the Jews as mothers, fathers, and children, exposed to ruthless slaughter. He decided to risk everything in desperate attempts to save “his” 1,200 Jews from certain death at the killing centers. Thanks to massive bribery, he was able to save his workers. In 1963, the Israeli government named him Righteous Among the nations. Oskar Schindler died in 1974 and is buried in Jerusalem in Mount Zion.

Expanded Bio

Oskar Schindler was born on April 28, 1908 in Czechoslovakia to a prominent family. Afer the deep economic depression of the 1930s, the family firm became bankrupt. Now unemployed, Schindler joined the Nazi party. He quickly got on good terms with the local Gestapo chiefs and was later recruited by the German Intelligence Agency to collect information about Polish people. He was highly esteemed for his efforts. Eventually Schindler moved to Krakow, Poland, where he took over a Jewish family’s apartment. After bribing Nazi officials with money and illegal black market goods, Schindler took control of a Jewish owned enameled goods factory Deutsch Emailwaren Fabrik. The factory principally employed Jewish workers who lived the ghetto close by.

Over time, Schindler eventually came to see the Jews as mothers, fathers, and children, exposed to ruthless slaughter.

In July 1944, Germany was losing the war and closing down the easternmost concentration camps, deporting the remaining prisoners westward or sending them to their deaths at Auschwitz. Schindler convinced the commandant of the Krakow-Plaszow concentration camp to allow him to move his factory to Brünnlitz in the Sudetenland, almost certainly sparing his workers from death in the gas chambers. Schindler composed a list of 1,200 names of Jewish people and they travelled to Brünnlitz in October 1944. Schindler spent his entire fortune continuing to bribe SS officials in order to prevent the execution of his workers until the end of the Second World War in Europe in May 1945. After the war, Schindler was supported by assistance payments from Jewish relief organizations. He moved to Argentina, went bankrupt in 1958, and returned to Germany, where several of his business ventures failed. He ended up relying on the support and relief from “Schindler Jews.” In 1963, the Israeli government named him Righteous Among the nations. Oskar Schindler died in 1974 and is buried in Jerusalem in Mount Zion.





Four Corner Biography 4: Karol Stachak and the Blue Police

Abbreviated Bio

The Blue Police was a group of Polish police officers placed under the supervision of the German leadership. During the Holocaust, the Blue Police were most active in “Jew Hunts,” searches for Jews who escaped deportations from ghettos.

Karol Stachak was the commandant of the Czudec Polish Police unit. As a valued member of the Home Army, he executed informers, bandits, and other people deemed dangerous to the organization and local population. In the spring of 1943, locals brought a Jewish man to the police station, who during his interrogation allegedly listed the names of eight families who had given him shelter. Stachak shot the Jew behind the police station.

Extended Bio

The Blue Police was a group of Polish police officers placed under the supervision of the German leadership. The Polish government in exile encouraged the policemen to return to service in order to mitigate German brutality and gather intelligence. Originally, the role of the Blue Police was to maintain law and order, but as the war continued, their duties expanded to include countering partisan activities. At the same time, the Polish resistance continued to fight against German police structures, sometimes via collaboration with the Blue Police. During the Holocaust, the Blue Police were most active in “Jew Hunts,” searches for Jews who escaped deportations from ghettos.

Karol Stachak was the commandant of the Czudec Polish Police unit. However, he was also a valued member of the Home Army, a Polish resistance unit, where he executed informers, bandits, and other people deemed dangerous to the resistance organization and local population. He was a reliable helper to Jews in hiding, and also hid a Jewish girl in his own home during the liquidation of the ghetto. In the spring of 1943, locals brought a Jewish man to the police station, who during his interrogation allegedly listed the names of eight families who had given him shelter. Stachak believed that handing him over to the Germans would result in the murder of these families and made the decision to shoot the Jewish person behind the police station. His cover was eventually blown in May 1944, and as a result he was placed under arrest by the Gestapo for ties to the Home Army and later imprisoned. The courts eventually sentenced him to death.

* You can read more information about Karol Stachak on page 45 of the article “Ordinary Men?: The Polish Police and the Holocaust in the Subcarpathian Region” by Tomasz Frydel.



https://www.prchiz.pl/storage/app/media/2019/00/tomasz-frydel/ordinary-men-the-polish-police-and-the-holocaust-2019.pdf

https://www.prchiz.pl/storage/app/media/2019/00/tomasz-frydel/ordinary-men-the-polish-police-and-the-holocaust-2019.pdf

Resistance During the Holocaust - Oregon Jewish Museum

Documents

Transcript of Resistance During the Holocaust - Oregon Jewish Museum