The Holocaust: Literary Considerations

1
The HolocaustLiterary Considerations

• Adapted from the United States Holocaust Memorial
  Museums Curriculum

2
Prior Knowledge

• What prior knowledge do you have?
• Which texts have you read?
• Which movies have you seen?
• What have you already studied?

3
Disclaimer

• Please note that this is not a history lesson
  merely a short overview followed by literary
  considerations.

I lt3 Ms. Woodworth class
4
http//www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/media_nm.php?ModuleId
10005143MediaId7827
5
Holocaust Literature in Context
Death marches Germany surrenders Liberation
of Camps
Germany invades Poland Warsaw ghetto
established Voyage of the St. Louis
Invasion of USSR Einsatzgruppen massacres
Hitler in power Boycott Antisemitic laws
Kristallnacht Evian Conference
Deportations to killing centers
Deportations from Hungary
Nuremberg Laws
German Jews must wear the yellow star
German Jews expelled from public schools
Warsaw ghetto uprising
1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945
1942-44
1941-43
1944-45
1925-42
1937 - 45
6
How does this pertain to English?

• Survivors, as primary sources, are eye-witnesses
  of this period in time. As they pass on, their
  written works become their voice.
• Consider the motive behind the diaries and
  letters that were carefully hidden.
• The victims wanted their stories to be known.
• In History you learn the facts in English the
  stories. Through reading, you experience the
  world.

This milk can, filled to the brim with diaries
and letters, was carefully buried so that the
truth could eventually be heard.
7
Book Burning The First Step to Public
Persuasion and Ignorance
Where they have burned books, they will end in
burning human beings." Heinrich Heine
8
Basic Overview The Holocaust

• The Holocaust refers to a specific genocidal
  event in twentieth-century history the
  state-sponsored, systematic persecution and
  annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany
  and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945.
• Be careful with terms like The Germans they
  did not act alone.

The time period known as The Holocaust is
offensive to some people because he word
holocaust refers to a sacrifice by fire-
sometimes offensive to people because it implies
the Jews were sacrificed for the greater good.
What do you think?
9
Basic Overview continued

• Jews were the primary victims 6 million were
  murdered Gypsies, the handicapped, and Poles
  were also targeted for destruction or decimation
  for racial, ethnic, or national reasons.
• Millions more, including homosexuals, Jehovahs
  Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war, and political
  dissidents, also suffered grievous oppression and
  death under Nazi tyranny.

Photo montage of victims USHMM Washington D.C.
10
Systematic

• Ghettos Sections of the city to segregate prior
  to transition
• Concentration Camps holding camps
• Labor camps prisoners were put to work
• Death camps only one purpose for these
• Trains transported purposefully

11
The GhettosSections of cities were first gated
off to segregate Jews. These became ghettos. Some
people were transported into ghettos.These were
very condensed living quarters. Basic living
necessitates such as food and running water were
limited. This quickly led to the spread of
diseases such as Typhoid.
12
Concentration Camps

• These holding camps served two main purposes to
  demoralize and dehumanize.
• Prisoners were immediately separated from their
  families and then stripped of their belongings,
  clothing, and hair.
• There is great value in having a sense of self
  and a purpose. What happens when those two things
  are stripped from you?
• Eliminates the desire to escape and rebel.
• Where do you go if you are convinced you have
  nowhere to go?
• Freedom is only desirable if you have a will and
  purpose to be free.

13
Belongings were sorted and recycled.
14
Piles of shoes that belonged to prisoners who
were murdered upon arrival, were recycled.
Auschwitz 1945
15
(No Transcript)
16

• Hair was used to make bomb fuses, felt, thread,
  rope and mattress stuffing.

17
Labor Camps

• Prisoners were forced to engage in strenuous
  penal labor and production to aid the war.

18
Death Camps

• Purpose to complete the final step in The Final
  Solution

19
The Centrality of Auschwitz

• Auschwitz was a death camp. It is also the only
  camp that tattooed ID s on the arms of victims.
• The amount of planning it took to simply
  transport people- never mind murder them and
  recycle their belongings- required a system.
• Many people claim they didnt do anything to stop
  the killing because they didnt know. Historian
  Raul Hilberg points out that over 1 million
  Germans must have known about the death camps,
  just by virtue of their association with the
  railroads.

20

• Avoid simple assumptions to complex history.
• I would have left!
• I would have killed someone!

21
The power of propaganda and bandwagon persuasion
22
Resistance Occurred

• Portrait of Jewish partisans (Bedzin ghetto,
  Poland 1942). Jewish resistance occurred in many
  forms and many places, including armed revolts in
  the death camps.

23
Why didnt they just leave?

• The Evian Conference sent a message to the Jews
  that even if they could get out of Germany, most
  countries didnt want to take on massive
  immigration during lean economic times.
• How has the cartoonist labeled the man in the
  middle? What does this imply about the tenor of
  the times?

The Evian Conference. Political cartoon entitled,
"Will the Evian Conference guide him to
freedom?, published in July 1938, The New York
Times
24
Some people immigrated successfully

• The voyage of the St. Louis, May June 1939

25
(No Transcript)
26

• Just because it happened does not mean it was
  inevitable
• Conscious choices were made

27
A teacher points out the salient features of a
student's profile during a lesson in racial
instruction. Teaching this subject became
mandatory in 1934. Consider this A greater
percentage of teachers joined the Nazi party than
did any other profession. Job security?
28
French police round up foreign Jews, 1941
29

• The Nazis found willing collaborators in many
  occupied territories. They couldnt have pulled
  it off by themselves.
• A member of the Lithuanian auxiliary police, who
  has just returned from taking part in the mass
  execution of the local Jewish population in the
  Rase Forest, auctions off their personal property
  in the central market of Utena.

Lithuanians, July 1941
30
Denmark, October 1943 The Danish did many things
to help the Jews escape and survive. In this
picture, a crowd gathers around a Danish Nazi and
a Jew he has apprehended. Danish police later
helped the Jewish man to escape.
31
Avoid comparisons of pain

• Dont jump to conclusions about other peoples
  pain, i.e. The Holocaust was the most difficult
  period of time.
• Pain is an abstract and relative concept. It is
  by no means a contest our goal is simply to
  widen our knowledge and experience through
  literature.

32
Levels of suffering? Injustice causes suffering,
period.
Rwanda
Trail of Tears
Armenia
American slavery
33

A group of Gypsy prisoners congregate in the
Rivesaltes internment camp. The Roma experience
came closest to that of the Jews. Persecuted as
an inferior race, between 25 50 of their
prewar population murdered by the Nazis, by
members of the Einsatzgruppen and in
concentration and death camps.

• Roma, 1939 - 1942

34

• Dont be fooled by stereotypical descriptions

35
Which students do you think are Jewish? (all of
them)
36
(No Transcript)
37
Important Terms
38

• Genocide- the systematic and planned
  extermination of an entire nation, race, or
  ethnic group
• Annihilation- total destruction
• Holocaust- the state-sponsored systematic
  persecution of European Jews by Nazi Germany and
  its collaborators between 1933 and 1945
• Commemoration- honoring the memory of or serving
  as a memorial
• Totalitarianism- total control of the country by
  the government
• Fascism- a system of government that is marked by
  stringent social and economic control, a strong
  centralized government usually headed by a
  dictator
• Pogrom- government-organized attacks on Jewish
  neighborhoods
• Anti-Semitism- ill-feeling or hatred toward Jews
• Stereotype- commonly held popular belief about
  specific social groups or types of individuals
• Racism- hatred of a person or group because of
  race or ethnic background

39
What do these terms have in common?

• Kristallnacht
• The Final Solution
• Aryan
• The Jewish Question
• Resettlement
• Euthanasia
• Treated appropriately

40
Kristallnacht Final SolutionAryan Jewish
questionResettlementEuthanasia

• These are all the perpetrators terms. We have to
  qualify them when we use them --- with finger
  quotes or with a disclaimer --- What the Nazis
  called resettlement in the East. Even though
  Kristallnacht has become widely accepted, it is
  the Nazi term that focuses on the broken shop
  windows of the Jewish merchants, and so it
  implies that the violence of November 9, 1938,
  simply set the economy right. Even when we use
  the term Jew, we have to remember that the
  Nazis did the defining based upon the
  grandparents religion.