Twenty-two eighth-grade boys in hooded navy sweatshirts and fleeces sat in front of me as I paced in front of the white board. Clumped around square tables, and unusually silent, they stared at the printed page in their hands. No one rocked back in his chair; no one elbowed anyone else; no one burped or snickered. A light May breeze and the hum of afternoon traffic blew in the narrow open windows. The #3 MUNI bus climbed the hill outside and I heard the snap of its trolley poles click along the overhead grid of wires. Inside the classroom: silence.
I was 16 months into my teacher training, and as instructed by my mentor teacher, I had photocopied and handed our students the excerpts in their hands, excerpts of the novel Night by Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel. Only a few minutes into my brief introduction to the author and the book, curly-haired, freckled, inquisitive David raised his hand and asked, "Miss Merz, why are we learning about this depressing, sad book?"
My mind reeled. Internally I said, Good question, kid. I had a slew of answers spinning in my brain, and while I was selecting an appropriate and satisfactory one, I flashed on the invitation to David’s Bar Mitzvah that sat in the pile of mail on my desk at home; that’s when my heart raced. If David, currently immersed in bar mitzvah lessons, didn't see the importance of learning about Wiesel's path, then how would any of my other eager students? What could I tell them?
I stumbled through an explanation of my own opinion. I told him and the rest of the class that if we could learn as much as possible about a story like this, we could perhaps better prevent something like the Holocaust from happening again. That seemed to please David and his classmates, and truthfully 13 years later, that answer, albeit simplistic, still works. But all these years later as I still teach about sad, depressing books, I continue to get that “why” question from other David’s about every other May.
With their questions, I reexamine my decision year after year, especially now that I have my own classroom in a different part of the country and get to make some of my own curricular decisions. I am not sure if I have “the” answer yet, but slowly, I am creating an answer that is beginning to feel satisfying to me, and my students. Here goes.
As a student and reader, and eventually later, as a teacher, I saw that throughout my life I’d been drawn to stories of the Holocaust, but there were three reasons I chose to put them in my own curriculum once I had some autonomy in curricular choices. First, as identified by the global education organization, Facing History and Ourselves, stories of the Holocaust and similar events reveal the origins and implications of prejudice, racism, and classification in all societies. This potential power made these stories very significant to me. Secondly, I thought that they might help students develop an awareness of the value of diversity and an acceptance of differences at a time in their lives when they were obsessively focused on conformity, yet struggling to find their own identities. Finally, I wanted students to read them because these stories force them to scrutinize moral issues. Literature that makes readers examine their own ideas about life — not just everyday life, but life and death issues — is necessary for all young people. I saw my middle school students hungry for “real life” stories that allowed them to question, probe, and test their own principles.
Eventually, during research on teaching about the Holocaust, I came across a letter in the book Teacher and Child, by psychologist Haim Ginott. It is a letter sent by a principal to his teachers at the beginning of each new school year. Heartfelt and passionate, it evoked the reason I chose to bring a study of genocide into my classroom and tried to expose them to as many Holocaust stories, educators, and survivors as possible. It reads:
Dear Teacher, I am a survivor of a concentration camp. My eyes saw what no man should witness: gas chambers built by learned engineers. Children poisoned by educated physicians.?Infants killed by trained nurses.Women and babies shot and burned by high school and college graduates.?So I am suspicious of education. My request is: Help your students become human. Your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, educated Eichmanns. Reading, writing, arithmetic are important only if they serve to make our children more human.
As a teacher and advisor, I also saw, annually, how my students were still harmed by one another. Barbara Coloroso, in her book Extraordinary Evil: A Brief History of Genocide… and Why It Matters draws a line between the ugly behaviors of individuals, bullying, and genocide. To some adolescents that seems like a stretch, but to anyone who knows the pain of exclusion or taunting by peers, it is not so dissimilar from being bombarded by racial slurs or even threats of violence. And in fact, bullying has preceded all genocides. Coloroso writes:
It is a short walk from bullying to hate crimes to genocide — genocide is the most extreme form of bullying — a far too common system of behaviors that is learned in childhood and rooted in contempt for another human being who has been deemed by the bully and his or her accomplices, to be worthless, inferior, and undeserving of respect.
The roles are what must be abandoned — and the international community (on a global and local scale) must become an active participant in a total rewrite. Those who can guide us are the ones who in the face of other genocides were witnesses, resisters, and defenders, those who jumped onto the stage as the scripts were being written and sounded the alarm we refused to hear; the ones who refused to abandon those who were targeted; those who defied the genocidaires; and those who survived genocide and denied the genocidaires their victory.
After reading experts like this, I knew it was part of my personal mission to carry on teaching Holocaust literature, but as I continued to expose my students to excerpts of Night and Anne Frank’s diary and other stories each May, I wasn’t sure that I could find one or two or even four books that would work for each of my approximately 90 students. Each student came with different background knowledge, each book brought out varying emotions. Some students entered my classroom with a deep awareness of WWII, but many others weren’t at all ready to see beyond the gates of Auschwitz or inside a cattle car. In addition, the more I learned, the more I saw that there is no adequate way to teach the millions of stories that make up the Holocaust experience. What may have been true for one victim was not true for another. Survival itself took on thousands of definitions. It became clear that the only way to honor any one story was to expose students to as many voices as possible.
In response to their varying background knowledge and the range of emotional maturity in each class, coupled with my need to show a wide scope of experiences, I began to teach as much different, age-appropriate Holocaust literature as I could find. I gave the students as much choice as I could, and I exposed them to as many different viewpoints and roles as possible. I let them pick from stories of teens who were on all sides or caught in varying instances of genocide through titles like: The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, Parallel Journeys by Eleanor Ayer, Frederich by Hans Peter Richter, I Have Lived A Thousand Years by Livia Bitton-Jackson, Adam Bagdasarian’s Forgotten Fire about the Armenian genocide during World War I, and A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park about the civil war and genocide in southern Sudan, among others.
I did so for over seven years. I read every book I could, adding more when I could, including poems, short stories, articles, and picture books; I asked students to read about Japanese internment in the U.S. and the conflict in Darfur; asked them to make connections, and tried to build context through articles on Raphael Lemkin and the stages of genocide and lessons from the Anti-Defamation League and USC’s Shoah Foundation. I took part in teacher training workshops at Milwaukee’s Nathan and Esther Pelz Holocaust Education Research Center, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the Jewish Museum Milwaukee. Through HERC, I met a local Holocaust educator, Mary Munson Murphy, and she began coming into my classroom annually for more and more time. Eventually, I took summer courses through Facing History and Ourselves.
After all of these experiences, I knew exactly why I wanted kids to read these stories, and I worked with my extremely devoted and helpful middle school librarian Francine Eppelsheimer to find books of varying levels. I brought her my concerns about exposing some students to hatred that they weren’t ready to absorb. I worried about keeping all kids interested and engaged. She found even more titles to consider. And then she came up with a bit of a solution. We needed to rank the books in some way, and let the kids choose based on their interest and ability.
We created an “emotional quotient” and “reading quotient,” two scales to help students self-select books that would best suit both their emotional maturity and reading level. We amassed a collection of books about teens in Poland, Hungary, Germany, Lithuania, Denmark, Holland, Cambodia, Rwanda, Republic of South Sudan, and the Jim Crow Southern U.S. Then we narrowed our list to 10 books and read and re-read them, making careful notes of how brutal or graphic the stories were, as well as how challenging the vocabulary was. We agreed upon a ranking, on a scale of 1-10 for each book’s “EQ” and “RQ.” Then we “book-talked” all the books, showed video interviews with the authors, and asked the students to consider their prior knowledge and interest of each book’s historical background. While we spoke about each book, students took notes on a handout, marking their interest and helping them remember which titles most intrigued them. Parents were invited to discuss the topics, pre-read the books, and help students make the best choice as well.
We reorganized the unit into a modified readers’ workshop, where each student chose a book that appealed to him or her. The students ordered one book, knowing that they were welcome to borrow as many other titles from the list as they’d like. I assigned a due date and ways in which they had to respond and report back to their peers. Francine and I surveyed the kids, and we found, from their feedback, that the students loved choosing their own books and the novels themselves. I was thrilled to hear repeatedly, “I have never really liked a book that I had to read for school, but I love this one!”
Eventually we eliminated some titles and added new ones, in fact, we continue to re-examine the options a few times a year and solicit feedback from each group of students. But there was always more to read and more to consider, and then one enticingly warm May afternoon, another student asked me how this story related to her life, and I felt exhausted. More importantly, I realized I didn’t want to be the one answering that “why” question over and over. I felt like I was doing all the talking, trying to explain how scary it was for many in the world that the Holocaust could have happened in Germany, the pinnacle of culture and education in Europe a mere generation or two back. I didn’t want to try to get them to see again and again, that if it could happen there, couldn’t it happen anywhere? Wasn’t it happening today in places like Syria? I was tired of asking rhetorically about whose job it is to guard against hatred and propaganda and leaders grabbing at absolute power.
I spent countless hours trying to get them to see this. But ultimately, I wanted my students to see and know and feel the answer themselves. I wanted them to decide why this unit was worthwhile and draw connections between Anne Frank or Loung Ung and the implicit bias they have seen or experienced in their own lives. I knew it wouldn’t sink in until it became personal, until they wrestled with these questions themselves.
Then one summer evening, during a long-distance phone call, my dad described to me a meeting he’d had with a panel of Michigan state commissioners who were working to install a memorial for Vietnam Veterans in Lansing, Michigan. A new book about Stalin’s reign of terror lay in my lap, and curricular questions swirled in my brain. As I hung up, I wondered about asking my students to create a monument or piece of art that synthesized what they’d read and learned. My mind jumped to the first professional development I ever did, which was at the Buck Institute for Education in Navato, California. It was an exhilarating workshop on project-based learning that had never left the back of my mind. Could this be an authentic question or problem to pose to the kids: How do we remember or memorialize the people, all the people, scarred by genocide? Why should we remember them? What does it mean to remember? How does art help people remember? How is memory connected to education and change?
I thought that creating a memorial to honor someone or some event they read about would be revolutionary. I quickly started typing ideas and conducting some research. I saw immediately that the memorial idea wasn’t new at all. It had been done across the country by history and English teachers for years, and in fact was being done in my own school in a junior history elective, but that didn’t dissuade me.
This could provide authentic learning for my students, and I wanted to try.
I needed an audience outside my classroom and real-world experts to consult with my students, so I began a mass email campaign. I contacted all the art teachers at my school and every architect I knew in the Milwaukee area. I emailed sculptors and professors; I made my dad promise he’d come talk to my students about his experience with memorials and their purpose and show his slides of various memorials from around the world.
In the next school year, as I planned for the following spring, I reached out to everyone I could think of and heard lots of “noes” but just enough “yeses” to continue undeterred. I got a handful of professionals to agree to guide my students in their creative processes, and decided I would indeed ask my students to create some sort of memorial, whether it be funerary, educational, or celebratory in nature.
When April came, each seventh grade student read one or more of our selection of novels about teens in the Holocaust or similar historical circumstances, and then were asked to consider the following questions:
- Why do we remember cataclysmic events?
- How do we remember instances of mass violence?
- Why do these stories need to be told?
I had long known but had forgotten that throwing questions rather than answers at young people made them think harder. I was pleased to see that choices and freedom made them start making their own connections. I stopped trying to cram more information down their throats and threw their wonderings back at them. When someone asked if what we were reading about had ever happened somewhere else, I handed them a book or guided them to a website, but I didn’t say anything else. The questions led to more questions, which led to research, which led to more questions and more reading and more learning.
After reading as much as they could handle, I asked them to first work individually to: study the idea of memory and memorials by analyzing national and international examples of memorials, physically visit an example of a memorial or public sculpture in Milwaukee, and eventually, work with a small group to create their own scale models or maquettes of memorials, with the help of our panel of local experts. They could dedicate their memorial to a single person, a group of people, or an idea. They could honor one of the people in the book they just finished, or they could chose to create an original piece of public art meant to educate its viewers about an injustice related to classification or the us versus them view. In a sense they responded to their novels through art and examined art as catharsis, a way to remember, to mourn, and to educate.
Once an idea was agreed upon, each student also had to argue through a formal proposal that his or her ideas were worthy of being made. Mrs. Eppelsheimer was integral in helping them research the various people and topics they chose to honor. The facts, figures, and statistics she led them toward ended up helping make persuasive proposals.
Their ideas blossomed into examinations of race, classification, bias, power, privilege, slavery, sexism, and police brutality. The classroom discussions and debates were heated, intense, and brave. Their ideas ranged from the concrete to the analytical, the beautifully simple to the complex. One memorial was dedicated to the life of Mildred Fish Harnack, a woman born in Milwaukee, educated in Madison, but executed under the direct order of Adolf Hitler for her work in the anti-Nazi organization known as the Red Orchestra. Another memorial honored victims of cyber-bullying who’d committed suicide.
I organized groups and supplies and teamed students with experts who could help them solve their design problems or librarians who could help them find a statistic to help make their case. I finally felt like I was a conduit for their learning, a facilitator, but not the answer holder.
Our school’s brand new makerspace, dubbed “Nerdvana,” teemed with buzzing students, cutting foam core, sculpting clay, smearing paper mâche, and hot gluing 3D-printed elements together to create symbolic forms. The smell of spray paint and the sound of power scissors both energized and angered the group and the rest of the middle school. There were supplies lost or borrowed without prior permission. There were maquettes that got bumped off tables, and there was an inordinate amount of arguing, debating, compromising, discussing, and learning how to be resilient.
The students were shocked and honored that professional sculptors, architects, designers, and college professors wanted to come into their classes, but they did, at various steps along the way, through planning, drafting, building, and critiquing. Also, these adults were often thrilled to be invited, and more importantly, they were extremely impressed by the creative and compelling work being produced.
Most groups, upon reflection at the end of the process, said that their creations did not quite turn out the way that had envisioned; however, many were better than originally imagined. Finally they were creating conclusions and synthesizing information in a way that I had so longed for all those years ago, and they were doing it on their own. Students wrote about their ideas, drafting, revising, and rewriting repeatedly, until their proposals and poster messages were as clear, strong, and sophisticated as they could be.
In order to create a final product that was as professional and as visually appealing as the students hoped, Dale Shidler, Chair of 2D and 4D Design at The Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (MIAD) guided them in photographing their completed models and then producing 24’ x 36’ posters that would serve to market their ideas. Some of the groups, even after working ceaselessly, still ended up making a maquette that resembled a simple diorama; but with the help of a dynamic photo, some Photoshop, basic graphic design skills, and strong research and writing, they were able to make posters that were professional and impressive.
Local artists and architects Richard Taylor, Brian Polster, Jessica Michels, and Charlie Merz visited and consulted with each group throughout the process. Dale Shidler came to University School of Milwaukee (Wisconsin) twice to offer feedback and once to instruct students in the creation of posters that would communicate their final ideas in a concise, visual way.
On Tuesday, May 27, 2014, the entire grade traveled to MIAD and formally presented their posters to professors Dale Shidler, Chris Beetow, and Adam Beadel. These MIAD faculty members graded all of the projects on feasibility and design aspects while I graded all of the written work and intermediate deliverables. The panel of judges was so impressed that five groups were awarded honors for their concepts and design. All posters were displayed in our middle school hallways for a week, and the winning posters were displayed at the Jewish Museum Milwaukee for three months.
Three years later we are still changing and trying new ideas. The poster component is still included, but doesn’t have to be. The book choices evolve continuously, and along with Holocaust survivors and educators, this year’s students will hear from author and activist Loung Ung on the Cambodian genocide and the need to take action to promote peace; the youth and programs director of the ACLU of Wisconsin, talking about segregation in Milwaukee; and the president of the Milwaukee Muslim Women’s Coalition on the dangers of Islamophobia and xenophobia. I remind myself continuously that I don’t have to have all the answers; I just have to keep getting my students to ask the questions.
Book List for 2016
Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
A 13-year-old Dutch Jewish girl records her impressions of the two years she, her family, and four others spent hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam before they were discovered and taken to concentration camps.
EQ: 2 RQ:5
Parallel Journeys by Eleanor Ayer
Readers learn how Alfons changed from a loving, wholesome, German boy to a "Nazi devil". Alternating chapters reveal another narrative from Helen Waterford, a German Jewish woman who survived the Holocaust but suffered greatly.
EQ:7 RQ:8
First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung
Covering the years 1975-79, the story moves from the deaths of Loung’s multiple family members, to the forced separation of the survivors, leading ultimately to the reuniting of much of the family, followed by marriages and immigrations.
EQ:10 RQ:7
Anne Frank Remembered by Miep Gies
This memoir tells the story of Miep Gies who was the outside contact for Anne Frank’s family while they were in hiding. Readers see the day-to-day struggles she overcame to keep them alive and safe as long as she could, as well as how she and her husband worked to save other Dutch Jews.
EQ:2 RQ:7
Surviving the Angel of Death by Eva Mozes Kor and Lisa Rojany Buccieri
Six-year-old Eva and her identical twin, Miriam, are suddenly "selected" to be victims of Dr. Josef Mengele's medical "research” while in Auschwitz.
EQ:8 RQ:5
A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park
After brutal rebel soldiers attack 11-year-old Salva’s school in Sudan in 1985, he describes several terrifying years on the run in emotional detail. The story alternates between his story and the story of Nya, a 12-year-old girl also in the Republic of South Sudan whose entire existence depends on her ability to get her family clean drinking water.
EQ:7 RQ:5
The Boy Who Dared by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
A fictionalized but vivid portrait of a real teenager from Hamburg, Helmuth Hübener, a German teenager executed for his resistance to the Nazis.
EQ:7 RQ:6
What World Is Left by Monique Pollak
Anneke and her family are taken to Theresienstadt, the “model” Nazi concentration camp. At 14, she suffers backbreaking labor, foul conditions, and massive overcrowding. The terror of being sent away on a transport haunts her always. Based on the experiences of the author’s mother, this book is rich with friendship but riddled with loss.
EQ:7 RQ:4
Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
A book that offers a harrowing and horrifying account of the
deportation of countless Lithuanians to horrid work camps in the wake of the Russian invasion of their country in 1939. Main character Lena uses her art to help her and her family survive to tell their stories.
EQ:10 RQ:8
All But My Life by Gerda Weissman Klein
The unforgettable story of Gerda Weissmann and her six-year
ordeal as a teen victim of Nazi cruelty taken from her family, put into camps, and taken on a death march. She loses everything but her life, as the title suggests.
EQ :10 RQ:8
The Boy on the Wooden Box by Leon Leyson
One of the youngest boys on Schindler’s list, Leon Leyson grew up in Poland, as the youngest of five children. As WWII breaks out, Leyson’s ingenuity and bravery, combined with the kindness of strangers and a bit of serendipity, save his life, time and again. His experiences and memories make for compelling reading about what it was like to suffer through the Holocaust.
EQ:8 RQ:5