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In honor of Universal Pictures’ rerelease of Schindler’s List, Echoes & Reflections has created a short, classroom-ready Companion Resource, that will help educators to provide important historical background and context to the film, as well as explore powerful true stories of rescue, survival, and resilience with their students.
Additionally, the following videos, recorded at Yad Vashem, feature Schindler survivors who speak of the impact Oskar Schindler had on their lives.
EVA LAVI TESTIMONY
NAHUM & GENIA MANOR
The posters feature the powerful words and experiences of Holocaust survivor and memoirist Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor Kurt Messerschmidt, and Anne Frank rescuer, Miep Gies. Each poster promotes meaningful conversation and reflection in the classroom, whether in person or in a virtual setting, and inspires students with powerful human stories of the Holocaust that can continue to guide agency and action as a result of studying this topic.
To support you in these efforts, we have also compiled several suggested classroom activities from teachers in our network that may be of use and interest.
Please fill out the form below to access and download your PDF posters.
USC Shoah Foundation’s first podcast, We Share The Same Sky, seeks to brings the past into present through a granddaughter’s decade-long journey to retrace her grandmother’s story of survival. We Share The Same Sky tells the two stories of these women—the grandmother, Hana, a refugee who remained one step ahead of the Nazis at every turn, and the granddaughter, Rachael, on a search to retrace her grandmother’s history.
A self-portrait of Rachael while she is living on a Danish farm that is owned by the granddaughter of Hana’s foster mother from World War II. Photo by Rachael Cerrotti, 2017
In order to enhance its classroom use, USC Shoah Foundation and Echoes & Reflections have created a Companion Educational Resource to support teachers as they introduce the podcast to their students. This document provides essential questions for students, as well as additional resources and content to help build context and framing for students’ understanding of the historical events addressed in the podcast.
Access to the podcast, as well as additional supporting materials—including IWitness student activities, academic standards alignment, and general strategies for teaching with podcasts—can all be found at the We Share The Same Sky page in IWitness.
Note: Due to the subject nature, the podcast is appropriate for older students, grades 10-12. As always, teachers should review the content fully in advance to determine its appropriateness for their student population.
After many years of research and digitizing the archive her grandmother left behind, Rachael set out to retrace her grandmother’s 17 years of statelessness. Her intention was to travel via the same modes of transportation and to live similar style lives as to what her grandmother did during the war and in the years after. That meant that when she got to Denmark, she moved to a farm. Rachael moved in with the granddaughter of her grandmother’s foster mother from World War II and traded her labor for room and board as Hana once did. This picture is from that first visit in the winter of 2015. Since this time, Rachael has spent many more months living on this farm. It is owned by Sine Christiansen and her family. Sine is the granddaughter of Jensine, one Hana’s foster mother from World War II. Photo by Rachael Cerrotti, 2015
A self portrait of Rachael overlooking the exact spot in Southern Sweden where her grandmother’s refugee boat came to shore in 1943. Photo by Rachael Cerrotti, 2016
- ANTON MASON, JEWISH SURVIVOR
Below is information to keep in mind when teaching the content in this unit. This material is intended to help teachers consider the complexities of teaching about survivors and liberators and to deliver accurate and sensitive instruction.
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The purpose of this unit is to provide students with an understanding of the political, legal, social, and emotional status of the Jewish survivors. This unit also examines the role of the liberators following the defeat of the Nazis at the end of World War II.
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VIDEO TOOLBOX
ACADEMIC STANDARDS
The materials in this unit address many Common Core State Standards.
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View History/SS »
TESTIMONY VIDEO GUIDEView More »
ASSET RESOURCE GUIDEView More »
ESTIMATED COMPLETION TIME60-90 minutes
Holocaust Survivors’ "Return to Life"
| 1 | Begin this lesson with a discussion about how students imagine survivors felt after liberation. The following questions can help guide this discussion: |
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| 2 | Introduce students to [L]Dennis Urstein[/L], [L]Henry Mikols[/L], and [L]David Abrams[/L] and then show their clips of testimony. Follow with a discussion using some or all of the questions below. |
DENNIS URSTEIN
HENRY MIKOLS
DAVID ABRAMS
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| 3 | Allow time for students to consider the range of emotions that Jews felt after liberation. Ask them to consider the following questions: |
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| 4 | Distribute the Holocaust 1944 and When It Happened handout. By way of introduction, tell students that each of these poems was written by a Jewish woman who escaped from Nazi Europe in the late 1930s as a young child. They both spent their childhood in England. In their poems, they examine the questions of guilt and duty with which many survivors struggle. |
| 5 | Assign half the class the poem “Holocaust 1944” and the other half “When It Happened.” Have students break into pairs, making sure that both partners have been assigned the same poem. |
| 6 | Allow time for students to read and discuss their assigned poem with their partners. Have some or all of the following questions posted on the board or on chart paper to help students organize their discussions: |
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| 7 | After the class discusses the poems in pairs, come back together as a whole group. Read both poems as a class and conduct a whole-group discussion, allowing students to lead the discussion using their reflections and ideas from the pair-work. Encourage students to listen for different interpretations by other groups that read the same poem that they did. |
ESTIMATED COMPLETION TIME60-90 minutes
Liberators of the Nazi Camps
| 1 | To prepare students for this lesson, share general background on the liberation of the camps outlined in the corresponding Note. |
NOTEView More »
| 2 | Introduce students to [L]Howard Cwick[/L], [L]Anton Mason[/L], and [L]Paul Parks[/L]; show their clips of testimony; and discuss some or all of the questions below. |
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| 3 | Distribute or display the A Liberator’s Thoughts handout. Tell students that the author of this written testimony is Harry Herder, Jr., who was nineteen at the time he and other US soldiers liberated Buchenwald, in April 1945. Discuss the selection using the following questions: |
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| 4 | To learn more about the liberators introduced in this lesson, have students, working individually or in pairs, prepare a list of 3–5 questions that they would like to ask Howard Cwick, Anton Mason, or Paul Parks. Students should then be encouraged to use the Biographical Profile and/or IWitness testimony (iwitness.usc.edu) to find the answers to their questions. |
ESTIMATED COMPLETION TIME60-90 minutes
Displaced Persons’ Camps after the Holocaust
| 1 | Explain to students that a critical issue that arose after liberation was that of the displacement of survivors. To introduce this topic, distribute the Displaced Persons handout and instruct students to read the text and answer the questions at the bottom of the page. [Optional: Have students work on the assignment in pairs or small groups.] |
| 2 | Review the Displaced Persons handout and the questions together and then introduce students to [L]Malka Baran[/L], [L]Daniel Geslewitz[/L], and [L]Ester Fiszgop[/L] before showing their clips of testimony. Use the following questions to continue the discussion about displaced persons’ camps: |
MALKA BARAN
DANIEL GESLEWITZ
ESTER FISZGOP
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| 3 | Divide the class into six groups. Distribute copies of the photographs from the displaced persons’ camps to each group. Have students study the photographs and share their initial observations with others in their group. Prompt students to think about how the photographs represent the choices that survivors made following liberation (e.g., to go on with their lives despite what they had suffered and lost). |
IWITNESS ACTIVITYUnderstanding Displaced Persons' Camps
here »
DISPLACED PERSONS' CAMP: LANDSBERG, GERMANY
DISPLACED PERSONS' CAMP: SALZBURG, AUSTRIA
DISPLACED PERSONS' CAMP: BERGEN-BELSEN
DISPLACED PERSONS' CAMP: GERMANY
| 4 | Assign each group one of the “lenses” below and instruct them to study the photographs again from this particular lens (e.g., If you were a ______ in this camp, what would you notice? How would you explain what you are seeing in the photographs? How might you propose to solve problems that displaced persons might be facing?) |
Lenses
• psychologist
• policymaker
• sociologist
• artist
• doctor
• educator
| 5 | Have each group select a reporter to share the discussion points made regarding each “lens.” Encourage students to listen for differences in perspective depending on the lens in which the photographs were viewed. |
| 6 | Conclude this lesson with a discussion about the obstacles that survivors faced following liberation and what they did to rebuild their lives. Include the following questions in this summarizing discussion: |
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The questions below, used in class or as homework, prompt students to reflect on what they are learning and its meaning in their own lives and in society.
These queries are excellent for journaling, allowing students to create their own primary source material. Keep in mind, the sensitive and emotional nature of the topics may preclude teacher evaluation. If journaling is used as an assessment tool, assure students that they will not be evaluated negatively for expressing opinions that may be different from others in class or from the teacher’s.
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The additional activities and projects listed below can be integrated directly into the lessons in this unit or can be used to extend lessons once they have been completed. The topics lend themselves to students’ continued study of the Holocaust as well as opportunities for students to make meaningful connections to other people and events, including relevant contemporary issues. These activities may include instructional strategies and techniques and/or address academic standards in addition to those that were identified for the unit.
| 1 | Visit IWitness (iwitness.usc.edu) for testimonies, resources, and activities to help students learn more about survivors and liberators. |
| 2 | Like personal diaries, photographs, and oral histories, personal letters can provide us with a more complete understanding of historical events, including valuable insight into the wartime experience. As with other primary documents, letters reflect only the viewpoint of a single individual and may contain mistakes. Their value, however, is that they offer readers a glimpse into the wide range of emotions that people felt as historical events were unfolding. |
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| 3 | As a whole class, read Simon Wiesenthal’s The Sunflower: On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness (Schocken Books, 1997). In the book, a dying Nazi solider brings Wiesenthal, a concentration camp prisoner, to his deathbed and asks forgiveness for crimes against the Jews. Wiesenthal says nothing and leaves the soldier’s bedside, but later questions his own response. |
| 4 | Contact the VFW’s Veterans in the Classroom community outreach initiative. Through this program, a local VFW member is able to help make history “come alive,” sharing personal experiences, appropriate memorabilia, uniforms, photographs, and other relevant material. US forces liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp, as well as Dachau, Mauthausen, Flossenburg, and Dora-Mittelbau; check with your local VFW to see if a liberator is available to speak to students. Many Holocaust museums and resource centers also have a Speakers’ Bureau of local liberators available to visit the classroom. As a class, generate a list of relevant questions to ask the liberator in advance of his or her visit. |
| 5 | The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) provides protection, shelter, emergency food, water, medical care, and other life-saving assistance to millions of people worldwide, who have been forced to flee their homes due to war and persecution. When possible, UNHCR helps refugees and other displaced people return to their homes voluntarily, safely, and with dignity. Have students research the UNHCR and share their findings in a presentation format of their choice (oral, written, multimedia). The following questions can help guide their research: |
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