ACCIDENTAL FICTION

I wrote my novel by accident.

My goal was to address a gap in Holocaust education and encourage educators to consider two rarely asked questions:

When we teach about Holocaust history, what's the best way to include—alongside Jewish Holocaust narratives—the Roma, disabled, homosexual, political, and many other victims of Nazism? And why are these victim groups so often forgotten?

To address that gap, I started to create educational materials and easy-to-implement lesson plans for teachers and school districts interested in these hidden histories. But putting together an educational unit around historical data that relied on encyclopedic reports full of dry facts and figures wasn't cutting it.

After all, much of Holocaust education is taught through compelling film (Schindler's List, The Pianist, The Diary of Anne Frank, Fateless, and so on) and fiction (Number The Stars, The Book Thief, The Devil's Arithmetic, The Reader, and others), all of which humanize history through individual stories. These books and movies go beyond dates and events to underscore key concepts of human behavior in the lead up and response to genocide.

And so I began to write a series of vignettes to make the narratives of Roma, homosexual, disabled, political, and other victims of Nazism engaging and relevant to middle school and high school students. Based on historical truth, I created a handful of fictional characters—all teenagers—each of whom, through a compelling short story, would represent the central narrative of a distinct victim community.

To tie the stories together, I set the stories in Nazi-era Berlin. And I found a way to place them all in early 1943. To stress the immediacy of each narrative, I wrote each story in present tense, first person so that events were unfolding in the moment.

For example, here, nineteen-year-old Tsura, a young Romani woman, is plotting to free her family from Marzahn, a Nazi encampment for 'Gypsies' at the edge of Berlin:

     Biting the skin on my chapped lips, I walk almost as fast as
     the chilling wind slipping between my neck and turned-up collar.
     The woolen overcoat hides the curves of my breasts and my
     dark hair is tucked tight into a flat cap. I look like a man—
     intentionally so—and feel stronger for it.

Surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly), as those single stories developed, they became entwined with one another.

Ruth and Alex, I discovered, are step-siblings. And Elise saves the life of street-smart Marko after they run into each other in Berlin's Hakescher Market. Elise, I realized, is a member of the Nazi Girls' League, but rarely talks about it to her best friend, Ruth. Meanwhile, Marko's sister Tsura, a member of an anti-Nazi resistance group, is over-protective of her younger cousin Kizzy who hates being treated like a kid. I also discovered that two of the characters are in love (take a guess which two!).

I was suddenly writing my first novel and it was turning into a bit of a page-turner!

I shared my first draft of TRAIN with some friends, colleagues, and members of my family who were as excited to read my book as I loved writing it. Their feedback led to a few more drafts and submissions to literary agents and a couple of publishers.

While I received flurries of rejections, a number of scholars and educators in the Holocaust education field were getting excited about the book and its accompanying curriculum.

A series of introductions and exciting moments led me to author and editor Christa Desir. Christa became my editor and, as soon as she took a look at my opening chapters, she pointed out a problem (echoed in the feedback I'd already received):

With multiple voices narrating interweaving accounts in present tense, first person, TRAIN wasn't working. The style was too jarring. And the individual voices sounded too similar. It all had to become one story.

I rewrote the first chapters of TRAIN in past tense, third person close point-of-view. The new style seemed to work. I was able to tell the story and still retain the important thoughts spinning inside the head of each central character. Here's the same scene as above, now re-written, plus a little more:

     They'll never know we were here.
         No sound. No impression in the dirt. Tsura had learned to keep
     her head below the brick walls of the city. To become the shadows
     and sidestep the light. She could recite each route by heart. Over
     railway lines and through private gardens, across main roads and
     public parks. But some checkpoints were impossible to avoid.
          A crowd had gathered close to the U-Bahn station. Two young
     soldiers blocked the entrance.
          "What's going on?" Tsura asked them.
          "The train station is closed," one of the soldiers said. He held
     out his gloved hand. "Papers?"
          Tsura handed over her identity documents for inspection. "What
     happened?"
          "Someone fell on the tracks."
          "Why are you dressed like a man?" the second soldier asked,
     rifle at his side.
          Tsura pointed at the sleeves of his jacket which didn't even
     reach his wrists. "Why are you dressed like a schoolboy?"
          The other soldier laughed. As he unfolded and checked her
     papers, his grin widened. "Nice to meet you, Greta. We share a
     birthday."
          "Lucky me," Tsura said. Her fake smile matched her false
     identity.

Today, I reached an exciting milestone. I've re-written all of TRAIN in the past tense, third person close. And I just sent the manuscript to Christa for comments.

Although anything could happen on this exciting journey toward publication, there's a chance TRAIN (and its accompanying curriculum) will be in print and online in early 2015. Stay tuned.


(Post updated in December 2014 to reflect recent manuscript edits.)

LAUGHING ABOUT RAPE

Can laughing about rape change rape culture?

Reality Check

“I’m a very special Holocaust survivor. I was in the camps with my wife and my girlfriend; and believe me, it wasn’t easy.”

Jack Polak recites parts of his Holocaust testimony with a cheeky smile across his face. Jack—a young, Dutch, married, Jewish man—had fallen in love with Ina—the other woman. And even deportation to a Nazi camp couldn’t get in the way of their passionate affair.

Jack and Ina’s story is the heart of the documentary Steal A Pencil For Me. I teach the film because it reminds us that the Nazis and their collaborators didn’t commit atrocities in a vacuum; the Nazis persecuted and murdered ordinary people who were trying to live ordinary lives. As Jack grins, we smile along and sometimes laugh gently at the complicated reality of his Holocaust experience.

So when I first watched the short film Meet My Rapist (you can watch it here) by director-writer-actor Jessie Kahnweiler, my uncomfortably-amused response felt comfortably familiar.

Confronting Rape

Interested in how we can engage young people and the public in questions about human rights—which includes confronting rape, sexual violence, misogyny, and rape culture—I invited Jessie on a video date. And she said yes!

It was your usual chatter. Y’know... filmmaking, humor, rape, “Holocaust survivor speed-dating,” that sort of thing.

I asked Jessie about using comedy to draw attention to rape culture. “What feels natural to me is using comedy to trick people into giving a shit,” she explained. “I wasn’t like 'I wanna make a rape comedy, like let’s really stir it up,' I wanted to fucking deal with my rape and this is how I deal with it.”

So the film is a form of testimony? I asked her.

“It had been eight years since I’d been raped. And I felt like I’d done everything I was supposed to do. Therapy, y’know—. You could supplement any other kind of trauma or skeleton or stuff people don’t wanna deal with. The film is about me confronting my own denial, and how I’ve moved through all these steps of healing. In this effort to be this strong feminist chick, I forgot to just be.”

Bubble Wrap

I told Jessie why I thought her film works so well as an educational device. In one scene, Jessie brings her rapist home to meet her parents. In another, Jessie’s rapist gatecrashes a job interview and distracts her by popping a sheet of bubble wrap. At the heart of the film is the reality that rape and the aftermath of rape are ever-present. “Will you stop it?! Just stop it!” Jessie snaps.

Moments within the film are so jarring, and the script is so embarrassingly funny, that the viewer is forced to consider how we, collectively, think about and talk about rape and sexual violence. “I was like raped, but I wasn’t like raped,” Jessie smiles apologetically.

“You laugh because you’re uncomfortable,” Jessie explained to me. And I was reminded of teenagers who laugh at photographs of open mass-graves and naked women about to be shot. Laughter indicates surprise and shock and the failure of expectations—and learning.

The 'R' Word

As the film builds, its unexpected scenes reveal questions that survivors of rape rarely ask out loud, in part because our culture of “first-world rape” (as Jessie put it) and victim-blaming and misogyny force survivors to keep their memories and trauma hidden from view. “What’s my rapist doing now?” Jessie wondered out loud. “And does he remember me? And how the fuck am I gonna get over him?”

Rape is taboo.

I toured Auschwitz last summer, I told Jessie, and an employee of the museum told us that Auschwitz tour guides are explicitly discouraged from talking about sexual violence in the camp.

In Meet My Rapist, Jessie Kahnweiler does the opposite. The film’s genius lies within Jessie’s bravery and audacity to say out loud what we’ve been trained to keep silent. “No one here wants an angry woman,” the interviewer warns her. “Because honey,” her therapist smirks, “Nobody wants to marry a rape victim.”

Responses

I asked Jessie about the public’s response to the film.

“I’ve gotten both positive and negative feedback. Some people just don’t get it,” she said, accepting that the film doesn’t speak to everyone. “What I’m most interested in as a filmmaker is how people think the way they do and why they believe certain things. In terms of rape culture, people are like, 'Rape is really bad.' But we’ve gotta open up the conversation. The fact that people are offended by the title Meet My Rapist—now that’s a fucking problem.”

When Jessie talked about the thanks she continues to receive from other survivors of rape, it became clear that the power of Meet My Rapist has even surprised its filmmaker.

“I mean, you wanna talk about the greatest moment of my life? The email from a rape victim. Or the guy who is a father of three who had been molested. I’m being honest about my shit, and it connects with people and helps them heal. As personal as it is, it feels like this issue is so much bigger than me.”

Throughout our conversation, it was obvious that Jessie doesn’t have a particular message or specific agenda. “I don’t have any of the answers. But in my work, the fun is in asking the questions.” Jessie wants people to think and reflect. “I don’t wanna tell you how to feel about the film. That’s your job, to be honest,” she said with a smile. “Sit with it. Be uncomfortable. Do some work.”


Interview with Jessie Kahnweiler, director of Meet My Rapist, December 3, 2013.

This is the first part of a series on teaching about rape culture. Read part two, here: Getting Teens To Talk About Rape

A SECRET MAP

For the last couple of years, I’ve been working on my first novel, TRAIN, a historical thriller for young adults, based on real events.

Lost In Berlin

A while back, eager for honest feedback, one of my readers suggested I do a better job with the novel’s “logistics of space.”

The Roma and Jewish teenagers at the heart of TRAIN are fleeing their homes. They crawl through the back gardens of Berlin and cower in damp basements. But, in an earlier draft, I hadn’t yet painted a clear picture of those houses, streets, and hiding places.

Despite chases across the city, I’d left out journey times across Hitler’s capital. I was depriving my characters—and my readers—of directions, times of day, proximity to key landmarks.

I’d paid lots of attention to character arcs and plot, and I’d ensured historical accuracy, but I hadn’t provided enough details of Nazi Germany to make those ten days in early 1943 come alive.

Writing From Photographs

I needed to get to know the geography of Berlin. But during the early writing phase, I was nervous to read beyond what was necessary for historical research, mostly because I didn’t want the descriptive prose of other writers to influence my own writing style or my characters’ voices.

First, I browsed photographs. Online searches brought up vivid black and white images of Berlin’s monuments and parks. Tram tracks embedded in the cobblestones crisscrossed and split, weaving themselves between grand buildings from which Swastika banners hung, dead, in the winter air.

I got the hang of describing the novel’s spaces. But I still needed to include journey times and directions for my characters’ routes of escape.

Finding My Way

I’d visited Berlin once before, but only for a week or so. I didn’t have a good sense of the city. There was no map in my head.

I searched online for precise directions—by foot—from the Moabit neighborhood to Charité Hospital; then directions—by car—from the Jewish Community Center on Rosen Street to Marzahn, the site of a Nazi camp for Roma families.

From my laptop screen to my head and into my manuscript, my characters began to find their way.

I created a single online map. On the map, I marked every event of my novel’s plot. And every home and workplace belonging to my central and minor characters. Every front step. Every meeting place. Every escape path, from Hackesher Market to St. Hedwig’s Cathedral, from Gestapo-raided homes to improvised hiding places.

I downloaded an up-to-date satellite image of the terrain; the ultimate bird’s-eye view of Berlin.

A Secret Map

But I had a problem. I’d superimposed Nazi-era history onto a contemporary landscape. My manuscript and I were full of doubts.

Did certain streets and public parks even exist in 1943? Had the West German or East German governments in post-war Europe moved a road? A bridge? Which neighborhoods had witnessed war up-close? Which buildings had the British warplanes destroyed?

When I noticed Google Earth’s “historical imagery” icon, I literally gasped and danced around my living room.

As if uncovering the key to a hidden passageway, caught in a sudden Internet-trance, I found myself sliding the years back to 1943 and staring in amazement at an aerial photograph of war-torn Berlin.

Comparing the modern-day map with this digitized historical artifact (the 1943 aerial photograph was likely taken from a British fighter plane), I discovered redirected streets and old buildings. I zoomed in on strange unfamiliar shapes. To figure out what they were, I compared search engine results with old-fashioned printed books in my home library.

I found that I’d placed the secret meeting place of two central characters, Alexander and Marko, close to a Nazi watchtower. I’d positioned the home of Elise and her fragmented Nazi family within walking distance of The Fountain of Fairy Tales. I realized that the British had bombed St. Hedwig’s Cathedral on the same day as a key turning point of my story.

Altered Fates

Just as some roads and houses of Berlin had been moved and rebuilt over seventy years, the plot of my historical thriller began to shift.

Tsura, a young Roma woman and anti-Nazi dissident, must now avoid certain cross-streets for fear of running into German soldiers.

Ruth, a Catholic girl dreading the deportation of her Jewish stepbrother, now becomes exhausted and pessimistic after a long trudge uphill as she passes bombed landmarks and houses that are still burning.

In moments of fear and reflection, the teenagers are now drawn to places of their childhoods. My rewriting of the story to reflect the nuances of history altered my characters responses, their decisions, and ultimately their fates.

While the key historical events of TRAIN stand in place, its fictional teenagers have become more real, their actions more credible. The precise moments, movements, and twists of the story are now more satisfying, more authentic, more compelling (to me, at least!).

As I work to finish editing my manuscript, I expect to discover a few more secrets of Holocaust history that, I hope, will surprise my future readers and, I know, will surprise me, too.

SYRIA & PILLARS OF SALT

When disturbing YouTube videos of atrocities go viral, should we hit “share” or should we look away?

Almost every week, I meet with artist and writer Ava Kadishson Schieber (her book Soundless Roar is exceptional) to learn about her experiences and memories as a Holocaust survivor. Once, during our conversation, Ava compared herself to the wife of Lot (the nephew of Abraham). Despite the warning, the biblical woman could not resist looking back at the burning cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, causing her to be transformed into a pillar of salt.

Twice a year, Ava visits my classroom to share with my students her experiences as a teenager during WWII when she hid on a farm for four years, pretending to be unable to hear or speak. Her father, Leo, was murdered in Auschwitz. Her older sister, Susanna, disappeared forever, consumed by Hitler’s war.

“How old are you?” a student asks. “I am fifteen,” the eighty-something-year-old woman smiles. When Ava turns to look back at her traumatic past, she is confronted by a reality that, in many ways, kept her girlhood frozen in time.

I’ve always thought of the story of the pillar of salt as a warning against human bystanderism. If we’re not prepared to take action against atrocities, then we cannot look only to be voyeurs. If we choose to look at violent scenes, we need to do so for the right reasons.

As we stare in shock at violent images that play on repeat on our television and laptop screens, we must know why are we watching. Are we fulfilling our collective responsibility to bear witness, or are we satisfying a collective morbid curiosity?

The photographs and videos of the recent Syrian attacks on civilians are omnipresent and continue to make headlines. Children and adults shake uncontrollably or lie still on the ground, asphyxiated on the fumes of chemical weapons. And YouTube views climb.

Smart phones and cameras in the hands of the world produce countless images that can go viral in minutes. This is both a blessing and a curse. The amount of evidence and publicity of these crimes multiplies, yet victims and survivors are captured and catapulted into the media at their most vulnerable; in ways they may not want to be seen or remembered.

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, many survivors were told to keep their heads facing forward. To look back on and talk about past trauma was once synonymous with opening—and reinfecting—old wounds. But, in just a few decades, our ideas of therapy have changed dramatically. Today, we encourage survivors of any traumatic experience to reflect on and to confront their psychological injuries. And rightly so. Ava Kadishson Schieber and other survivors of atrocity recall their experiences and losses in order to rebuild their lives—and in order to teach.

As we dare to look—and encourage others to look—at very real violent images, we must be prepared to respond beyond hitting “like” or “share”—to email our political representatives, to sign petitions, to educate others, to voice our disgust loud and clear. Otherwise, what are we turning into?

THE OLYMPIC SHAMES

Leading up to the 1936 Olympics, Hitler’s government re-opened a number of gay bars and cafés in Berlin as part of a broader campaign to conceal Nazi violence and hateful rhetoric.

At the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, what will Putin do?

The world was watching as Nazi Germany prepared for the 1936 Summer Olympics. Activists, politicians, and organizations around the globe called for a boycott. The Jewish community in Germany and abroad hoped the Games would draw attention to Nazi antisemitism (the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws had been passed just months earlier).

Intending to impress and dazzle the world, in the weeks before the opening ceremony, Hitler ordered the “clean up” of Berlin.

The Nazi government removed and relocated Berlin residents they deemed undesirable. Roma and Sinti people were evicted and transferred to Nazi “Gypsy” encampments on the outskirts of the city with the false promise that they could return to their homes once the Olympics were over.

At the same time, mindful of public opinion and mounting international criticism, the Nazi government temporarily relaxed its oppressive policies and actions against certain racial and social minorities. Nazi rhetoric was tempered. Anti-Jewish signs and pervasive antisemitic propaganda were hidden from sight. Gay bars and cafés that the Nazis had shut down were re-opened. Foreign homosexuals were not arrested.

For the two weeks of the 1936 Olympiad, the Nazi capital resembled elements of the open, tolerant, vibrant Berlin of the late 1920s.

Learning from history isn’t easy.

Before the 2004 Athens Olympics, the Greek government evicted some 2,700 Roma from their homes and created a housing crisis that continues to this day. These evictions were mostly ignored by the international press.

In the months leading up to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the Chinese government removed and relocated hundreds of thousands of people living in poverty, people who were homeless, people involved in the sex trade, and other people deemed undesirable. The world watched the spectacular Beijing opening ceremony, mostly oblivious or indifferent to China’s human rights abuses.

Again and again, governments with shameful human rights records have been awarded the honor of hosting the Olympics. Each time, discrimination and violence is overlooked or excused. Giving an oppressive regime the opportunity to host the Games could lead to improvements for human rights, we tell ourselves.

And now, with the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi in southwestern Russia just months away, Putin’s government has passed an outrageous law that makes it possible for police to arrest and jail anyone—Russian citizens, foreign tourists, Olympic athletes—who voices support for the rights of gay and lesbian people. A senior public official has gone as far as calling for gay people to be banned from organ donation: “Their hearts, in case of the automobile accident, should be buried in the ground or burned as unsuitable for the continuation of life.”

There are reports of a recent increase in government-sanctioned violence against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Russia (or at least an increase in media attention), leading to calls for LGBT-friendly countries to grant asylum to Russian victims and targets of homophobic and transphobic violence.

News organizations, bloggers, and activists have compared Russia’s new anti-gay laws with the anti-Jewish and anti-homosexual laws of Nazi Germany, citing parallels between the Nazi-hosted Olympics of 1936 and the upcoming Sochi Winter Games. Just as the Nazi Games raised questions about the participation of athletes of Jewish or African descent (a number of Jewish and Black sportspeople competed and won medals in Berlin), LGBT athletes and LGBT spectators at the 2014 Games could face harassment, arrest, and imprisonment.

Activists are calling for a boycott of Putin’s Olympics. Boycotts of Russian products have begun (gay bars in Chicago and New York have stopped buying and serving Russian vodka, for example). And there are calls for public protests, to be led by Games participants and medal winners, that would dare Russian police to arrest and jail Olympic athletes.

When President Obama cancelled his recent meeting with President Putin, although he made clear his opposition to the idea of a boycott, he took the opportunity to speak out in support of LGBT athletes and against Russia’s homophobic legislation.

When the Berlin Olympics of 1936 came to an end, Nazi Germany returned to business as usual. The gay bars and cafés were boarded up again. The Nazi roundup, deportation, torture, and killing of homosexual men resumed. Later, the Roma prisoners of the Nazi “Gypsy” encampments were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and elsewhere. The regime’s discriminatory anti-Jewish laws accelerated into meticulously planned and implemented genocide.

In the coming months, even if Putin tones down his anti-gay rhetoric, even if he softens legal restrictions and threats of arrests over the duration of the Games, there’s a good chance that the persecution of LGBT Russians will return in full force once the Olympic athletes and media have returned home.

We cannot be silent. Every person who chooses to participate in the Sochi Games—as an athlete, as a vendor, or as a spectator, including those watching from home—must do something that draws attention to the plight of LGBTs in Russia. The international community, particularly each country that has pledged to protect the rights of LGBT people, has a responsibility to voice its objection to Putin’s anti-gay legislation in the strongest possible way.

A PLAYGROUND AT BIRKENAU

“How did you get into Holocaust education?” is a common question and I tend to answer differently depending on who’s asking and what’s on my mind.

Why I Do What I Do: Reason #2

As our group walked through Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau, one thing we saw disturbed us over and over again: Tourists with children.

When I was eight years old, I saw something I shouldn’t have seen. We were at the home of my parents’ friends. With the adults in the kitchen, I was in the TV room upstairs with the older kids. Flicking through the channels, our eyes became fixed on the screen: A teenage boy watched naked women and children walk toward the gas chambers of a Nazi camp. He couldn’t look away. In another scene, men who had tried to escape the camp were about to be executed when the Nazi officer in charge explained the full punishment: each condemned man was ordered to choose an additional prisoner to be shot. The hundreds of other prisoners—women and men—were forced to watch the mass execution. If any were to turn their heads or close their eyes, they would also be killed.

This was the made-for-TV film “Escape From Sobibor,” based on real events. I imagined myself in the shoes of the Nazis’ victims and, for years, those violent and confusing scenes gave me nightmares. I can still remember myself sitting on the carpet, looking up at the screen, finding it impossible to look away and stunned into silence. I was too young.

When it comes to Holocaust education, how young is too young? Should Holocaust museums and Holocaust sites set minimum age requirements for visitors? The Imperial War Museum in London sets age requirements for entry to its Holocaust history and crimes against humanity exhibitions. Holocaust museums in the U.S. leave the decision to parents. There was a time, our guide told us, when children under 14 year olds were not allowed on the site of Auschwitz. But that ban was lifted.

Over our three days at Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau last week, we watched toddlers playing—and sometimes throwing tantrums—inside the preserved barracks and prison building of Auschwitz. Seven and eight year olds walked by the ruins of the gas chambers of Birkenau. And they stared at the exhibits of human hair and piles of shoes and explicit photographs of emaciated prisoners and listened through their headphones to the Auschwitz State Museum tour guides who described the gruesome details of mass-murder and Nazi experiments.

As we watched these children and their parents tour Auschwitz, I became more and more troubled. What were the parents’ justifications for bringing their children to these sites of atrocity? Weren’t they concerned about traumatizing them?

Or do the lessons about prejudice and extremism outweigh the emotional risks? How should parents explain this history to their children? At what age are children able—cognitively and emotionally—to comprehend the Nazis’ intentions and actions?

In 1943, the Nazis built a playground in Auschwitz-Birkenau. It was placed in the “Gypsy camp” and it included a sandbox, swings, and a carousel. Unlike most Jewish children who arrived at Auschwitz, children of Roma or Sinti descent were not gassed on arrival. Instead, they were allowed to remain with their families and many were used in Nazi experiments before the “Gypsy camp” was liquidated in August 1944.

Throughout the Nazi era, children witnessed extreme violence. Jewish children smuggled food into the Nazi ghettos. They kept diaries and created art. Jewish parents saved the lives of their children by sending them on the Kindertransports to Great Britain. Meanwhile, German “Aryan” children were indoctrinated into Nazi ideology. The Germans kidnapped Polish children who looked “Aryan” and raised them as Germans. Jewish children, along with the elderly, were often the first to be murdered in the Nazi camps. The experiences of children are woven into the fabric of Holocaust history. But that does not make Holocaust history a child-friendly topic.

One of the reasons I do what I do is out of concern for young learners who, despite the good intentions of teachers and parents, are often exposed to violent Holocaust content too early or in problematic ways.

There’s no perfect solution. Because of the nature of Holocaust and genocide education, we can’t avoid the possibility of traumatizing young learners. But we can minimize the risks. Before choosing to expose learners to violent images—in photographs and on film—teachers, youth educators, museum designers, and parents need to tread carefully:

1. INTRODUCTIONS: When we first introduce children to Holocaust history, we do not need to show them images of starved Jewish children in Nazi ghettos or open mass graves. Violent images can overwhelm and stifle critical thinking. We can teach about Holocaust history through words—spoken or on the page. That way, each learner has a chance to move through content at her or his own emotional pace.

2. PREPARATION: When learners are ready to view violent images, we have to prepare them properly. Although Holocaust history is shocking, we don’t want to shock young people into silence. Before sharing violent images—or before a trip to a museum or historical site—we need to ask learners: What do you expect to see? Then, if their expectations are off, we need to tell them what they will see. That way, we minimize the shock and set the stage for conversation and reflection, later on. (To be clear, we should not tell them how they will feel, because everyone responds differently.)

3. VIEWING: When showing violent images to young people we must provide context. We have to go beyond the image. We can ask learners: Who took the photograph or film, and why? What might have been happening beyond the frame? What might have happened before the photograph or film was taken? What might have happened afterwards? How did the photograph or film survive the war? What evidence does each photograph and film provide?

4. REFLECTING: After viewing violent images, we have to help learners reflect on what they saw. We can ask learners: Did anything surprise you? Did you find it easy or difficult to look at the image, and why? How do the images add to—or even contradict—what you already knew about Holocaust history? What new questions about the Holocaust and genocide do you now have?

My hunch is that the children we saw walking through the Auschwitz sites weren’t prepared or supported in these ways. I’m worried that, when those young and older children look away from the piles of hair and photographs of mass graves, they’ll keep their thoughts and questions to themselves, unable to process and learn from what they saw.


Why I Do What I Do: Reason #1

THE H WORD

As our three weeks in Poland come to an end, I've been thinking about why I do what I do. “How did you get into Holocaust education?” is a common question and I tend to answer differently depending on who’s asking and what’s on my mind.

Why I Do What I Do: Reason #1

Nine summers ago, I had just finished putting together a human rights youth program. But, just before its launch, I was told to remove all references to the Holocaust.

In 2004, as a youth worker in inner-city London, I traveled with my colleagues to Cape Town to plan an anti-racism youth exchange program for British and South African teenagers.

We recruited around 30 young people, we facilitated human rights training in both countries, and we prepared them for a summer of travel. First, the teens from South Africa would fly to London for two weeks to meet the Brits. Later in the summer, the Brits would fly to Cape Town and its surrounding townships. Working with the London teens, I was responsible for putting together the itinerary for the UK-based part of the program. We planned trips for the South African teens to various London neighborhoods, focusing on racism in the UK, immigration, homophobia, sexism, Islamophobia, and social inequality.

I decided to start the two weeks of learning by focusing on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ratified by the United Nations in 1948. I was especially excited that I had arranged for the teenagers to meet with a Jewish Holocaust survivor who had lived in South Africa before settling in the UK.

But when I presented the schedule to the program funders, I was ordered to remove two elements from the itinerary. First, I was not allowed to focus on the gap between rich and poor (which is another story!). Second, I had to remove all references to the Holocaust and Nazi antisemitism, including canceling our meeting with the Holocaust survivor. I was stunned and it became very clear that the person overseeing the project would not allow the program to go ahead if references to the Holocaust remained in the schedule. I argued back. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, the international community had the guts and the will to advance major human rights and anti-genocide laws. Beginning a human rights education program by learning about Nazi genocide and its implications seemed, to me, entirely appropriate. But I was overruled. The Holocaust content had to go. The Holocaust survivor had to be cancelled. Disgusted by the decision, I apologized to our program partners for the last-minute changes. Then I quit the program in protest.

I still don’t fully understand what happened. I was young. I didn’t ask the questions I would know to ask today. I didn’t understand the politics. I’m still not sure if quitting the program was the best decision.

A year later, I found myself in graduate school, training as a learning scientist. As I explored various specializations, with my experiences in London at the back of my mind, I began to form questions around Holocaust education design. I focused my work on Holocaust museums and collective Holocaust memories. And it was soon time to choose a dissertation path.

I remember the methodology class session. Two faculty instructors and my peers listened to my presentation—a proposal to conduct research on Holocaust pedagogy. When one of the faculty instructors told me—in front of everyone—that focusing on the Holocaust was a terrible idea because “Nobody will care about the Holocaust in 20 years,” I was shocked, angry, and determined to prove the professor wrong.

I walked out of the classroom knowing that despite—and perhaps because of—the professor’s comment, I would dedicate my research, my teaching, and my design work to Holocaust education.

These experiences triggered in me a sense of indignation; at first, my work was a protest against those who would rather we not mention “the H word.” But, over time, as my frustration was replaced by my excitement for my work, these moments became reminders that not everyone understands—or wants to understand—the importance and power of Holocaust history to shed light on ongoing atrocities.

Was I right to quit the youth program in protest, back in 2004? I don’t know. But what I know now is that it’s part of my work to stand up to people who would rather we stay silent.


Why I Do What I Do: Reason #2

CRYING TO BE HUMAN

As far as I can remember, learning about the Holocaust has never made me cry. How would I respond in Auschwitz?

I cried when I said goodbye to my friends and family before moving from London to Chicago. I’ve been known to cry when I've had a few too many drinks! I cried when my grandmothers died.

I teach about Nazi eugenics and the development of gas vans and Nazi experiments on pregnant women. And rail cars and Jewish and Roma and homosexual survivors and post-war suicide and inherited trauma. I’m an avid reader of Holocaust literature, particularly for young adults, and I watch and teach Holocaust films. I’ve listened to many Holocaust survivor testimonies—both recorded and live—and I’ve explored Holocaust museums around the world. I’ve tried to wrap my head around the fact that the Nazis murdered so many children who were disabled or Jewish or Roma or Sinti. I learned about the Holocaust in primary school and at home. But the horrific content of Holocaust history, testimony, film, and fiction has never made me cry.

Today, as we stood by the ruins of a gas chamber in Auschwitz-Birkenau, I talked about my personal connection to the Holocaust. My grandfather escaped Nazi-occupied Holland, I explained. But, as far as I know, he didn’t talk about his family’s story. We don’t know the details, but we’re pretty sure that many members of his extended family were murdered in the Nazi camps.

As a teenager, during an organized trip to Yad Vashem, I took myself up to the museum’s archives. The woman behind the desk warned me that finding information about my murdered family would be unlikely; unless, she said, they were Dutch and had an unusual name. “They were from the Netherlands,” I replied, “and the name is Ziekenoppasser.” She led me to the books of the dead. In the final book, on the final pages, I found a list of men and women with the last name Ziekenoppasser, deported from Amsterdam and other Dutch cities and towns, murdered at Sobibor and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Today, the Yad Vashem online database lists 33 entries for Ziekenoppasser. I suspect some of these people are our relatives, but we might never know.

This morning, in the Birkenau prisoner processing center, I found myself searching the anonymous family photographs for people who resembled my Mum’s side of the family. I felt sick as I looked at each image—children playing, weddings, family portraits. But I didn’t cry.

A little while later, standing at the ruins of Gas Chamber III, I recited to my group the little I know of my family’s story. As I did, I wondered if this was exactly where they were murdered and I felt—suddenly, unexpectedly—as if I was honoring their memory. But I didn’t cry. Instead—and this now seems absurd—I realized that I might want to return to Auschwitz, one day.

Yesterday, at Auschwitz I, we stood inside the still-standing gas chamber and walked through the reconstructed crematorium. We wandered into rooms displaying piles of adult shoes, stolen before their owners were gassed. The shoes of murdered children were displayed separately. When I saw the mounds of human hair, I felt a pain in my chest—like a punch. I found myself asking our guide a question about the exhibit, perhaps to prevent myself from crying.

In the Auschwitz prison block (a prison within a prison), we looked at the original bunks, we walked past standing-cells, and we stared at walls covered in official photographs of camp prisoners in their striped uniforms, emaciated men, androgynous women, all soon to be dead. I didn’t cry.

I followed our tour guide, as if in a trance, staring at a pile of hairbrushes and toothbrushes and shaving brushes. My mind took me to the perpetrators. How did the Nazi guards allow themselves to participate in these horrific crimes? How could human beings treat other human beings in these horrific ways? It’s unfathomable.

As I walked through Auschwitz, I thought about my family, murdered here. But I didn’t cry. And I thought about the Nazi guards who led them to their deaths. The Nazis must have been in some kind of trance, I found myself thinking. These murderers had hypnotized themselves. They weren’t thinking things through. They were confused, intoxicated by the mist that moved through the system of violence and murder that they had designed. If the Nazi guards and their leaders had stopped for just one second, surely they would have realized what they, as humans, were doing to other humans.

Last night, I shared this notion—of Nazi guards in a trance—with the rest of my group. “The Nazis knew what they were doing,” people in my group reminded me, “they knew what they believed.” I was listening carefully to what they were saying, but it didn’t make any sense.

When I teach about Holocaust history, I not only strive to humanize the Nazis’ victims; I also strive to humanize the Nazis themselves. Too often, through Holocaust films and museum exhibitions and fiction and the sensationalist media, we portray the Nazi leadership and lower-level camp guards as monsters. We display photographs of Nazi officers in their pressed uniforms, smiling with their fingers on the triggers of their guns, watching with cold eyes as children are marched to their suffocation. We call them evil. Monsters. As if their actions were inevitable, uncontrollable. By doing so, we excuse them; we ignore the decisions they made. The frightening truth is that the Nazis were just as human as their victims. Years before they became Nazis, as children, they played games and did their homework. They had life dreams and ambitions. They fell in love. They had children of their own. But if we paint these men and women as monsters, we keep the perpetrators at a distance. Look what they did, we say. This is what evil looks like! By painting the Nazis as inherently inhumane, we are saying that “real” human beings could never perpetrate or become complicit in genocide; we could never be capable of committing such atrocities, we tell ourselves.

The image of Nazi guards, walking in a trance, following murderous orders, replayed again and again in my head. How can it be possible to see others as anything but human? “It’s impossible,” I said to my colleague. “No. It’s possible,” he said to me, “—it’s just impossible for you.” I understood what he was saying and, for a moment, I choked on my tears.