Hebrew School: Perpetrators, Collaborators, and Bystanders

Hello my lovelies!

This week’s Hebrew school lesson went Amazing. My assistant teacher and I decided to reorder our day so that her portion will always be the first, which will allow ample time for me to ensure that the tech for the day is ready to roll before it is needed after last week’s crisis. This week’s crisis was infinitesimal in comparison to last week’s, this week we just didn’t have the right cable to run the projector, which got fixed in less than 15 minutes, long before the assistant’s 30 minute time slot was done.

For this week’s class, I brought in what I refer to as my artifacts of evil. I have two Death’s Head emblems from SS uniforms, and a HJ dagger insignia as well as one Soviet-Nazi collaborator’s medal. The kids were all fascinated to see the real thing when it comes to the Death’s Head emblems, because you always read about them, but they are rarely depicted.

Our slideshow presentation went super smooth, and detailed the three primary roles in any situation involving conflict: Perpetrators, Collaborators, and Bystanders. I introduced my students to Otto Adolf Eichmann to demonstrate a perpetrator. As one of the key cogs in the deportation and execution of millions of innocent lives, I figured he was the perfect example. Even if his trial and execution were done in an illegal fashion, I think they were well deserved. I must say I am proud that my students did not necessarily agree with how Israel handled the situation, which shows that they are learning compassion as well as justice in my class.

To demonstrate the idea of a collaborator, I introduced them to Marcheal Phillipe Petain of Vichy France. As a willing lapdog for the Nazis, Petain was responsible for the deaths of a lot of France’s Jews that would have otherwise escaped Nazi persecution.

For bystanders, I presented my students with two quotes…

“They came for the Communists, and I didn’t object for I was not a Communist. They came for the Socialists, and I didn’t object for I was not a Socialist. They came for the labour leaders, and I didn’t object for I was not a labour leader. They came for the Jews, and I didn’t object because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to object.” – – Pastor Martin Niemöller, emphasis mine

“Thou shalt not be a victim, thou shalt not be a perpetrator, but, above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.” – Yehuda Bauer

Then, because I am me, I showed them the sermon from the beginning of the film “The Boondock Saints” explaining the horror of being a bystander.

I then introduced my students to the idea of being an UPSTANDER by using the example of the Rosenstrasse protest. The fact that nothing bad happened to these women shows that if more people had resisted, Hitler would never have been able to do what he did. This was a strong message for my students.

I am so proud of how my students pay attention, for the most part, and are (hopefully) learning a lot from me. Next week I will be going with them to Camp Yehuda (name changed for privacy issues) where I will have the joy of teaching the entire 7th grade class about Jewish Heroes of the Holocaust. Which is a lesson that I must compose entirely from scratch since the lesson they used last year is something that my class will already be covering in a later class session.

Ta Ta for now, I must get busy reading and reviewing genocide plays. . .

Love and hugs,
Chaya bat Maria

As always, please leave me feedback about what you think of my posts, any suggestions you have for future posts, or any books you would like me to review. For reviews please figure out how to get me either a physical copy or an electronic copy of the book as I am a poor graduate student!

Another weekend

Hello my lovelies,

For those of you who do not know, I teach Hebrew school on Sunday mornings. My class are seventh graders, a mix of both boys and girls (though mostly only the girls show up). Ours is a reform synagogue whose entire seventh grade class is focused on learning about the Holocaust.f

November 2nd’s class went fantastic. Absolutely wonderful. The kids loved my powerpoint presentation, and were very interested in the subject… This week was the 76th anniversary of Kristallnacht, November 9th. The events of 9 November 1938 are crucial for Jewish understanding of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany, so we had a special service for the children at the beginning of the day to commemorate this event. The service and ceremony went wonderful, all of the kids from my class volunteered to read without any hesitation, the kids from the other class not so much. *puffs out chest like a proud momma bird*

Just before the ceremony, I find out that my assistant teacher has been tapped to leave our class for part of the day to go teach the fifth graders since their teacher had food poisoning. UGH!

So we did her part of the class immediately after the service, and of course that went very well. Then it was my turn. We had a lesson on the indoctrination of youth under National Socialism in Germany, for which I had prepared an absolutely fabulous presentation, which was still on my laptop and not on my ipad (of course). So I hooked the laptop up to the projector, and it wouldn’t work. The laptop did not recognize that an external display had been connected. I think there was a problem with the thunderbolt adapter. But I started to freak out.

I texted the assistant principal and asked for her portable wifi hotspot to be brought up to my room so that I could email myself the presentation to my ipad. Email sent fine… ipad didn’t download the presentation. So I start to freak out more.

I figure maybe it sent in .pages (which won’t email through typical channels) so I resend the email in .pptx… ipad still won’t download it. The wifi isn’t strong enough for it to pull down a 6mb file from email server. OMG!

After an hour of fidgeting and fumbling trying to get this stupid f***ing powerpoint to download to my ipad, i get the genius idea of downloading it to my phone. Which, of course, works without an issue… yay LTE coverage on the top level of a building.

While I have been trying to download and get this powerpoint going, I have lost the attention of my 13 year old students. UGH! So I try to reel them back in with discussion about the book we just finished reading, etc.

I look at the clock. I only have 30 minutes left for my 1.5 hour presentation. F***! So I have to rush through my presentation, which I had timed with Ishti at around an hour. Needless to say I have to gloss over several of the important facts that I wanted to discuss. I felt like such a total failure as a teacher by the end of it.

BUT: My kids were still able to answer the takeaway that I really wanted them to be able to answer: What makes the Hitler Youth different from BS/GSoA?

So I guess in the end that’s what matters. That the kids can recognize that indoctrination is subtle and they must question what they are being taught.

So here’s a question for you lovely readers: Do you want to hear about my classes, or should I keep them for a different blog or just not write about them? Please respond to this and let me know what you think!

Peace and Hugs,
Chaya bat Maria