WWII veteran William Alexander Scott, III at Buchenwald : educational exhibit companion

Educational Exhibit Companion

Table of Contents

Guidelines for Teaching About the Holocaust Glossary Lesson Module: Witness to the Holocaust Handout: Witness to the Holocaust Lesson Module: Liberation Activity Module: Response Journal Handout: Nuremberg Racial Laws, 1935 Worksheet: Nuremberg Race Laws Worksheet: How will you choose to participate?

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Georgia Commission on the Holocaust

Through awareness and education, instill a sense of personal responsibility to combat indifference and apathy so individuals will not be a bystander in the face of bigotry and discrimination.
The Georgia Commission on the Holocaust was established to educate the citizens of Georgia about the consequences of hate, prejudice, and discrimination through the lessons of the Holocaust. These lessons will be taught in order to cultivate positive character development and to foster the understanding of the significance of good citizenship.
The Commission was established by Executive Order by Joe Frank Harris in 1986. Governor Zell Miller reestablished the Commission upon taking office and charged it with creating education programs for the citizens. Then in 1998 by act of the Georgia General Assembly the Commission became a permanent State Agency.
The Georgia Commission on the Holocaust is bipartisan, nondenominational and multiracial.

Additional Resources
For more educational resources and information about the Anne Frank in the World exhibit please
visit www.holocaust.georgia.gov.

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"Guidelines for Teaching About the Holocaust"
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Age Appropriateness
Students in grades 6 and above demonstrate the ability to empathize with individual eyewitness accounts and to attempt to understand the complexities of this history, including the scope and scale of the events. While elementary students are able to empathize with individual accounts, they often have difficulty placing them in a larger historical context. Such demonstrable developmental differences have traditionally shaped social studies curricula throughout the country; in most states, students are not introduced to European history and geography--the context of the Holocaust--before middle school. Elementary school can be an ideal location to begin discussion of the value of diversity and the danger of bias and prejudice. These critical themes can be addressed through local and national historical events; this will be reinforced during later study of the Holocaust.
Methodological Considerations
The teaching of Holocaust history demands of educators a high level of sensitivity and a keen awareness of the complexity of the subject matter. The following recommendations, while reflecting approaches that would be appropriate for effective teaching in general, are particularly relevant to Holocaust education.
1. Define the term "Holocaust"
The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Jews were the primary victims--six 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, Jehovah's Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war and political dissidents, also suffered grievous oppression and death under Nazi tyranny.
2. Do not teach or imply that the Holocaust was inevitable
Just because a historical event took place, and it is documented in textbooks and on film, does not mean that it had to happen. This seemingly obvious concept is often overlooked by students and teachers alike. The Holocaust took place because individuals, groups, and nations made decisions to act or not to act. Focusing on those decisions leads to insights into history and human nature and can better help your students to become critical thinkers.
3. Avoid simple answers to complex questions
The history of the Holocaust raises difficult questions about human behavior and the context within
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which individual decisions are made. Be wary of oversimplification. Seek instead to nuance the story. Allow students to think about the many factors and events that contributed to the Holocaust and often made decision-making difficult and uncertain.
4. Strive for Precision of Language
Any study of the Holocaust touches upon nuances of human behavior. Because of the complexity of the history, there is a temptation to generalize and, thus, to distort the facts (e.g., "all concentration camps were killing centers" or "all Germans were collaborators"). Rather, you must strive to help your students clarify the information presented and encourage them to distinguish, for example, the differences between prejudice and discrimination, collaborators and bystanders, armed and spiritual resistance, direct orders and assumed orders, concentration camps and killing centers, and guilt and responsibility.
Words that describe human behavior often have multiple meanings. Resistance, for example, usually refers to a physical act of armed revolt. During the Holocaust, it also encompassed partisan activity; the smuggling of messages, food, and weapons; sabotage; and actual military engagement. Resistance may also be thought of as willful disobedience such as continuing to practice religious and cultural traditions in defiance of the rules or creating fine art, music, and poetry inside ghettos and concentration camps. For many, simply maintaining the will to remain alive in the face of abject brutality was an act of spiritual resistance.
Try to avoid stereotypical descriptions. Remind your students that, although members of a group may share common experiences and beliefs, generalizations about them tend to stereotype group behavior and distort historical reality. Thus, all Germans cannot be characterized as Nazis nor should any nationality be reduced to a singular or one-dimensional description.
5. Strive for balance in establishing whose perspective informs your study of the Holocaust
One helpful technique for engaging students in a discussion of the Holocaust is to think of the participants involved as belonging to one of four categories: victims, perpetrators, rescuers, and bystanders. Examine the actions, motives, and decisions of each group. Portray all individuals, including victims and perpetrators, as human beings who are capable of moral judgment and independent decision making.
As with any topic, students should make careful distinctions about sources of information. Students should be encouraged to consider why a particular text was written, who wrote it, who the intended audience was, whether there were any biases inherent in the information, whether any gaps occurred in discussion, whether omissions in certain passages were inadvertent or not, and how the information has been used to interpret various events. Strongly encourage your students to investigate carefully the origin and authorship of all material, particularly anything found on the Internet.
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6. Avoid comparisons of pain
One cannot presume that the horror of an individual, family, or community destroyed by the Nazis was any greater than that experienced by victims of other genocides. Avoid generalizations that suggest exclusivity such as "the victims of the Holocaust suffered the most cruelty ever faced by a people in the history of humanity."
7. Do not romanticize history
Accuracy of fact along with a balanced perspective on the history must be a priority.
8. Contextualize the history
Events of the Holocaust and, particularly, how individuals and organizations behaved at that time, should be placed in historical context. The occurrence of the Holocaust must be studied in the context of European history as a whole to give students a perspective on the precedents and circumstances that may have contributed to it.
9. Translate statistics into people
In any study of the Holocaust, the sheer number of victims challenges easy comprehension. Show that individual people--families of grandparents, parents, and children--are behind the statistics and emphasize that within the larger historical narrative is a diversity of personal experience. Precisely because they portray people in the fullness of their lives and not just as victims, first-person accounts and memoir literature provide students with a way of making meaning out of collective numbers and add individual voices to a collective experience.
10. Make responsible methodological choices
One of the primary concerns of educators teaching the history of the Holocaust is how to present horrific, historical images in a sensitive and appropriate manner. Graphic material should be used judiciously and only to the extent necessary to achieve the objective of the lesson. Try to select images and texts that do not exploit the students' emotional vulnerability or that might be construed as disrespectful of the victims themselves. Do not skip any of the suggested topics for study of the Holocaust because the visual images are too graphic. Use other approaches to address the material.
In studying complex human behavior, many teachers rely upon simulation exercises meant to help students "experience" unfamiliar situations. Even when great care is taken to prepare a class for such an activity, simulating experiences from the Holocaust remains pedagogically unsound. It is best to draw upon numerous primary sources, provide survivor testimony, and refrain from simulation games that lead to a trivialization of the subject matter.
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Glossary
ALLIES The nations fighting Nazi Germany, Italy, and Japan during World War II; primarily the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union. (The Simon Wiesenthal Center)
ANTI-SEMITISM Acts or feelings against Jews; takes the form of prejudice, dislike, fear, discrimination, and persecution. (St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Learning Center)
ARYAN RACE Term was originally applied to people who spoke any Indo-European language. The Nazis appropriated the term and applied it to people of Northern European racial background. (St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Learning Center)
AXIS The Axis powers originally included Nazi Germany, Italy, and Japan who signed a pact in Berlin on September 27, 1940. They were later joined by Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary, and Slovakia. (The Simon Wiesenthal Center)
BUCHENWALD A concentration camp established in 1937 near Weimar, Germany. While it was primarily a labor camp in the German concentration camp system and not an extermination center, thousands died there from exposure, over-work, and execution. Many Jews from other camps were forcibly marched there by the Nazis in early 1945. (Anti-Defamation League, USC Shoah Foundation Institute, Yad Vashem)
BYSTANDER One who is present at an event or who knows about its occurrence without participating in it. (Anti-Defamation League, USC Shoah Foundation Institute, Yad Vashem)
CIVIL RIGHTS A civil right is an enforceable right or privilege, which if interfered with by another gives rise to an action for injury. Examples of civil rights are freedom of speech, press, and assembly; the right to vote; freedom from involuntary servitude; and the right to equality in public places. Discrimination occurs when the civil rights of an individual are denied or interfered with because of their membership in a particular group or class. (Cornell University Law School) The Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice was created in 1957. The Division enforces federal statutes prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, disability, religion, familial status and national origin. (The United States Department of Justice)
CONCENTRATION CAMPS The generic term applied by the Nazis to all of the camps: death camps, slave labor camps, internment camps, transit camps, punishment camps. (St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Learning Center)
CREMATORIUM/CREMATORIA Furnaces used to cremate bodies. During the Holocaust, crematoria were installed in several camps, among them the extermination camps and the Theresienstadt ghetto. (AntiDefamation League, USC Shoah Foundation Institute, Yad Vashem)
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DEATHCAMPS Nazi camps for the mass killing of Jews and others (e.g. Gypsies, Russian prisoners-of-war, ill prisoners). These included: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka. All were located in occupied Poland. (St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Learning Center)
DISCRIMINATION The denial of justice and fair treatment by both individuals and institutions in many arenas, including employment, education, housing, banking, and political rights. Discrimination is an action that can follow prejudicial thinking. (Anti-Defamation League, USC Shoah Foundation Institute, Yad Vashem)
DISPLACED PERSON/DISPLACEDPERSONS'CAMP(DP CAMP) Camps set up after World War II in Austria, Germany, and Italy as temporary living quarters for the tens of thousands of homeless people created by the war. Many survivors of the Holocaust who had no home or country to which they could return were among the displaced persons. (Anti-Defamation League, USC Shoah Foundation Institute, Yad Vashem)
GAS CHAMBERS The Nazis first began using poison gas as a means for mass murder in December 1939, when an SS Sonderkommando unit used carbon monoxide to suffocate Polish mental patients. In the summer of 1941, the Germans commenced murdering Jews en masse in a systematic fashion. After several months, it became clear to them that the mass murder method they had previously employed, of shooting, was neither quick nor efficient enough to serve their needs. Thus, based on the experience gained in the Euthanasia Program, they began using gas chambers to annihilate European Jewry. The Nazis continued to search for a more efficient method of mass murder. After some experimentation on Soviet prisoners of war, the Nazis found a commercial insecticide called Zyklon B to be an appropriate gas for their needs. Gas chambers functioned at Mauthausen, Neuengamme, Sachsenhausen, Stutthof, and Ravensbrueck. All of these gas chambers utilized Zyklon B to kill their victims. (Yad Vashem)
GENOCIDE The deliberate and systematic destruction of a religious, racial, national, or cultural group. (The Simon Wiesenthal Center)
HOLOCAUST The term "Holocaust" literally means "a completely burned sacrifice." It was first used by Newsweek magazine to describe the Nazi book burnings in Germany. Later it was applied to the destruction of six million Jews by the Nazis and their followers in Europe between the years 1941-1945. Yiddish speaking Jews used the term "Churbon" (meaning "a great destruction.") The word Shoah, originally a Biblical term meaning widespread disaster, is the modern Hebrew equivalent.
JEWISH BADGE A distinctive sign which Jews were compelled to wear in Nazi Germany and in Nazioccupied countries. It took the form of a yellow Star of David or an armband with a Star of David on it. (St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Learning Center)
LIBERATION The process of an army driving conquerors out of an occupied territory. Holocaust survivors and citizens of occupied Europe used the word "liberation" to refer to the moment they were freed from German control. Individuals and/or nations involved in the liberation are referred to as "liberators." (AntiDefamation League, USC Shoah Foundation Institute, Yad Vashem)
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NAZI Short for Nationalsozialistische deutche Arbeiter-Partei (N.S.D.A.P.), the political party that emerged in Munich after World War I. The party was taken over by Adolf Hitler in the early 1920s. The swastika was the party symbol. (Anti-Defamation League, USC Shoah Foundation Institute, Yad Vashem) NAZI IDEOLOGY or NAZI RACIAL IDEOLOGY The Nazi system of beliefs, based on a racial view of the world. According to Nazi ideology, the Nordic Aryan Germans were the "master race." Other races were inferior to them and the Jews were considered to be the "anti-race," the exact opposite of the Germans, and an evil and destructive race. Germans were said to be the natural rulers of the world and, in order to achieve that position, influence of the Jews needed to be ended. Thus, racial anti-Semitism and solved the so-called "Jewish Question" lay at the heart of Nazi ideology, as did the desire for more territory or Lebensraum (living space.) (Anti-Defamation League, USC Shoah Foundation Institute, Yad Vashem) PREJUDICE An opinion formed before the facts are known. In most cases, these opinions are founded on suspicions, ignorance and the irrational fear of or hatred of other races, religions or nationalities. RACISM The practice of discrimination, segregation, persecution, and domination of a group based on that group's race. (Anti-Defamation League, USC Shoah Foundation Institute, Yad Vashem) SCAPEGOAT A person or thing that is blamed for the mistakes or crimes of others. Hitler blamed the Jews for the defeat of Germany in World WarI and post-war Germany's troubles STEREOTYPE An oversimplified generalization about a person or group of people without regard for individual differences. Even seemingly positive stereotypes that link a person or group to a specific positive trait can have negative consequences. (Anti-Defamation League, USC Shoah Foundation Institute, Yad Vashem) YELLOW STAR The six-pointed Star of David made of yellow cloth and sewn to the clothing of European Jews. See also "Jewish badge".
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LESSON MODULE:
Witness to the Holocaust
WWII Veteran William Alexander Scott III
at Buchenwald
Summary
The Scott exhibit is a photographic essay of one of Atlanta's leading African-American citizens, founder and editor of the Atlanta Daily World newspaper, tireless civil rights leader, WWII photojournalist and a witness to the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp. This exhibit was curated by the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust.
Biography
William Alexander Scott. III, A brilliant man of many talents, he continually surprised even those who knew him with the depth of his experience and wisdom, and the breadth of his intellectual interests. Businessman, and chess master, loving father and grandfather, film critic, radio show host, artist, poet and public servant, W A. Scott brought his intelligence, humor and integrity to all of his pursuits. He celebrated life.
In 1991 "W. A.", as he was known to family and friends, was honored for his "valiant service" with the Allied Forces in Liberating the Nazi concentration camps during World War II, and was appointed by President George Bush to the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. It was an honor in which he took particular pride, along with his membership in the now legendary Tuskegee Airmen, Inc. In 1991, he was also included among the "Hidden Treasures: African-American Photographers in Atlanta. 1870-1970" at the APEX Museum. W, A. Scott's life began in Johnson City, Tennessee, where he was born on January 15, 1923. That year his family moved to Atlanta, Georgia, where his father W, A. Scott, II, founded the Atlanta Daily World newspaper in 1928. He attended the Atlanta University Elementary (Oglethorpe) and Laboratory high schools. From childhood he worked at the Atlanta World in various capacities from paper-boy and clean-up person, to sports statistician, movie and play critic and photographer.
"W.A." was studying Business Administration and Mathematics at Morehouse College, and waiting to marry his childhood sweetheart Marian Willis, when he was called up for the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II. He served from 1943 to 1946. He and Marian married on August 28, 1944, just before he was shipped overseas. Scott served as a photographer with the 318th Airbase Squadron and the 183rd Engineer Combat Battalion, While with the 183rd in Germany. Scott was one of the first Allied soldiers to enter Buchenwald. After the war he returned to Atlanta, and completed his education at Morehouse. He began his married life with Marian. and in 1948 became Circulation Manager of the Atlanta Daily World. During the years Scott covered many events of historical significance occurring in this area, sometimes as the lone African-American walking into a Southern hamlet to investigate a lynching. In 1984, he became Public Relations and Advertising Manager, a post he held until his death.
Scott was a member of the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust.
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Methodology
Before or after viewing the exhibit, give each student a copy of the testimony handout located on pages 11-12. Assign students to read portions of the testimony out loud or assign students to read it individually to themselves. On the board, write the series of discussion questions. Questions for consideration can be found on pages 13 and 14. Divide students into groups of 3-5 and ask them to discuss each question after they have read the testimony handout. Once the groups have completed their discussions, assign 1-2 of the writing prompts and provide students with class time to write in their response journal. Activity Module: Response Journal can be found on page 14. Optional: Provide handouts of the "Nuremberg Racial Laws, 1935." Copies can be made from the handout found on pages 15-16 Assign students to read portions of the laws out loud or assign students to read it individually to themselves.
o Provide the accompanying worksheet found on page 17 to students. Assign the worksheet as homework or to be completed during or after the students view the exhibit and/or "Nuremberg Racial Laws, 1935" handout.
Optional: Provide the "How will you choose to participate?" worksheet found on page 18 to students and assign as homework or to be completed during or after students view the exhibit.
Recommendation for Further Research
Research the Tuskegee Airmen. Who were they? How did they contribute to the de-segregation of the United States Military in 1948?
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STUDENT HANDOUT: "Witness to the Holocaust" by William Alexander Scott, III
About the photo: Timed photo by William A. Scott, III (left) with Scott's personal 21/4 x 31/4 miniature Speed Graphic and Leon Bass during basic training at Camp McCain (Grenada, MS), spring of 1943 with 183rd Engineer Combat Battalion.
When one explores the halls of memories, some moments cannot be forgotten or dimmed by the passage of time. I remember the day-clear and sunny-riding in a convoy into Eisenach, Germany, 11 April 1945, as World War II was ending; and, a Third Army courier delivering a message to us to continue on to a concentration camp (Buchenwald), 10 or more miles further east, near Weimar. I was a reconnaissance sergeant, photographer, camoufleur and part-time historian in S-2 (Intelligence Section) of the 183rd Engineer Combat Battalion. We were in the: 8th Corps of General George S. Patton's 3rd Army. As we rode into Buchenwald, I can remember thinking--"there is no place as horrible as we have been told--no atrocities--we should turn around--stop wasting time--go back to Eisenach and establish our Battalion Headquarters. But we continued and finally, arrived at a place that did not look so bad as we passed the main entrance--but, as we rolled around the front building, we saw the feeble mass of survivors milling around.
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We got out of our vehicles and some began to beckon to us to follow and see what had been done in that place--they were walking skeletons. The sights were beyond description. What little we had been told in an orientation session in Northern France in early December, 1944, was nothing in comparison--and I had thought no place could be this bad.
I took out my camera and began to take some photos--but that only lasted for a few pictures. As the scenes became more gruesome, I put my camera in its case and walked in a daze with the survivors, as we viewed all forms of dismemberment of the human body. We learned that 31,000 of the 51,000 persons there had been killed in a two week period prior to our arrival. An SS trooper had remained until the day of our arrival and survivors had captured him as he tried to flee over a fence. He was taken into a building where two men from my unit followed. They said he was trampled to death by the survivors.
I began to realize why few, if any, persons would believe the atrocities I had seen. HOLOCAUST was the word used to describe it--but one has to witness it to even begin to believe it--and, finally after going through several buildings, with various displays--lamp shades of human skin, incinerators choked with human bones, dissected heads and bodies, testes in labeled bottles, so that they could be seen by the victims on a shelf by the door as they went in and out of the barracks (after two weeks of this procedure, they would be killed, but, we arrived before this ritual could be continued), my mind closed the door on this horror.
We eventually left after helping to remove some of the survivors for medical assistance. As we rode back to Eisenach in silence, I remembered that about 1,000 persons in an isolated area were in better shape than the others-- who were they?-Russians we were told. But, I asked myself, how could a country, classified during my high school days of the late 1930's as probably the world's most literate, allow this type of mass murder and psychotic behavior to take place? There were no answers, as many thoughts raced through my mind.
Even though my ancestors had arrived in our country (the United States of America) as slaves in chains from Africa, and subjected to torture and death during the long centuries of slavery, it all seemed to pale in comparison to the glaring impact of what I had witnessed at Buchenwald. I later learned about other death facilities-including the monstrous Auschwitz. My slave ancestors, despite the horrors they were subjected to, had value and were listed among the assets of a slave holder.
Had the Nazi position prevailed in the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War, (my slave great grandfather and namesake-- William Alexander Scott fought with the Union Army in Mississippi) I, or others similarly situated, would not exist in the world today--the earth would have literally become the "Forbidden Planet" where no humans would exist, only Robby the Robot and Hal the Computer would patrol the plains. My life, as I contemplate the impact of past events on it, has evolved into a character that exhibits an attitude to fellow humans that they have nothing to fear from me or my family. I am only one. But my wife, our children (a son and a daughter--their children, 2 boys, a girl and 2 boys, respectively) have the character and function that nothing should fear them--they have no designs on others or their families.
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LESSON MODULE: Liberation
Summary
The Red Army (Soviet soldiers) were the first to liberate prisoners of concentration camps towards the end of the war. (Soviet prisoners were among the victims held at such camps.) The first liberation of a camp by the Red Army took place on July 23, 1944, at Majdanek camp (Poland). The next liberation took place on January 27, 1945, when they entered Auschwitz, the largest German concentration camp. It consisted of a network of camps and sub-camps ranging from concentration and extermination to labor. At Auschwitz the Red Army found hundreds of abandoned prisoners, many on the brink of death due to disease, malnourishment and abused. The Nazis operating the camp had left in haste, forcing able prisoners on a death march to the East as they retreated from the advancing Allies. The other camps were liberated as such: Buchenwald and Dachau by Americans, and Bergen-Belsen by the British in April of 1945.
The evidence at the camps upon the arrival of Allied forces was undeniable and overwhelming for many soldiers, despite the Nazis' attempts at hiding evidence of their crimes.
The act of liberating the camps was not all that was required; the prisoners were so unhealthy and weak that simply freeing them of their captors and the camps did not ensure their survival. The Allies initiated relief efforts that included feeding and providing medical attention for the prisoners. Regardless, nearly half of the prisoners left at Auschwitz died within a few days following liberation.
Displaced persons camps were established as a short-term solution for the number of victims who could not or would not return to their homes. Some DP camps were set up on location, where a concentration camp existed before. The largest of such was DP camp of Bergen-Belsen. The majority of displaced persons lived in southern Germany (American occupation zone) and northern Germany (British occupation zone.) Under the Truman administration immigration restrictions to the United States were eased and in 1948 the State of Israel was founded. The more than 200,000 displaced persons of Europe were gradually able to find relocate and start new lives. Most of the DP camps were closed by 1951.
Questions for Consideration
1. Who was General Eisenhower and what role did he have in the liberation of Europe? 2. Why was it important to document and take pictures when liberation a town or camp? 3. Why were many Jews not able to return home after being liberated? 4. What is a displaced persons' camp? 5. What role did the Red Cross in the liberation of Europe? 6. Who were the Allies? 7. During the process of liberating the camps, what questions do you think the Allied soldiers might have
had? 8. Do you think responsibility was a theme in the thoughts and reactions of most Liberators? Who was
responsible for the existence of the camps, crematoria, and victims?
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ACTIVITY MODULE: Response Journal
Objective
Provide students with the opportunity to express their thoughts, feelings, reactions, and beliefs after they have viewed the exhibit and student hand out.
Methodology
1. Assign 1-3 writing prompts to each student as an in-class or take-home assignment. Notify students that there are no "right" or "wrong" answers to these prompts. a. Optional: Have students volunteer to read his/her response(s) outloud to the rest of the class as the opening for a class discussion.
2. Provide feedback on 3-5 of the student's responses. a. Optional: Once the activity is complete, encourage each student to bring their journal home to share with his/her family.
Questions for Consideration
1. How do you express yourself? 2. What experiences in your life have shaped your perspective and voice? 3. Do you keep a diary? If so, why? 4. Explain Mr. Scott's statement of "How could a country classified during my high school days
of the 1930"s as probably the most literate, allow this type of mass murder and psychotic behavior to take place? There were no answers as my thoughts raced through my mind." 5. How did Scott compare the prisoners to his enslaved ancestors? 6. Write a letter as if you were a Liberator describing what you had witnessed? 7. Why do you think Scott became a champion for civil rights when he returned home to Atlanta? 8. How do you think it would feel to be a black man in a segregated army?
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"Nuremberg Racial Laws, 1935"
By United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Reich Citizenship Law of September 15, 1935
(Translated from Reichsgesetzblatt I, 1935, p. 1146.)
The Reichstag has unanimously enacted the following law, which is promulgated herewith: Article 1 1. A subject of the state is a person who enjoys the protection of the German Reich and who in consequence has specific obligations toward it. 2. The status of subject of the state is acquired in accordance with the provisions of the Reich and the Reich Citizenship Law. Article 2 1. A Reich citizen is a subject of the state who is of German or related blood, and proves by his conduct that he is willing and fit to faithfully serve the German people and Reich. 2. Reich citizenship is acquired through the granting of a Reich citizenship certificate. 3. The Reich citizen is the sole bearer of full political rights in accordance with the law. Article 3 The Reich Minister of the Interior, in coordination with the Deputy of the Fhrer, will issue the legal and administrative orders required to implement and complete this law.
Nuremberg, September 15, 1935 At the Reich Party Congress of Freedom
The Fhrer and Reich Chancellor [signed] Adolf Hitler
The Reich Minister of the Interior [signed] Frick
(United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2012)
Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor of September 15, 1935
(Translated from Reichsgesetzblatt I, 1935, pp. 1146-7.)
Moved by the understanding that purity of German blood is the essential condition for the continued existence of the German people, and inspired by the inflexible determination to ensure the existence of the German nation for all time, the Reichstag has unanimously adopted the following law, which is promulgated herewith:
Article 1
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1. Marriages between Jews and subjects of the state of German or related blood are forbidden. Marriages nevertheless concluded are invalid, even if concluded abroad to circumvent this law. 2. Annulment proceedings can be initiated only by the state prosecutor. Article 2 Extramarital relations between Jews and subjects of the state of German or related blood are forbidden. Article 3 Jews may not employ in their households female subjects of the state of German or related blood who are under 45 years old. Article 4 1. Jews are forbidden to fly the Reich or national flag or display Reich colors. 2. They are, on the other hand, permitted to display the Jewish colors. The exercise of this right is protected by the state. Article 5 1. Any person who violates the prohibition under Article 1 will be punished with a prison sentence. 2. A male who violates the prohibition under Article 2 will be punished with a jail term or a prison sentence. 3. Any person violating the provisions under Articles 3 or 4 will be punished with a jail term of up to one year and a fine, or with one or the other of these penalties. Article 6 The Reich Minister of the Interior, in coordination with the Deputy of the Fhrer and the Reich Minister of Justice, will issue the legal and administrative regulations required to implement and complete this law. Article 7 The law takes effect on the day following promulgation, except for Article 3, which goes into force on January 1, 1936.
Nuremberg, September 15, 1935 At the Reich Party Congress of Freedom
The Fhrer and Reich Chancellor [signed] Adolf Hitler
The Reich Minster of the Interior [signed] Frick
The Reich Minister of Justice [signed] Dr. Grtner
The Deputy of the Fhrer [signed] R. Hess
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Translation: Nuremberg Race Laws." Holocaust Encyclopedia. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007903#seealso. Accessed 25 October 2012.
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STUDENT WORKSHEET:
"Nuremberg Racial Laws, 1935"
Student Name ______________________________________Date ___________

Vocabulary

anti-Semitism Aryan race civil rights discrimination

Jewish badge Nazi prejudice racism

Response Questions
1. Which law stripped Jews of German citizenship?

______________________________________________________________________________

2. Which law segregated Jews from other Germans?

______________________________________________________________________________

3. Circle one: How did Nazis force Jews to display their identity as Jewish?

a. Jews were required to carry identity cards.

b. Jews were required to have a red "J" stamped on their passports.

c. Jews who did not have "recognizable `Jewish'" first names were forced to adopt new

middle names: "Israel" for males and "Sara" for females.

d. Jews were required to wear a Jewish badge: a yellow Star of David on their clothes or

a similar armband.

e. All of the above.

4. Circle one: Jews are a race of people.

True

False

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STUDENT WORKSHEET: How will you choose to participate?
Student Name ______________________________________Date ___________ Directions: Please fill out.

Are you a bystander?

Why?________________________________________

Or an Upstander?
List Upstanders from history:
_________________

_____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________ _____________________________________________
Do you take a positive stand on behalf of others?

_________________ _________________ _________________ _________________ _________________ _________________

Are you someone
who speaks
out?

Do you make the world a better place?
How?_________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________ ______________________________

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