I teach 5th grade in Bernardston, a rural working-class town in western Massachusetts where one Jewish student attends the local elementary school. Several years ago, a report cited that most Americans were unaware of the full extent of the Holocaust that decimated European Jewry during World War II. Since then, I have always included a lesson about this catastrophe as part of my curriculum.
In 1994, a small group in my class began reading the award-winning children's classic, Number the Stars by Lois Lowry (1989). As we followed the Danish rescue of their Jewish population from the Nazis, I became aware that none of my youthful readers understood the subtle messages in the story. Why were Danish Jews disappearing? Where did they go? Why was the young Jewish protagonist, Ellen Rosen, so terrified of being stopped by the German soldiers? It was clearly time to explain the process by which Nazism came to dominate Germany and then engulf Europe.
In my classroom are two excellent books published by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. In Tell Them We Remember (1994), Susan Bachrach relates how children experienced the Holocaust. This book omits the grisly images one associates with this subject, preferring to trace 20 Jewish and non-Jewish youngsters as their stories mirror events from 1933 through 1945. The other source, The World Must Know by Michael Berenbaum (1993), is the definitive history of the Holocaust, narrated unsparingly with rare photographs and detailed text. (Elementary teachers should preview this book to choose appropriate excerpts.) This book conveys the rich Jewish culture that existed in Eastern Europe prior to World War II, ensuring that schoolchildren view Jews as living people, not merely as victims or survivors.
I walked my reading group through The World Must Know very carefully, beginning with family-album photographs of prewar Jewish families to emphasize their humanity: parents cuddling their children, various generations posing formally, sisters sitting in their best finery. Next, we discussed the allure of Nazism and how an entire nation of cultured and intelligent people embraced it. It is a mistake to use the words sick or crazy when describing the Nazi phenomenon: The German people were neither. The thinking that transforms prejudice into dehumanization and death is common, insidious, and alive today.
From there, I detailed the roundups, the harrowing boxcar rides, the arrivals at the death camps, and the lethal conclusions. I emphasized that the Nazis murdered 1.5 million children, a fact my students found unbelievable. "Why would they murder kids?" was the invariable question. This simple but frightening inquiry paved the way for a study of dehumanization: how the Nazis reduced their victims to the level of insect pests and thus eradicated them without remorse. When we arrived at the final pictures from the Auschwitz State Museum—rooms full of the hair, luggage, and shoes of the victims—I reminded the group of the family photos we had begun with. This was what those people had become because of anti-Semitism. The children were speechless.
Auschwitz and Anxiety
A few weeks later, I was invited to attend a convocation at the Auschwitz concentration camp in O´swieçim, Poland. I decided to draw the rest of the class into this Holocaust study. I brought up the subject at our morning meeting circle and let the children from the Number the Stars group lead the discussion. Most students in the small group voiced their gut reactions, mixed with curiosity as to what I would find at Auschwitz. We then studied the history and physical layout of the camp.
I showed just the ending of Schindler's List, deeming the entire movie too overpowering for their age. As they watched Schindler's emotional parting with the people he had saved, several of the kids were visibly crying as well. It did not take long to realize that my trip and the Holocaust in general were causing the class a great deal of anxiety. When I related that, as a Jew, I felt compelled to complete the final leg of my journey by train, one alarmed girl told her mother that her teacher was "being sent to Auschwitz!"
This incident illustrates that presenting the Holocaust to elementary-age children is a delicate balance of being honest with facts while not endangering their personal sense of safety. To paint the world as an evil, life-destroying environment will more likely force children to shut off entirely. Sixth graders in my school who were working on a three-month unit of Holocaust readings told their teacher that they were "too depressed" to continue.
With this in mind, I offered the class a project that was strictly voluntary. Would they like to write letters and communicate their thoughts to the children who perished at Auschwitz? If so, I would be willing to carry them with me and leave them at the Auschwitz State Museum. The guidelines were simple: Write what is in your heart. Write what you feel. Don't worry about editing, spelling, or grammar. One-third of the class responded.
<POEM><TITLE>For All the Children</TITLE><POEMLINE>For all the children,</POEMLINE><POEMLINE>who were thrown away,</POEMLINE><POEMLINE>who were never wanted.</POEMLINE><POEMLINE>For all the children</POEMLINE><POEMLINE>who could never talk.</POEMLINE><POEMLINE>For all the children</POEMLINE><POEMLINE>who could never learn.</POEMLINE><POEMLINE>For all the children</POEMLINE><POEMLINE>who could not go to school</POEMLINE><POEMLINE>or who didn't know</POEMLINE><POEMLINE>what school was.</POEMLINE><POEMLINE>For all the children,</POEMLINE><POEMLINE>who lie here at Auschwitz.</POEMLINE>—Katie Buchanan, age 11</POEM>
<POEM><TITLE>The Love of Your Family</TITLE><STANZA><POEMLINE>Picture this</POEMLINE><POEMLINE>Your family all together back home, your pets on your lap.</POEMLINE><POEMLINE>The soft sound of your mother's voice while she sings the baby to sleep.</POEMLINE></STANZA><STANZA><POEMLINE>Picture this</POEMLINE><POEMLINE>The drawing, book, or toy you used most and liked the best of all your books or toys or even drawings.</POEMLINE></STANZA><STANZA><POEMLINE>Picture this</POEMLINE><POEMLINE>Happy times and the love of your family.</POEMLINE></STANZA>—Erynn Marshall, age 10</POEM>
The full class was then given a topic for creative writing called "Holocaust and Hope." I prefer a "you-are-there" approach to history, so I asked the kids to imagine themselves in the camps. How would you survive? What would daily life be like? What would happen to you? This assignment gave them a catharsis of expression and a sense of control. To ease the process, I asked that all writers "survive" the experience.
Reality Strikes Home
A week before my departure to Poland, our county synagogue was desecrated with swastikas and "white power" slogans. The outpouring of support from the non-Jewish community was immediate and heartfelt. Parents sent me letters of support, and the school principal apologized to me in front of my class. Still, the incident shattered the illusion that hate was something that happened somewhere else. That week, I participated in a candlelight vigil at the temple, where 400 sympathizers gathered to light the menorah and wash away the stains from the synagogue walls. In class, our discussions focused on the need to speak out against hate crimes—whether they are committed 6,000 miles away or in our own neighborhood.
Five days later, I was within the grey hallways of the Auschwitz State Museum. In Block 5, a table contains toddlers' shoes and little threadbare sweaters, remnants of inhumanity's smallest victims. It was there that I laid the letters of my students. This action left me grief-stricken. Together with others participants at the gathering (including those who were children of Nazis), we linked arms around this table and said Kaddish, the Hebrew prayer for the dead.
Our museum guide was moved and offered to leave the letters on this table for others to experience. When I peered into this room on my last day there, they were being read by a cluster of German high-school students.
When Voices Carry
When I returned to school, I told my students everything that happened. The very next week, one of the children received a letter with a foreign stamp. I read this surprise note aloud to the class. J. Antoni from Tarragona, Spain had seen our letters at the Auschwitz Museum and wrote, "Only the people like you, with your young 10 years, can make a world much better for the future. It'd be a great honor for me to be your friend." As the kids crowded around to read the card, they were all ecstatic with pride and amazement. And then, by common agreement, the class and I decided to leave the Holocaust behind and move on. We had reached our limit.
As we settled back into the routine of reading, spelling, and math, I contemplated the lesson my class and I had learned by confronting the Holocaust. For them, it was the knowledge that their voices could carry across the world with power and conviction. For me, it was the reaffirmation that young hearts need nurturing as much as young minds.
