Echoes and Reflections: Lesson 1 - Studying the Holocaust
Part 1: Human Catastrophes
Directions: Please type your answers the following questions in this document.
At the end you will turn it into me in Google Classroom.
1) Write a definition for the word “Catastrophe”. A catastrophe is a...
2) What factors do you believe make an event a catastrophe?
3) Write down some examples of both natural and human catastrophes.
Example: Natural- Hurricane Katrina; Human- Holocaust
With a partner, answer these questions (you each need to type them into
your own document).
1) Who is likely to study human catastrophes and why?
2) What kinds of questions do you think people studying human
catastrophes would want to answer?
3) How might the questions be different from questions asked about
natural catastrophes?
Type notes here on the Holocaust from Ms. Longinotti’s lesson:
● The Holocaust (Shoah is the Jewish term) refers to the murder of
approximately 6 million Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators during
WWII
● From 1933-1945, Nazis persecuted the Jews by decreasing, and
eventually eliminating their rights, under German Laws, including
removing their citizenship.
● In 1939 (outbreak of WWII starting with the Germany’s attack on the
Soviet Union), Nazis begin the mass murder of the Jewish people
● Other groups were also targeted for death, although not mass
extermination
● Kristallnacht Pogrom (Night of Broken Glass)- 1st event openly
targeting Jewish people
Echoes and Reflections: Lesson 1 - Studying the Holocaust
Holocaust Definitions:
Definitions 1: (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC, USA)
The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution
and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.
"Holocaust" is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire." The Nazis, who came
to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior"
and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were an alien threat to the so-called German
racial community.
During the era of the Holocaust, German authorities also targeted other groups
because of their perceived "racial inferiority": Roma (Gypsies), the disabled, and some
of the Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians, and others). Other groups were persecuted on
political, ideological, and behavioral grounds, among them Communists, Socialists,
Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals.
Definitions 2: (Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, Israel)
The Holocaust was unprecedented genocide, total and systematic, perpetrated
by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, with the aim of annihilating the Jewish people.
The primary motivation was the Nazis’ antisemitic racist ideology. Between 1933 and
1941, Nazi Germany pursued a policy that dispossessed the Jews of their rights and
their property, followed by the branding and concentration of the Jewish population.
This policy gained broad support in Germany and much of occupied Europe. In 1941,
following the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Nazis and their collaborators launched
the systematic mass murder of the Jews. By 1945, nearly six million Jews had been
murdered.
Definitions 3: (Imperial War Museum, London, UK*)
‘The Holocaust’ is the term used to describe the systematic and wholesale
slaughter of the Jews of Europe by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Second
World War. Two-thirds of European Jewry perished between 1939 and 1945.
On coming to power in 1933, the Nazis began to actively persecute the Jews of
Germany with the introduction of discriminatory legislation which was accompanied by
vicious antisemitic propaganda. With the outbreak of the Second World War, the
process escalated. Nazi conquests meant that every Jew in occupied Europe was
under the threat of death.
Other groups besides the Jews fell victim to Nazi racial policies. Poles, Slavs,
Soviet prisoners of war, Roma and Sinti (gypsies), were all murdered in vast numbers.
And Hitler’s political opponents, communists and trade unionists, Jehovah’s Witnesses
and homosexuals were also brutally done to death in Nazi concentration camps.
Echoes and Reflections: Lesson 1 - Studying the Holocaust
With your partner, compare and contrast the definitions above. What might be
the reasons for why they aren’t exactly the same?
Type in the definition of genocide created by the United Nations
In 1948, the United Nations defined genocide as any of the following acts
committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or
religious group, including
● killing members of the group
● causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
● deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its
physical destruction in whole or in part
● imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
● forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
KWL: Please fill out the KWL Chart about what you know about the Holocaust
already. Include your sources of information on your “What I know” list when
possible.
What I Know (list of
What I Want to Know
What I learned (list of
things you knew about the
Holocaust already)
(list of things you’d like to
learn about during this unit)
new things you learned
during this lesson)
Example: Some Jews went
into hiding (source: Anne
Frank: Diary of a Young Girl)
Echoes and Reflections: Lesson 1 - Studying the Holocaust
Part 2: Primary and Secondary source Material
Directions: We will be studying several documents related to the same event in
order to compare and contrast source material. Please type your answers the
following questions in this document. At the end you will turn it into me in
Google Classroom.
Kristallnacht Pogrom notes:
Type notes here on Ms. Longinotti’s lecture about Kristallnacht Pogrom:
● From the time the Nazis came to power in 1933, they began isolating Jews in
Germany by passing laws to remove their rights as German citizens
● In the first half of 1938, additional laws were passed in Germany restricting
Jewish economic activities and occupational opportunities
● In July 1938, a law was passed requiring German Jews to carry ID cards
● Later in 1938, 17,000 Jews of Polish citizenship were arrested and relocated
across the Polish border. The Polish government refused to admit them so they
were interned in “relocation camps” on the Polish Frontier
● Among the deportees, was a man named Zindel Grynszpan who had moved to
Germany in 1911 to open a store. He and his family were arrested on October
27 by German police and forced to move over the Polish border. Their home and
possessions were confiscated.
● 17 year-old Herschel Grynszpan (Zindel’s son) was living in Paris, France when
he heard the news of the deportation. He went to the German Embassy in Paris
on Nov. 7 intending to assassinate the German Ambassador.
● The Ambassador wasn’t there, so he shot a diplomat named Ernst vom Rath
instead.
● Rath was critically wounded and dies on Nov. 9
● Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Chief of Propaganda, uses the attack to launch
Kristallnacht Pogrom by claiming the attack was a direct attack against the Reich
by the Jews.
● Kristallnacht mean “Night of the Broken Glass”
● Kristallnacht starts the evening of Nov. 9-Nov. 10 and happens in Germany,
Austria, and areas of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia
● By the end of Kristallnacht: Almost 100 Jews were killed and hundreds more
were injured; about 7,000 Jewish businesses and homes were damaged and
looted; 1,400 synagogues were burned; cemeteries and schools were
vandalized; and 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps
Echoes and Reflections: Lesson 1 - Studying the Holocaust
Document Notes:
Discuss the primary source document in your group and type notes on your
discussion below.
1) Heydrich’s Instructions, November 1938
2) Letter by Margarete Drexler to the Gestapo
3) Description of the Riot in Dinslaken
4) Magdeburg, Germany, November 10, 1938
5) Siegen, Germany, November 10, 1938
6) History textbook
After looking at all 6 sources, please answer the following questions
about the above documents.
1. Which of these materials are primary source documents? Which are
secondary sources?
2. What were some of the things your group noticed while studying the
two photographs? What questions, if any, did the photographs raise for
your group?
3. How is studying the photographs different from studying the other types
of material?
4. What did you learn about the Kristalnacht Pogrom by reading
Heydrich’s instructions?
5. What argument does Margarete Drexler us in her letter to the Gestapo
to try to get her money returned? Why is this information important to
know?
6. How does the Description of the Riot in Dinslaken make the story of the
Kristallnacht Pogrom a “human story”?
7. What, if anything, did you learn from any of the primary sources?
Visual History: information from survivor and witness testimony
After watching the Kurt Messerschmidt testimony, please type in your answers
the following questions.
1. How do you feel after listening to Kurt Messerschmidt talk about his experience?
Echoes and Reflections: Lesson 1 - Studying the Holocaust
2. What is meant by the term “testimony”?
3. What role, if any, does memory play when giving testimony?
4. What, if anything, did you learn about the Kristallnacht Pogrom from Kurt’s
testimony that you didn’t learn from any of the other materials studied?
5. How does Kurt’s testimony reinforce what you learned from other sources?
6. What are the benefits and challenges of using visual history testimony?
7. What role does the testimony collected by the shoah Foundation play in the study of
the Holocaust? How is this different from the role and responsibility of historians?
How is each important?
After finishing this lesson, please go back to your KWL chart. Chose
a different color for your font this time, and add in any other info to
the chart to update it with your learning.
Reflect and Respond
Reflect and respond to the topics below based on the material covered in the
lesson. Type your answers below.
1. What thoughts and feelings come to mind when you hear reference to "the Holocaust"?
What do you know about this event and how have you learned your information? Discuss
your thoughts on the importance of studying the Holocaust.
2. In his testimony, Kurt Messerschmidt talks about helping the cigar shop owner pick up
pieces of glass from the street. He says that he was sure some of the people disapproved
of what was happening that night, but their disapproval was only silence. Why do you think
that people are often unwilling to speak out when they see something wrong happening?
What are the dangers of being silent in the face of injustice?
3. Kurt Messerschmidt’s testimony about his experience during the Kristallnacht Pogrom is
filled with rich detail and sensory images, and yet is very compact. Describe a particularly
important experience from your life, crafting the memory in a narrative with a clear
beginning, middle, and end, vivid details, and a sense of place.