The Holocaust

We talked about the Holocaust very briefly a long time ago, but as the children are older now, we covered it in a lot more depth this time. One interesting video we watched was this documentary about a paper clip project students did while studying the Holocaust. Surprisingly moving!

Of course the Holocaust is a difficult subject. I read this book called The Liberators that was quite harrowing. I would only recommend it for high schoolers, I think, and it was hard even for me, but it also felt like a valuable perspective to get firsthand.

This book talks about another little-known aspect of the Holocaust: the Lebensborn program.

To counter all the sadness inherent in these Holocaust stories, we found it uplifting to read about people who helped the Jews and others, and kept goodness alive in that dark time. One of the best books we read was a longer one, but well worth the time—it was called Darkness over Denmark and it was FULL of amazing stories of bravery and sacrifice. I couldn't help but feel so proud of Denmark, land of my ancestors—even though most of my ancestors had immigrated here by that point, probably. :)

There are lots of other good books about the Resistance to Hitler, and people who helped his victims. Many of them are shown here in our book list.

The Sound of Music

Here we are at the Culmination of our week of study, at The Sound of Music play (musical?).

It was fun seeing a play with the kids (just the boys; we left the girls home with a babysitter)---we haven't done that often before, but with them being so well-prepped for this one, we all really enjoyed it.  Also, Malachi kept being unwillingly folded up in his chair (he just wasn't heavy enough to hold it down, poor boy) which provided us with much amusement.

Inflation and Propaganda

After learning about hyper-inflation in the Weimar Republic (which is one of those slippery concepts for me---inflation, I mean---that I feel like I understand but then I get re-confused about it whenever it comes up), we did an exercise to help make it more understandable. This helped ME. I handed out money as "wages" to each child, and had a "store" full of little treats (toasted almonds, pieces of IKEA chocolate, etc.) which they could buy with their money. Prices were a bit high, so after a while I (the government) printed MORE money so everyone would have enough to buy what they wanted. But the stores, needing to pay their employees and suppliers more to keep up with the inflation, had to raise their prices. So I printed more money, and so on. We soon saw how everyone was getting paid thousands of dollars at a time, and then having to spend that thousand dollars on a single almond. To help drive the point home, I had a few historical pictures of kids using stacks of worthless German money to build towers with, and people burning banknotes in their stove since it was more cost-effective than buying fuel. The kids thought this was SO funny! They were pretty put out about how the inflation made all their play-money worthless, though. All day, they kept asking me, "Can I buy another piece of chocolate? I'll give you $5000 for it!"---to which I would reply, "Sorry, the price has gone up to $1,000,000 by now."

Abe's propaganda, showing "The Boiled Hair Cutter" (NEVER BUY) and the horrible fates that await you if you do.

We had talked briefly about propaganda in Sam's political portrait lesson, but in this unit we talked more about Nazi propaganda and showed a bunch of examples (which are horribly amazing, by the way). The Anti-Jewish stuff is the worst, but the idealized Aryan Families are pretty interesting too. The kids liked looking at these examples and proclaiming that they would never be fooled by such things! Too bad most evil messages are more subtle now . . . :) We watched some commercials on YouTube, both older and more modern, to discuss that very point.

Then, we did an activity where we had to pick an object out of a bag and draw a propaganda picture about it, trying to influence the viewer's opinion one way or another. (My own stellar contribution, a diatribe against Sam's yellow rubber dishwashing gloves---"STOP THE FLOP!"---is unfortunately not pictured.) Then we had to give a presentation about our pictures.

Nobody really knows what Daisy drew, or what she was talking about, but she gives a great presentation

Malachi's object was a turkey baster. He tried to convince us to buy it because it makes you magic and turns into a rocket that takes you to the moon. And several other astounding things.

Sebby, predictably, took the sinister direction, like Abe did: this purple teacup attacks you with electricity, knives and guns. "Never, ever buy!" his poster proclaimed. (Subtlety is not a 6-year-old's, or a 9-year-old's, strong point, I suppose.)

Holocaust Unit

We had tickets to "The Sound of Music" at the Hale Center Theater (a special matinee for ages 3 and up), and I was trying to think of what we could study that would help the kids understand that story more. I checked out a few books about "the real story" of The Sound of Music (I put that in quotation marks because it's always subjective, right?---I read books by both Maria and by one of the Von Trapp children, and they each had their own distinct interpretations of what "the real story" was) to see if anything came to me.

What I decided was that we should do a unit on the Holocaust, with a little Austrian history thrown in. Even though the play doesn't have a huge focus on the War, it's a good springboard to the subject---and it certainly becomes more meaningful when you realize what is at stake for the Von Trapp family. I thought it was interesting that, in my reading, some people seemed to dismiss The Sound of Music as soon as they learned it was historically inaccurate, or "Hollywoodized" or whatever. For me, knowing the variations between movie and real life (the family really escaped by train, for example, instead of over the mountains) enhanced it and made it even more interesting to me. And I can't dismiss the appeal of the story, accurate or not---it's an accessible, engaging jumping-off point for further discussions about Hitler, the Anschluss, etc.

As I was planning out the books and activities, I kept thinking, "This is a weird subject to bring up with little kids. Will they be too scared or disturbed? Or worse, will they be bored and fail to realize the significance of this topic?" It seemed too insensitive to be looking for "activities" related to the Holocaust---yet I did want to make it interesting for the kids! So I spent a lot of time worrying about how it would all come together.

As it turned out, the kids seemed fascinated with the history of World War II, and were really interested in the books we read even when they were slightly above their level. (I often just tell about/summarize the longer parts for them.) In fact, all three of the boys asked me (when I said, "There's a lot more to study about World War II---we didn't even scratch the surface of it") "Please, can we do another World War II unit soon?" Hopefully it wasn't just their morbid curiosity (they did love looking at the photos of WWII destruction---bombed cities, etc---and I kept trying to say, "But remember, these were people's HOMES!") and they got at least a small sense of the weightiness of war.

This was, of course, a very brief and incomplete introduction to the Holocaust. I only showed a few pictures of the Concentration Camps, for obvious reasons, although those I did show were examined minutely by the boys. There were a few really good children's books I found, in addition to the more historical/older audience books we read from. I got emotional several times during this unit, and especially while reading these books, but I think it gave the lessons a little weight they might not have otherwise had (Abe kept peering curiously up at my face, trying to analyze why my voice kept quavering).

My favorite of the books was this one:

It's a great story; sad but thought-provoking, and well-told in the actual words of a German Jewish girl. There are pictures of her, now an old lady, in the back of the book, and it gives a nice sense of closure.

We loved this one too:

This one is a legend (no documentation of it actually happening) but it's a beautiful story, and was a good way to introduce the idea of resistance.What should good people do when confronted with evil? I liked the discussions we had, about how the answers to that question aren't simple, and how good people found different good ways to resist the Nazis.

This story (sorry, no picture) was a good one too, from a cat's perspective. The little kids especially liked it.