Week 7

This week we met with Jenna Fisher a representative and teacher of the local organization Facing History and Ourselves. This is a group that dedicates its time teaching teachers how to teach about the Holocaust in their classrooms. During this session, before explaining what exactly it is she does, Fisher passed around many resources for the class to look at. They seemed to cover people from all different ethnic backgrounds from all over the world. These resources, she explained, were some of the ones she uses to teach others about difficult times in history so that they can teach these events to their students.

Then we looked over some documents in pairs and discussed what we found shocking, familiar, and something we wished to learn more about. I was particularity shocked by the political art that was being expressed around the time of the great depression. People would paint pictures and write music that was very vulgar and harsh at times but was also very telling of the kind of environment these artists were growing up in. Some of the paintings reminded me of Picasso who was also very politically and socially motivated in his time. I also wanted to learn more about the economics during the great depression and during the time of Hitler's rise to power. Were these people so desperate for some economic stability that they would overlook the horrors and abuse Hitler was already putting in place as Ambassador? 

Week 6

This week we met with a representative of the German Consulate in Boston, Rolf Schuette. He discussed the various ways in which Germany's identity has changed since the Holocaust. One aspect of this is how people who were killed in the Holocaust are now remembered in Germany. For example, Schuette said that engraved cobble stones are now placed in front of the home of the late Jews who used to live there that listed the name of the homeowner so people walking by will always be reminded of who once lived there. 

Before class we were asked to watch another of Schuette's lectures given in Germany. That lecture and the one that my class attended were very much the same although some statisticts had changed. One of the statistics was that of the amound of Neo-Nazi activity in West Germany. This statistic had risen ever so slightly and I asked the speaker if he could tell us anything more about this kind of activity and whether or not it should be a concern. Unfortunately he did not have much information because his primary focus was very much on the survivors and the Jewish community instead of the perpetrators. He did however suggest that much of the anti-semitism from these groups were geared toward Turkish Immigrants. I was very interested to learn that he was asked to give an opening speech at Gay Pride and that he was openly gay himself which made me soften to his abrupt and evasive nature a bit more.  

Week 5

This week we met with Dr. Julie Oxenberg, a Boston therapist that has worked extensively on the process of healing between Germans and Jews. Dr. Oxenberg showed us a video of seminars she had hosted where people from different conflicting racial backgrounds came together and expressed their feelings. The unique aspect of these meetings was that participants were asked to identify their feelings as separate of themselves. And each aspect of their specific emotional feelings took on different attributes. I found this technique to have interesting affects during the video. At one point the participants got very emotional and were asked to target their feelings and express their emotions as a separate entity. I was rather surprised by how tense things got between certain people and their feelings for those they had never even known.

In the readings about second generation perpetrators I was also surprised to find how little emotion some of these children had about their parents being involved in the Holocaust. I find it interesting how as people become more distantly related to the Holocaust their views change. They become more compassionate about those lost whether they are related to survivors or perpetrators. The nieces and nephews of perpetrators nowadays seem to be more compassionate and sympathetic to the Jews than second generation survivors decades ago. Perhaps there is a renewed curiosity among the modern age in regards to the horrible historical event.

Week 4

This week in Learning from the Holocaust we continued learning about second generation survivors as well as second generation perpetrators. From the video we finished in class I learned that second generation survivors tend to distance themselves and seldom come to their parents about their own problems because they find them so much less important than the problems their parents faced. Second generation survivors are often curious about their parents past experiences and memories of the Jewish Holocaust but are often too afraid to ask questions because they don't want to cause their parents the pain of retelling those memories.

Often, these survivors are more creatively expressive (see propeller model) than their parents and tend to reconcile with their trauma by painting or drawing. First generations survivors, or really anyone who has suffered severe trauma, seek safety first. They wish to establish themselves and what they are living for before the telling of their story. Some first generation survivors of WWII (not necessarily even the Holocaust) would/do suffer from PTSD and even have abnormal fears that were created by the trauma they endured.

Our interviewee Nicole Backer believes that it may not have even occurred to the Germans to help or hide the Jews. Backer's grandparents were considered first generation survivors even though they were never imprisoned. This makes Backer a third generation survivor.

Finally, we watched a film on second generation Nazi perpetrators many of whose relatives were SS members. These people described their contempt of their likeness toward their now deceased Nazi family members, some even changed their last names in an attempt to distance themselves from the Holocaust while others wrote books about their own experiences and emotions toward their family.

For those second generation perpetrators that never changed their names, are they often recognized by the public? Or is the public's knowledge of the Holocaust becoming too limited for them to be recognized?

Week 3

This week we focused on survivors of the holocaust, particularly second generation survivors. From the readings and class discussion I leaned about the different effects the events of the Holocaust and its aftermath had on those who did make it out alive. Many survivors did not want to have children but those who did often had many as though to make up for all of those lives lost. These parents also tended to be overprotective and and quiet about their past.

I also learned more about what is known as the 1.5 generation survivors. These survivors were children during the Holocaust (up to 14 years old) and usually resided in camps or ghettos. These children could be spit up into groups depending on their level of development and ability to comprehend what was happening around them. This 1.5 generation is named because these children were said to be too young to have completely grasped the situations they were in and therefore should not be labeled as first generation survivors. Many of these children, specifically ranging from 11-14 years old were forced to grow up very quickly and make decisions they would never have been faced with otherwise.
I was curious about how exactly these choices and forced maturity affected them through the rest of their lives, did they expect their children to take on responsibility at a young age? Or did they shelter them from adulthood and keep their children's childhoods as carefree as possible?

Lastly, we watched a video of a woman who managed to survive five different camps with her sister. Since the war she has written many poems and stories about her experiences particularly about her father and their last goodbye as well as her rescue. I found her poems to be very vivid and heart-wrenching but it gave me much more insight into the turmoil and experiences some of the Jews went through while inside the camps.

Week 2

It never ceases to amaze me the strange and incredible opportunities life can bring you. I had the opportunity to talk with a Kindertransport child (now at the ripe old age of 89) and share in his experiences and struggles of living through and ultimately escaping the Holocaust. Throughout his life he has managed to keep a positive outlook and even brought us Lebkuchen cookies! After reading the article on children with a similar background I was very curious to know if Ed had been reunited with his family (aside from his brother.) He told me that although he was later reunited with members of his family, that he does have one particularly painful memory of getting off the Kindertransport in hopes of meeting his grandmother on the platform but she never showed up. I can only imagine the heartbreak and confusion he must have felt as he waited for her in this new and foreign country having just left his parents behind at the age of 13.