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?