Holocaust study is a sensitive subject

August 29, 2007 9:22 PM

A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust - an overview of the people and events of the Holocaust through photographs, documents, art, music, and literature. It is designed to prepare K-12 teachers to approach this sensitive topic. The content is presented from three perspectives: Timeline, People, and The Arts. Produced by the University of South Florida.
posted by netbros (6 comments total)

On a somewhat related note, I highly recommend the documentary film Paper Clips.
posted by Poolio at 9:25 PM on August 29, 2007

I'm almost afraid to go to bed, as I don't want to miss the impending shitstorm that get started by some Holocaust denier.
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:38 PM on August 29, 2007

"We used to have a canary. When we learned of the law prohibiting Jews to keep pets, my husband simply could not part with the bird. (...) Maybe someone informed on him, because one day my husband was called in for questionning by the Gestapo (the political police). (...) After many weeks of agony I received a note from the police that, for the fee of 3 Reichsmark, I should pick up my husband's urn." Report 1943

.
posted by Avenger at 9:40 PM on August 29, 2007

Is there one in particular you have in mind, Pope Guilty?
posted by Poolio at 9:41 PM on August 29, 2007

This is just sick. I'm not one for metaphysical stuff, but having been to Dachau there's a "feeling" that things were just wrong.

Stepping foot on to...I'm not even sure what to say. It makes me sick. Ugh.
posted by ryoshu at 12:43 AM on August 30, 2007

Its unfortunate that we as Americans are as disconnected from the Holocaust as we are. For many of my generation at least, this was something that happened to older people a long time ago, far far away. I remember meeting a woman with a number tatooed on her arm back in grade school in the early 80s and I've seen a million horrible images and had a good grasp of it as far as an abstract thing.

That being said, I hadn't really had a "Holocaust moment" where it all just sort of sank in at once until I visited the Anne Frank house this past spring. The enormity of it was encapsulated by this one group of people, this one little girl who had the normal joy of an adolescent wrapped into this viciously ugly package. I must have cried like fifteen different times, from hearing the bells of Westkerk, hearing the giggles of a girl in line with us knowing that but for history and destiny she could have been the girl locked in the attic, peering out through the display window at the crazy guy in the boat and the semblance of an outside world separated by the thickness of a pane of glass and yet a million worlds away. Even hearing German spoken in line...

Suddenly these weren't figures in a book, they were people with lives destroyed in a very short period of time and they were just grains of sand on the beach of the Holocaust...

More Americans should have moments like this.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 1:15 PM on August 30, 2007