The Ghetto Fighters’ House – Center for Humanistic Education hosted an International Conference with the support of the EZV foundation. The conference “Holocaust Education for Democratic Values” was designed for educators in all frameworks and fields, and sought to elucidate the theoretical and pedagogical link between educating about the Holocaust as an historical, formative event and inculcating democratic values in individuals and groups.

http://tinyurl.com/a2gcs5u

The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking http://tinyurl.com/bxx76r8
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

THIRTEEN years ago, researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum began the grim task of documenting all the ghettos, slave labor sites, concentration camps and killing factories that the Nazis set up throughout Europe.

What they have found so far has shocked even scholars steeped in the history of the Holocaust.

The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler’s reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945.

The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum in late January at the German Historical Institute in Washington.

“The numbers are so much higher than what we originally thought,” Hartmut Berghoff, director of the institute, said in an interview after learning of the new data.

“We knew before how horrible life in the camps and ghettos was,” he said, “but the numbers are unbelievable.”

The documented camps include not only “killing centers” but also thousands of forced labor camps, where prisoners manufactured war supplies; prisoner-of-war camps; sites euphemistically named “care” centers, where pregnant women were forced to have abortions or their babies were killed after birth; and brothels, where women were coerced into having sex with German military personnel.

Auschwitz and a handful of other concentration camps have come to symbolize the Nazi killing machine in the public consciousness. Likewise, the Nazi system for imprisoning Jewish families in hometown ghettos has become associated with a single site — the Warsaw Ghetto, famous for the 1943 uprising. But these sites, infamous though they are, represent only a minuscule fraction of the entire German network, the new research makes painfully clear.

The maps the researchers have created to identify the camps and ghettos turn wide sections of wartime Europe into black clusters of death, torture and slavery — centered in Germany and Poland, but reaching in all directions.

The lead editors on the project, Geoffrey Megargee and Martin Dean, estimate that 15 million to 20 million people died or were imprisoned in the sites that they have identified as part of a multivolume encyclopedia. (The Holocaust museum has published the first two, with five more planned by 2025.)

The existence of many individual camps and ghettos was previously known only on a fragmented, region-by-region basis. But the researchers, using data from some 400 contributors, have been documenting the entire scale for the first time, studying where they were located, how they were run, and what their purpose was.

The brutal experience of Henry Greenbaum, an 84-year-old Holocaust survivor who lives outside Washington, typifies the wide range of Nazi sites.

When Mr. Greenbaum, a volunteer at the Holocaust museum, tells visitors today about his wartime odyssey, listeners inevitably focus on his confinement of months at Auschwitz, the most notorious of all the camps.

But the images of the other camps where the Nazis imprisoned him are ingrained in his memory as deeply as the concentration camp number — A188991 — tattooed on his left forearm.

In an interview, he ticked off the locations in rapid fire, the details still vivid.

First came the Starachowice ghetto in his hometown in Poland, where the Germans herded his family and other local Jews in 1940, when he was just 12.

Next came a slave labor camp with six-foot-high fences outside the town, where he and a sister were moved while the rest of the family was sent to die at Treblinka. After his regular work shift at a factory, the Germans would force him and other prisoners to dig trenches that were used for dumping the bodies of victims. He was sent to Auschwitz, then removed to work at a chemical manufacturing plant in Poland known as Buna Monowitz, where he and some 50 other prisoners who had been held at the main camp at Auschwitz were taken to manufacture rubber and synthetic oil. And last was another slave labor camp at Flossenbürg, near the Czech border, where food was so scarce that the weight on his 5-foot-8-inch frame fell away to less than 100 pounds.

By the age of 17, Mr. Greenbaum had been enslaved in five camps in five years, and was on his way to a sixth, when American soldiers freed him in 1945. “Nobody even knows about these places,” Mr. Greenbaum said. “Everything should be documented. That’s very important. We try to tell the youngsters so that they know, and they’ll remember.”

The research could have legal implications as well by helping a small number of survivors document their continuing claims over unpaid insurance policies, looted property, seized land and other financial matters.

“HOW many claims have been rejected because the victims were in a camp that we didn’t even know about?” asked Sam Dubbin, a Florida lawyer who represents a group of survivors who are seeking to bring claims against European insurance companies.

Dr. Megargee, the lead researcher, said the project was changing the understanding among Holocaust scholars of how the camps and ghettos evolved.

As early as 1933, at the start of Hitler’s reign, the Third Reich established about 110 camps specifically designed to imprison some 10,000 political opponents and others, the researchers found. As Germany invaded and began occupying European neighbors, the use of camps and ghettos was expanded to confine and sometimes kill not only Jews but also homosexuals, Gypsies, Poles, Russians and many other ethnic groups in Eastern Europe. The camps and ghettos varied enormously in their mission, organization and size, depending on the Nazis’ needs, the researchers have found.

The biggest site identified is the infamous Warsaw Ghetto, which held about 500,000 people at its height. But as few as a dozen prisoners worked at one of the smallest camps, the München-Schwabing site in Germany. Small groups of prisoners were sent there from the Dachau concentration camp under armed guard. They were reportedly whipped and ordered to do manual labor at the home of a fervent Nazi patron known as “Sister Pia,” cleaning her house, tending her garden and even building children’s toys for her.

When the research began in 2000, Dr. Megargee said he expected to find perhaps 7,000 Nazi camps and ghettos, based on postwar estimates. But the numbers kept climbing — first to 11,500, then 20,000, then 30,000, and now 42,500.

The numbers astound: 30,000 slave labor camps; 1,150 Jewish ghettos; 980 concentration camps; 1,000 prisoner-of-war camps; 500 brothels filled with sex slaves; and thousands of other camps used for euthanizing the elderly and infirm, performing forced abortions, “Germanizing” prisoners or transporting victims to killing centers.

In Berlin alone, researchers have documented some 3,000 camps and so-called Jew houses, while Hamburg held 1,300 sites.

Dr. Dean, a co-researcher, said the findings left no doubt in his mind that many German citizens, despite the frequent claims of ignorance after the war, must have known about the widespread existence of the Nazi camps at the time.

“You literally could not go anywhere in Germany without running into forced labor camps, P.O.W. camps, concentration camps,” he said. “They were everywhere.”

Eric Lichtblau is a reporter for The New York Times in Washington and a visiting fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

One of his early endeavors was a recent trip to the United States and the DC Holocaust Museum. During his visit he met with the Director of the American Friends of the Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum and expressed his support for efforts for the Museum.

Pines-Paz has joined the Museum during the 70th Anniversary year since the Uprising and will provide strong leadership as we move into the next 70 years.

The US Embassy in Tel Aviv chose to honor one of the many brave people associated with the Ghetto Fighters’ House on Holocaust Remembrance Day. In honor of the UN-mandated International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, we celebrate two survivors who endured, triumphed, and now bear witness: Uri Chanoch, aged 13 when his childhood ended – seehttp://goo.gl/zoECL (Credit Yad Vashem) and Havka Folman-Raban, aged 17 when she joined the Warsaw Ghetto resistance – see http://goo.gl/PzfL8(Credit Ghetto Fighters Museum).

Article in the Jerusalem Post on the International Conference “Holocaust Education for Democratic Vaules
Article in the Jerusalem Post on the conference. In the article Dr. Anat Livne, Director of the Ghetto Fighters’ House, talks about the importance of the conference: “The goal of this conference is to shed some light on the education system in dealing with on of the most important aspect of our complex society.

Holocaust Museums in Israel Evolve
Museum critic for the New York Times, Edward Rothstein, recently visited three major Holocaust museums in Israel.
Read more >>
With the revitalization of the American Friends Group we look forward to hosting in person and on-line events in the near future. Stay tuned to our facebook page and be sure to sign up for updates here.

“If there were a school for study of the human spirit, the Uprising would be its main course.” - Antek Zuckerman, Partisan fighter/founder of the Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum and Kibbutz

Background

Seventy years have passed since the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a revolt that in world history symbolizes resistance to evil forces, not only in desperate battle for survival, but also as an affirmation of the power of the human spirit.

The Study of the Human Spirit

The essence of the Ghetto Fighters’ House – consisting of a museum, a rare archive, and an educational center – is the study of the human spirit encouraging “Active Choice,” and the responsibility of each person to stand up to hatred and fight oppression based on religion, race, or ethnicity.

This House was built upon acts of kindness in the midst of chaos.

This House was built on demonstrations of faith when hope seemed lost.

This House was built on courage and dignity in the face of inevitable horrors.

This House was built on questions for which we continue to struggle for answers.

Can we teach humanism? Can the Uprising teach future generations that they are not powerless against tyranny? Can we dedicate a school to the study of democratic humanism, teaching that the human spirit can overcome, unite, survive and ultimately flourish?

Ghetto Fighters’ Museum created this House of Learning where the human spirit and the responsibility for its survival is an educational centerpiece. Ghetto Fighters’ Museum’s efforts to build a program for study and discourse about the meaning of the Holocaust, and the search for these answers, will continue for many years to come – resonating and transforming future generations. Partners are needed to build and strengthen this institution and create a place of study and development for proactive leaders of humanistic values.

Project Description: “Live in the name of the Uprising”

“We had [three] additional weapons: a great ideal, great willingness, great devotion. We viewed our entire lives as one great preparation for the Uprising; we viewed the uprising as its natural extension. We saw ourselves as people allowed to walk the earth…only if we live in the name of the Uprising.” - Antek Zuckerman

How do we convey these values to coming generations? How do we encourage commitment to these values in an age in which attention spans are short, gratification is immediate, and our 21^st century culture has created great alienation and apathy?

Ghetto Fighters’ Museum’s “70 Years from the Uprising” program will use interactive technology and involve teachers, students and organizations worldwide in the program. Our “70 Years” program will bring life to archaic texts and artifacts to build a new model of Museum activity, one that goes beyond the exhibitions focused on the study of the Uprising, its heroes and leaders. The program will drive discussion and study that will grapple with the meaning of the Uprising in current times.

To address the issues and dilemmas in an impactful way, program leaders will create an activity for small groups that resembles a game, using the technology of smart, portable computer devices (tablets, Smart Phones, etc.) to access the rich collection of sources available in the Museum. The platform will be a special application for the Ghetto Fighters’ Museum, but we are convinced it will be adopted by other teaching museums. New technologies will shatter old patterns of learning, creating a “virtual Ghetto Fighters’ Museum” that will promote a discourse about morality and humanistic ideals worldwide.

In short, the “70 Years from the Uprising” program will use the most current technology to reach the heads and hearts of the new generation of educators and students who will “live in the name of the Uprising.”

Goals of the activity: The Game

• Turning young visitors into investigators on the trail of a person and/or issue, thereby creating their own the personal story of the Ghetto Fighters.
• Learning through activity/action, taking full advantage of the curiosity and creativity of young people.
• Grappling intellectually with the difficulties and complexities faced by the Ghetto Fighters.
• Understanding the choices of the Uprising leaders, and thereby the circumstances, considerations and the costs.
• Understanding the moral conflicts that confronted the fighters of the Uprising.
• Identifying similar forces that challenge humanism in today’s world.
• Creating their personal dialogue and project for change.
• Facebook platform for youth participants to dialogue with one another.

“The central event was not the Uprising in Warsaw or in the other ghettos. The central event…transpired in the heart of the people.” - Abba Kovner

The goal of the activity is to strengthen the connection between the visitor and the Ghetto Fighters’ experience, fostering learning that creates understanding and identification with Ghetto Fighters’ lives and the life and death dilemmas they faced. This learning promises to shake young people from their “comfort zones” and open their eyes to wonder of the human spirit and the meaning of a life based upon moral and humanistic values. These lessons are relevant for our own lives and time.

The full program of “70 Years to the Uprising”

The interactive game briefly described above is not the entire program of “70 Years from the Uprising,” but one of many innovative activities intended to arouse emotions in this special year and lay the groundwork for a renewed discussion in Israeli society about the Uprising and its meanings. We have created a full program composed of the following elements:

1. Development of an interactive game for small groups of students in grades 9-12 based on a challenge/riddle about Uprising Museum exhibitions.
2. Development of an in[gs1] -depth research activity for university students, student teachers, teachers, soldiers, and police officers. The activity presents a unique way to resolve moral dilemmas by profound engagement with the issues of the Uprising.
3. Preparation of a curriculum and creation of a teaching kit for middle schools and high schools to convey moral issues that arise in the story of the Uprising. The four lessons of this teaching kit will give a comprehensive picture of the Uprising: (1) the pioneering youth movements upon the outbreak of World War II; (2) educational and public activities carried out by the youth movements in the ghettos; (3) exemplary young leaders in the ghetto undergrounds; and (4) the uprising in the ghettoes and Jewish self-defense – their meaning and repercussions.
4. Two teacher training courses will be developed on the meaning of the Uprising. One will be given in the Museum and the other online. Each course is 56 hours.
5. Ten study evenings spaced throughout the year on ten subjects related to the Uprising and its meaning. These will be open to educators and some will be developed jointly with other Holocaust institutes.
6. A conference for leaders of educational youth movements in Israel. This will include lectures and discussion circles in which leaders in Israeli society will participate.
7. Construction of a rotating exhibition to present the testimonies of fighters in the various ghetto undergrounds.

Integrating the project into the goals and activities of Ghetto Fighters’ House

The “70 Years from the Uprising” program will spearhead an effort to renew the Museum and its public image. The program will conduct a new discourse about the Holocaust, one that will use the story of the Uprising to instill values of responsibility and social solidarity among the descendants of Holocaust victims. The success of this project will significantly advance the work of the Museum and bring its activities broad public attention.

Contribution of the project to preserving the memory of the Holocaust among the younger generation

It will reach out to young people through new technology to foster leadership among them. The new education curricula and frequent conferences on the legacy of the Uprising will embed the memory of the Holocaust in unconventional ways, providing a familiar approach for youth who now integrate technology in both their educational and social activities.

Project partners

The Claims Conference and the Ghetto Fighters’ Kibbutz.

Senior staff for the project and their previous experience

Ron Cohen, Director, Educational Division and Educational Development – a history teacher by training, and a senior docent at the Museum for some 15 years.

Tzipi Tal, Director, Events Staff – years of experience as Director of the Education and Guide Center of the Museum.

Evelyn Akherman, Director, Museum Division – a history teacher by training, senior docent, and previous director of the Education and Guide Center.

We view the entire project of “70 Years from the Uprising” as a way to reach more diverse audiences through an exciting and friendly encounter with the Museum. The state-of-the-art technology together with the fascinating programs that are meaningful and relevant to our own lives will lead to productive cooperation with the school system, the army, and youth movements, as well as the general adult public for whom the story of the Uprising and the courage shown during the Holocaust is engraved in their souls.

By DANIELLE ZIRI

10/10/2012 21:07

“Holocaust Education for Democratic Values” forum addresses how to link Holocaust education and democratic education.

 ”Remembering the Holocaust imposes on us a greater than ever before duty for moral awareness, precisely because we know of the potential existence of radical evil in every human society,” said Raya Kalisman, director of the Center for Humanistic Education, quoting historian Saul Friedlander as she opened the three-day international conference on Holocaust Education at the Ghetto Fighters Museum on Tuesday morning. She explained the phrase effectively sums up the mission of the Center for Humanistic Education, which has been functioning within the museum for 18 years.

The forum, entitled “Holocaust Education for Democratic Values” and initiated by the Center for Humanistic Education, aims at opening a discussion on how to teach the topic to students but also on the links between Holocaust education and democratic education. The conference targets educators of all grades and at guiding them when teaching the subject in class.

Some of the items brought up at the event included the use of analogies in teaching the Holocaust; the connection between educating about it and educating about democracy; visual arts using Holocaust imagery and more. Participants were Israeli scholars and education professionals as well as academics from various foreign countries.

“Democracy is what can protects us from such tragedies,” emphasized Kalisman. “Learning about it awakens us to the other’s needs. Ignoring the other’s suffering is in fact the greatest danger to society.”

“It will always be important to speak about the Holocaust,” said Paul Salmons, head of the Holocaust Education Development program at the University of London’s Institute of Education. “The issues that the Holocaust raises are very present and relevant in the lives of young people in the United Kingdom,” he added.

Salmons, who spoke at the conference on Tuesday morning, further explained the Holocaust Education Development program aims at guiding teachers across the UK on the topic.

Dr Martin Salm, chairman of the Remembrance, Responsibility and Future foundation in Berlin, which funded the conference, said: “We believe it’s necessary that the young generation maintains awareness about the Holocaust, but we also believe that it’s got to be taught in a way that something that happened 60-70 years ago still touches them.”

“It’s our mandate at the foundation to transmit lessons learned from that particular history to the youngsters,” Salm added.

Dr. Anat Livne, director of The Ghetto Fighters House Museum said in a statement: “The goal of this conference is to shed some light on the education system in dealing with on of the most important aspect of our complex society.” We believe that understanding the connection between the study of the Holocaust and education for democracy can strengthen values that contribute to the existence of a good and just society.