Last Word.

I felt that the Night event went swell. I got the chance to go and listen to talks about resistance and targets of genocide. The talk I went to on resistance was very interesting. I mainly chose to go to that talk because I just wanted to learn more about resistance and see what the kids running it had to say. Then the talk I went to on Targets of Genocide was cool too! It was really interesting to hear about different groups that faced mass-genocide during the holocaust along with the Jews.

From my perspective, the event seemed to go great! I haven't heard a single complaint about it. The discussions seemed to turn out very well and everyone seems happy with the end result of their work!

Music in the Holocaust

One of the discussion groups that I attended at the event was the subject of music composed during the Holocaust, led by Dahae and Hannah from first period. At the second discussion, there were about seven people in the audience.

The audience didn't know much about Holocaust music when the presentation began. We first learned about how Jews in concentration camps got the chance to compose music: The ideal concentration camp, the fortress of Terezin. The world was told that Hitler had set aside a town for Jews in order to be protected from the dangers of war. This town, built in the city-fortress of Terezin, was the only camp opened to the Red Cross during the war. Prisoners were shipped there, and it produced several propoganda films during the war showing prisoners splashing in a nearby lake, apparently having fun. When the Red Cross came to visit, the storefronts were filled with bread and candies and other goods. The Red Cross concluded that the Nazis were treating the Jews of Terazine well, and were therefore treating the Jews of Austerwitz and Birknau and the other camps just as well.

In fact, the prisoners of Terazine were shipped off to be gassed after they were no longer needed. Hans Krasa and Victor Ullmann, the composers of the two music pieces that we listened to, were both murdered at the other death camps.

At the camps, to further the illusion that it was a place where prisoners were treated well, Jews were permitted and ordered to compose music. There were enough musicians for two full orchestras in Terezin. At the beginning of the war, musical instruments were not allowed in camps, so musicians would break down their instruments into component parts and hide those in their clothing. Later in the war, the ban on instruments was relaxed.

When we had learned the background of the composition of the music, we turned down the lights and listened to a piece by Hans Krasa. I don't know the name of the piece, but here is what I have in my notes: It begins with a single cellow, playing slow and low, sadly. A violin begins to play, matching the mood but not the melody, playing at a much higher pitch. They go on in this manner, and then two more violins begin, playing the same notes at different octaves at the same time. The doubled melody rises and falls against the slow cellow and the high violin. Suddenly the doubled strings are silent, and there is a section where violins are plucked rhythmically. cautiously, as a single high thread is played by the first violin. Then a violin plays boldly, almost triumphantly in counterpoint to the mood of the rest of the piece, and is quickly silenced.

One member of the audience thought that the rhythmic, soft plucking reminded him of footsteps tiptoeing around, trying not to draw attention. "As long as food was coming that day and no one was being threatened, then it was a good day." I thought that each string represented a different prisoner's story, and that the doubled strings were the story of a boy and his father, or a girl and her mother staying together through the war, only to be killed before the end later.

The presentation was done well, and the audience was interested the whole time. I learned a lot, and so did everyone else.

Samuel Bak

A few days ago in class, we observed and analyzed paintings by artist and holocaust survivor Samuel Bak. The paintings we looked at were: "Flight From Berlin," "Family Tree 1," and "The Family." Flight from Berlin contains three men sitting in what appears to be a makeshift, childish, "junkyard"attempt at an aircraft. Family Tree 1 features a tree growing on top a small, run down stone building, which is probably the ruins of synagogue, with stars of David stuck on the branches. There is also some new sprouts coming up off the building. I think the withering tree symbolizes the old generation of Jews who died or survived through the Holocaust, and the new sprouts symbolize the new generations. The last painting I looked at was The Family. The Family features a mass of people, some of them deformed somehow, none of them seemingly particularly happy. Some of the people can talk, but have bandages over their eyes; some of the people can see, but have bandages over their mouth. I the very background you can see smokestacks, presumably from the crematory, and the people see coming from it. I think this painting symbolizes the terrible effects of the holocaust.

Last period of work

The event has finally arrived. The entire class is busy making powerpoints, creating posters, and discussing how to handle the audience. Mr. Cohen gave us more pointers on how to present our topics. Everyone's working hard, but we're calm. We're expecting a good turnout: in addition to the people invited by the students, there will be teachers, people from the FHAO organization, and the mayor!

At the event, there will be photographers and a student with a video recorder, and the post-event team will use them to create a documentary of the entire project. The six bloggers will also cover each session and write about them.

Holocaust Denial

Even today, there are groups that deny the occurence of the Holocaust, claiming it was fabricated by the Allied forces and the Jews. Common evidence provided by these groups include almanacs that report the number of Jews stayed stable during the war, and chemists and experts testifying that the gas chambers were mocked up and actually unable to execute anyone. The point of this argument is that the Nazis did not actually make plans to commit genocide on the Jews within Germany.

I came across an interesting article which takes a nicely sized sledgehammer to that position.

"Starting in 1942, the Jews began circulating rumors that they were all being killed. These rumors filtered through various news agencies, from various sources.

By 1945, the Jews had forged tens of thousands of Nazi documents, all "proving" that the Nazis had committed mass murder. The Jews invented the whole thing in a whirlwind effort. They invented the places where the gassings took place. They researched and invented the techniques that were used. They forged photographs and wove them into the documentary record.

Their Jewish chemists figured out which perfectly ordinary buildings would be palmed off as gas chambers. They forged reports of how well the gassing operations were going. They forged reports to Hitler saying that the Eastern territories were free of Jews.

They forged inventories of the morgues, saying there were showerheads and gas-tight doors in them. They forged the whole story about SS guards being taken to a special camp to get them used to the idea of killing Jews.

Everything, every bit of it, forged.

Somehow the Jews got their Jew agents to be there when this forged evidence was presented to Hoess and Broad and Kremer and all the dozens of Nazis tried in 1945 and 1946. All of them must have had the same initial reaction: "what!? I never wrote that!?" but the Jew agents, of course, slapped them around a bit until they admitted it was true. And the Jew agents were very good, because every single one of them admitted that it was true. Those agents must have been quite good at making Nazis admit things, because a lot of those Nazis were seasoned military men. Where'd they hire those agents from?

They found a few thousand Jews who were willing to lie through their teeth and say that Auschwitz was an extermination camp, not a concentration camp. They must have held a big meeting, gathered all the survivors together, and briefed them. "OK," the Head Jew would have said, "repeat after me: Auschwitz was not a nice place to live. You did not go swimming at Auschwitz. Auschwitz used its morgues to gas people. In the summer of 1944 they burned bodies in ditches. Everyone on the left, you actually saw people being led to the gas chambers. You on the right, you did not, but you heard a lot about it." And so on."

-http://www.holocaust-history.org/~jamie/the-hoax.shtml

Our Progress in Pictures

Hola! I'm Mia, a photographer for the Night event. Even though I'm not necessarily a 'blogger,' I have some snazzy pictures to show readers our progress for the Night event, and some general info about the class!

First of all, this is out teacher Mr. Cohen. He's the main organizer for the event, and in charge of making sure we do all our work!
Then there is us, the period 1 students, always hard at work in preparation for the event (which is in a mere week!).
...well, unless we're looking at pictures in food blogs (how can you blame us!).
Anyways, in preparation for the Night Event, which will be held at Paly next Wednesday, March 23, the class has been divided into groups with different roles for the event. Below we have some group facilitators, the ever so essential heart and soul of the event. They will be holding discussions that will not only tackle issues mentioned in Night, but also ones dealing with the Holocaust and Elie Wiesel's life.
Along with the group facilitators, we also have a group of people making posters, opening and closing speakers, program designers, event designers, and more. We even have a documentary in the making. That's pretty exciting!

Basically, we're all working extremely hard to make the Night event a success (and the work doesn't end it class (well, at least for me) evidenced by me writing this blog on a Friday night (though it was my choice)).
I hope you are planning on attending the Night event next Wednesday, March 23, from 6:30 to 8:30 P.M at the Paly library and selected classrooms. While this event should be fun, it will also be extremely intellectually stimulating (and even a teeny bit mind boggling!).

Come with knowledge about the book Night and an open mind. We look forward to seeing you there!

Silence Isn't Always Golden

" And then I explain to him how naive we were, that the world did know and remained silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent when and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented"(Elie Wiesel).

This excerpt from Elie Wiesel's acceptance speech of the Nobel Peace Prize was very thought provoking to me. Would I have the courage to speak out against something even if others around me were silent? I would like to say yes, but I am uncertain had I actually been put in the situation. His point is very strong. How can you be innocent if a crime is being committed and you are ignoring it to avoid involvement. He also says something about what we can do to help these victims. "What all these victims need above all is to know that they are not alone; that we are not forgetting them, that when their voices are stilled we shall lend them ours, that while their freedom depends on ours, the quality of our freedom depends on theirs"(Elie Wiesel). Both these excepts seem very related to our studies of Night and offer some general insight of how Elie feels about oppression in general, and what we can do to possibly prevent future genocides.

What we're doing

People in my class have just recently started working on things. There is a group studying judgment of the Nazis after the war;  a group studying the paintings of Samuel Bak, who is a holocaust survivor; a group studying resistance to the Nazis; and a group studying how different generations dealt with the holocaust after they were liberated.

Life After Night

With our event just one class period away, I realized I had little understanding of what happened to Elie Wiesel after the end of Night, or how he became such a renowned author.

After the war and his time in the concentration camps, he went to France. There he became a professional journalist, as well as teacher of Hebrew, and a choir master. It took him ten years before he was willing to write about his experiences during the war. He initially wrote a 900 page work in yiddish entitled And the world kept silent. This work was eventually narrowed down into a 127-page version written in French called La Nuit(Night). Several years later he found a publisher for his French and English version, yet it did not sell many copies at first. From there he became a human rights activist for oppressed peoples, and eventually received the Congressional Medal of Freedom, and the Nobel Prize for Peace. Since then, he has spoken on behalf of victims of genocide and oppression. He has also written several fictional novels in the past few years.

I find it very inspiring how Elie was able to live a successful life at such a young age without his parents. I could not imagine moving to France as a teenager just having survived the concentration camps.

Discussion topics

There are eight topics that will be discussed on the presentation night, led by two or three students who have prepared a discussion outline. Topics include the Armenian genocide, other groups targeted by the Nazis, Holocaust denial, and music produced during the Holocaust. The question of how the Holocaust is remembered across generations, the Nuremberg Trials, resistance against the Nazis, and the art of a survivor will be discussed as well, with supporting paintings and videos. There will be two rounds of discussions, and the audience is encouraged to listen to and participate in the topics that interest them the most.

Judgement and Justice

Last friday in class, Jack Weinstein, the local Facing History and Ourselves director, came to talk to us about what justice means to the victims of the Holocaust. He encouraged us to think deeply about who is responsible, how they should be judged, and how they should be punished. Some questions included: Should participants in "atrocities" during war be punished? Should they be tried before a court of law? Are individuals responsible if they have obeyed laws of a nation? Do some have more responsibility than others? Can an entire nation be guilty? After WWII, the allies had to ponder these questions in the Nuremberg Trials. The charges pressed included: conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. We thought discussed these questions among ourselves, then shared our ideas around the room. This visit by Mr. Weinstein has proved quite insightful.

Samuel Bak Paintings

I remember first seeing Samuel Bak's paintings in 8th grade. I had trouble understanding their meaning at first, but after a long discussion with the class I slowly formed a new understanding. Looking back on them after two years, I notice the old information but realize that I have learned so much from this unit. Night has really opened my eyes to new ways of thinking and can't wait to see what else I can learn.
After searching up some other art work of his, I found a site that lined up his paintings and I noticed that every single person had the same look and posture of defeat: head down, back bent forward, and head in hand. The backgrounds are nothing alike, but the same message seems to come up. I have little experience with art that I wouldn't be able to tell you what it means, but I hope to better understand it soon.

Comparisons

As I read the novel, I continued to be struck by the cruelty and devastation inflicted upon the innocent victims, who were targeted merely because of their race. It helps me to recognize how grateful I am that I live in a diverse place, where such individuality is appreciated. 


Also, I recently read One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. That book focused on the life of an inmate in a soviet work camp. I was struck by both the similarity and the drastic differences found in these camps. In Night, Eliezer travels throughout a system of camps, all of which, despite their common ideas, differ greatly in the severity of punishments and amount of freedom. This is similar to the disparity between the camps run by the Soviet Union. Some of the Nazi's camps are "death camps", where the primary goal is to eliminate the Jewish race, while others are "work camps".  The Soviet's camps, on the other hand, were meant to punish political prisoners, but not necessarily to kill them. On top of the intense work involved, prisoners in the Russian camps also had to deal with the intense weather often present in Siberia. It was fascinating to me that there was so much similarity between the camps, yet also such disparity.


    

Today in the Lab

Today we are in the computer lab. We are all putting our finishing touches on our posters, blog posts, and researching. I feel like this event is coming together, but we are not completely ready. We just have to keep focused and work really hard until the event is over.

The Event is Approaching...

As our Night event grows closer, our discussion groups become busier and busier. We have groups leading discussions on Holocaust Denial, Music from Terezin, Targets of the Holocaust, and others. We also have some students making posters about Propaganda, Elie Wiesel(the author of Night), and a poster about the Facing History and Ourselves program.

I feel that the event is slowly coming together. If everyone puts in hard work and some good effort over the next few days, then the event will be a success. I think that the event will come out well, and I look forward to hearing some of the talks on Wednesday!

In the worlds of Elie Wiesel, "There are victories of the soul and spirit. Sometimes, even if you lose, you win."

Resistance

While rereading the first few chapters of Night, I noticed that the Germans were met with surprisingly little resistance in their occupation, then deportation of Weisel's community. Before the Germans even arrived, the people of the community felt that they would never arrive at their homes, that the Germans would be sated somehow by taking Budapest. A faceless member of Weisel's community says "The Germans won't get as far as this. They'll stay in Budapest. There are strategic and political reasons..." And three days later, the German military had arrived in the town of Sighet.

Still the community continued to delude themselves. Even after the Jewish were banned from cafes, train stations, and resturaunts, even after the yellow stars were issued, the Jews of Sighet continued to be optimistic. The attitude of Sighet is similar to that of the world community. While Hitler began rearming Germany and preparing for war, the rest of the world did nothing. When Germany invaded the Rhineland, it met with little or no military opposition. Why is it that the Germans were able to do so much with so little resistance? Perhaps the world was still reeling from the horrors of the first world war. Perhaps people really believed that Hitler would stop before he actually harmed them. What were the effects of religion? The town elders preached the virtue of "Never lose[ing] faith, even when the sword hangs over your head". Who or what is responsible for the lack of resistance?