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.