Remembering the Children

"The 2012 observance of the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust will focus on the theme “Children and the Holocaust”. The United Nations will remember the one-and-a-half million Jewish children who perished in the Holocaust, together with the thousands of Roma and Sinti children, the disabled and others, who suffered and died at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators. Some children managed to survive in hiding, others fled to safe havens before it was too late, while many others suffered medical experiments or were sent to the gas chambers immediately upon arriving at the death camps. Highlighting the impact of mass violence on children, this theme has important implications for the 21st century."

Illustration: Auschwitz susrvivor - Sonia by Tanya Pahwa, SMSchool, Meera Bagh, New Delhi, India - Butterfly by Sonia's grandson: Matt Chateauneuf

Resources for teachers

Books suitable for teens, tweens, and young adults

USA Holocaust Museum, free educational CD and DVD being sent around the world & general teaching about the Holocalust.

"I never saw another butterfly" - Children's Drawings and poems from Terezin Concentration Camp - Many teacher activities included.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas-Teacher Guide by Novel Units, Inc. - Novel unit-created by teachers for teachers. The chapter-by-chapter guides incorporate research-based, higher-order reading, writing, and thinking activities. Grades 5 and up.

A Guide for Using Number the Stars in the Classroom - This resource is directly related to its literature equivalent and filled with a variety of cross-curricular lessons to do before, during, and after reading the book. Grades 3 and up.

Movies
Safe Haven: The warsaw Zoo - As the Nazis liquidate the Warsaw Ghetto, many will die. Three hundred will live when they find safe haven at the Warsaw Zoo.

Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance After the Holocaust - visit to the Polish towns - to try to find the Catholic farmers who hid his father-in-law from the Germans. A lot of issues are surfaced but left unresolved in this well crafted documentary.

The Shanghai Ghetto - In the late 1930's German Jews were trying to escape Nazi persecution, but country after country closed its doors to them. The only place in the world that didn't require entrance visas was the international city of Shanghai. View the 2 minute trailer for a synopsis of this documentary.

Novels
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas - historical allegory set in Berlin during WWII.

Number the Stars - Danish Resistance smuggles almost the entire Jewish population of Denmark, nearly seven thousand people, across the sea to Sweden. (Appropriate for primary students.)

Sarah's Key - based on the events of the French roundup of thousands of children. Switches between France in 2002 and 1942.

Invisible Bridge - Nazi aggression finds two young lovers in Hungary, where life for the Jews goes from hardship to horror.

True stories
Heroes of the Holocaust: True Stories of Rescues by Teens

We Are Witnesses: Five Diaries of Teenagers Who Died in the Holocaust (including Anne Frank).

Five Chimneys: The Story of Auschwitz - A Woman Survivor's True Story of Auschwitz

Survivors: True Stories of Children in the Holocaust - true-life accounts of children struggling through and surviving the Holocaust

Marsha will willingly Skype with students about her mother's life, if a mutual time can be agreed upon.
See her session with The Glass Class, Harrison Elementry School, Warsaw, Indiana
Best for her is Fridays when she is not teaching English classes.
Matt Kuntz, Lincoln School in Oak Park, Illinois, created this guide to prepare for a Skype conference with Marsha, as well as a "note sheet" for students to jot down thoughts, questions, etc.

Where physically possible, Marsha will also conduct workshops for students and their teachers. Contact her to make arrangements. If necessary to travel a distance, travel expenses and accomodations need to be provided by the organization making the request. Marsha does not charge any other fee for her workshop.

Here is a worksheet left with the students at Kaplan School. Good for all EFL teachers as well as any wishing to read/see a little Hebrew.