Comparing Antisemitic Violence and Economic Restrictions in Medieval Europe to Nazi Violence After the Anschluss

by Jan-Ruth Mills

This unit can follow Medieval Miracle Plays and Antisemitic Violence. Students will have prior knowledge of one of the historical texts, but the group work is quite different.

Procedures

Day/Hour One

Preparation/Materials

Handouts:

  • Homework Day One.
  • Also ask students to bring a shoe or cigar-sized box for final assessment project on fourth day
  • Art supplies: Construction paper, glue, markers, magazines for collages. See Final Assessment with Rubric

PowerPoint of Logos (or slides to print for group work)

30 minutes
Timed Writing/Brainstorming/Whole-class sharing that can be extended to include an introductory class activity if students don't know each other already..

Ask students to imagine the following scenario:

You arrive home after school to find your neighborhood is threatened by fire. The fire chief tells you that all members of your family and your pets are safe. She gives you five minutes to go into your house and get ten items. Write down 10 the items you would get. You have five minutes.

After five minutes, ask students to put their pencils down.

On board, list what students volunteer to reveal about their list. Discuss values students are demonstrating by their choices. Love of music (musical instruments, iPods, CDs); concern for appearance, love of family; photos, memorabilia; practical concerns for family: clothes, food, money, blankets, pillows. Sometimes, I ask them to think about how their parent(s) would think about the choices they made.

Ask students how their choices might change if their family were to experience a second or even a third destruction of their home. How many would make sure they got valuable items that could be carried out easily, like money and jewelry? How important would identification cards and birth certificates be the next time? How many would choose to grab a photograph instead of a heavy vase?

As a class, write ten items on the board that the class thinks would help a family start a new life.

If their list changed so that they chose to get valuable items like jewelry or money instead of sentimental items, would it mean their values had changed? Or would they put survival above sentiment? If this time they got a check book and left their teddy bear from childhood behind, does it mean they are a different person?

Ask students how an entire community would respond to constant demands to leave their homes and even their country very quickly with little notice, over and over. List people who might have to do this currently:

  • Military families
  • Refugees
  • Migrant workers
  • Homeless families
  • Hurricane victims

Discuss affects on these families/communities. What holds them together? What causes friction within these communities? How are they seen by outsiders? How do they see outsiders?

How would a community be affected if hatred, persecution and violence were the reason for constant moves?

Return to the list the class wrote as a whole. Ask students to imagine arriving in a new country where they did not speak the language. How would these ten items help explain their values to their new neighbors?

How easy is it to judge by appearances? Ask students to write down something no one would know by looking at them.

(Option: Pair/Share and then have students introduce each other through this activity)

What are the ways we try to make ourselves known to others? What if we were forced to wear an unpopular brand if clothes...would that change who we are? How hard is it to avoid judging people by their clothing? (You can use PowerPoint of Logos here or ask students to draw the logos of popular brands.) How do we categorize people who wear a favorite brand?

Discuss categories as a way to make sense out of what we perceive. (Students have probably discussed categories before, but to remind them of how well they know this skill, I have them brainstorm the names of cars, as Kathy Fitzgerald and Jaime McBeth Smith suggest in The Student Writer, and then categorize them. Animal car names: Rabbit, Mustang, Bronco, etc.) How does this help us?

Discuss how this skill can be hurtful when we begin to categorize people. What "categories" of people are students aware of that are harmful? What if they were in prison clothes? What if they were forced to wear a yellow star?

Pass out homework. Discuss how categorization is one way to organize information and to help make connections and draw conclusions. But categories can also be made hastily or ignorantly based on a shallow understanding of reality. Good scholars always question the validity of their categories with further research. Frtiz Voll, in trying to come to terms with two thousand years of antisemitic violence, found that categorizing types of violence was helpful. Students will listen to testimony as homework

Day/Hour Two

Activity Two: Historical Research of Holocaust

The duration of this lesson varies according to the reading skills of the class and so two different lengths of group worksheets are provided. The vocabulary in the group work prepares them for the homework as well as for the in-class writing done as an assessment on the third day.

Lesson Objective:

Research historical record to discover the frequency and effects of antisemitic violence during the Middle Ages.

Handouts

10 minutes:

Discuss homework.

(Ask them to take out assignment sheet to use for group work) What categories of violence did their survivor experience? Did they see any patterns in the survivor’s stories? (Restrictions about where they could live followed by forced moves, theft of property, violence and finally murder? Discuss the definition of the word ghetto. Explain ghettoes were first used to restrict the movements of Jews in medieval Europe.

Explain that our research question today is: How common was it to restrict Jews socially or force them to move, pay extra or higher taxes, even steal their children in the history of medieval Europe?

Restrictions on Jewish religious practice, social interaction, trade and professions, civil and political rights, residence (ghettoization), ownership...

Force used to make Jews pay higher taxes, take away their children (to raise them as Christians), lootings, vandalism, expulsions...

10 minutes.

Introducing Group Activity: Ask students to take homework-assignment sheet with explanation of categories with them to their groups. Break them up into groups. Give a handout.

Before they begin group work, ask who has the date 855?

Ask them to read the second sentence, “In sermons during the Easter season the people in Beziers were encouraged to revenge the crucifixion of Jesus.” Explain that this was a result of the “deicide myth,” the myth that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus Christ.

Ask who has1021? Ask them to read it. Explain that Jews were often blamed for natural disasters as well as “host desecration,” In the Roman Catholic Church the consecrated host is believed to be the physical body of Christ and so by putting a nail threw it Jews would have been attempting to kill Christ again.

1144? Explain that the ritual murder charge was a myth that Jews killed a Christian child or baby as part of their rituals. Sometimes they were said to use the blood of a child to make matzos (unleavened bread) at Passover. This became known as the “blood libel.”

While one could point out that murder is against Jewish Law (Thou Shalt not Kill) and that using any blood in food is against Jewish Laws, another approach would be to refer students to  Jewish-Christian Relations where they can use "blood libel" and "deicide" as search terms and read the statements by Christian theologians and Christian denominations apologizing for and correcting these myths.

15-20 Minutes Group Work

Depending on their reading level.

As they read and discuss the assignment, I circulate answering questions which usually focus on whether an incident fits into one category or another. I refer them to Mr. Voll’s definitions. Students may put an incident into a category I would not, but the important discussion here is on evidence. Why do they think this fits into the category?

10-15 Minutes

Whole class share: Remind students that Fritz Voll categorized the types of violence he found in historical records and secondary sources  into seven categories to help him understand history. Ask groups to explain what they learned about the use of restrictions and force. Discuss what expectations Jews in Europe might have had about the stability of their lives? How about employment? How were they restricted as to employment? (For longer classes: Ask groups to rotate from butcher paper to butcher paper described below, writing the dates and a brief description of each incident.)

 Collect group work. Hand out homework

 Day/Hour Three

Materials:

  • Seven pieces of butcher paper (Many thanks to Facing History and Ourselves for this method of assessment)
  • Enough colored markers for each group to have a different color
  • Group work from previous day
  • “The Holocaust in Austria” for class (Can be printed as one double sided page at this link if you don’t print out citations).

Preparation:

Following the Facing History and Ourselves practice, hang up 7 long sheets of butcher paper at level students can write on. Write the following headings on them:

  • Restricted Employment—not allowed certain jobs
  • Forced to move
  • Forced to Pay Extra Taxes or Fines
  • Forced to give up children
  • Forced to convert
  • Had property taken from them
  • Forced to live in one area of a town or country

5-10 minutes:

Possible quiz on readings: Assign students to choose one of the headers on a piece of butcher paper and write about it in relation to the homework reading (I allow this type of writing assessment to be open book and focus the lesson on how to write a paragraph rather than memorizing dates).

20 minutes:

Have students return to groups from previous day. Hand back group work and give each group a marker. On the butcher paper u,nder the categories they feel are appropriate. have students write date and key words from the worst (start with two) restrictions or force they found in their reading.

15-20 minutes:

Ask where the headers on the butcher paper came from? Headers are the explanation of Mr. Voll’s categories of force and restrictions.. The butcher paper categories are narrower categories than Mr. Voll's. The students have provided evidence that these narrower categories exist by providing incidents from the reading as examples of each. What category of violence has the most entries? What does this show? What years seem to have the most restrictions and force? Does anyone remember any other violence from these years? Are there categories that do not appear on the butcher paper? Do students see a pattern between restrictions, force and escalating violence?

Write a model paragraph on the board using one of the headings in a statement followed by evidence provided by the incidents. Example:

After the first ritual murder charge in 1144, ritual murder charges were made frequently. For example, there were three ritual murder charges in German cities between 1283 and 1285. This was followed by....

Randomly assign student groups to write a paragraph on the back of their group work using one of the headings. I don’t expect too much finesse from the statements they write under these circumstances. What I look for is that they use the category in a topic sentence and provide evidence from the incidents to prove it.

Further discussion or carryover to the next day:

How often does the violence begin with hateful words? How often did hateful words start violence no one could stop? How often does this happen in our society? Our school? Our families? How does this relate to graffiti that either says something hateful or marks territory as unfriendly to a certain group? Is this different? How?

10 minutes:

Pass out copies of The Holocaust in Austria. If time allows, explain that they will need to understand this article in order to do the homework, and then read as a class or ask what expectations they might have from headings as pre-reading. What words do they see in the reading that have already been discussed in class or appear on the butcher paper?.

Homework:

Read handout. Go to Tucson survivor’s sight and listen to Selma Neuhauser’s story. Ask them to pay particular attention to the date of Selma’s departure. Using the reading, ask them to write down what restrictions and force the Nazis were using against Jews, including Selma’s family.

Day/Hour Four-Five

Preparation:

Print out Bread and Water: Austrian Resistance against Nazism and Assignment and Grading Rubric. I ask students to sign and date this when they receive it and then staple it to the written portion of their project. Every class day I allow them to work on a project, I ask them to take it out. As I circulate I ask them which part they are working on and if they have any questions.

Background reading on Kindertransport from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Explain:

To the traditional and religious antisemitism that students have studied thus far, the Nazis added the pseudo-scientific theory of “Eugenics” which held that Jews were subhuman. This “theory” that Jews were diseased and posed a physical threat to Germans simply by their presence was used to explain why Jews had to be removed. Racist theories became state policy under the Nazis. The students have just learned that Germans, Austrians, and other Europeans had a tradition of antisemitic violence that allowed them to accept the steps toward “the Final Solution.” The Jewish Holocaust in Europe was unique in the sense that Nazis planned their total “extermination.”

Discuss homework:

How “abnormal” were the events in Selma’s life, given the history of European antisemitism? What expectations might Jews in Austria have had of their neighbors? Did Selma’s parents understand the threat? When Selma left for Sweden, what did she think would happen to her parents? What was Selma’s experience of her non-Jewish neighbors before the Nazis took over? After?

What do students think might have kept non-Jewish Austrians from joining the German and Austrian Nazis in their violence against Jews? What might have helped them to resist believing the Jews deserved to be treated this way?  When Fritz Voll saw Jewish women forced to work on bomb damage in Berlin, why do students think his parents wouldn’t talk to him about the treatment of the Jewish women?

As a class, read Bread and Water: Austrian Resistance against Nazism

If possible, listen to Hermina Aussems discuss her reasons for joining the resistance in Holland. How do students feel about parents who chose to risk their lives to resist? Students sometimes wish to discuss the risk resisters who were also parents took regarding their children. If there is a lot of interest in this, consider using the movie A World Apart about a white South African journalist whose resistance to Apartheid resulted in her arrest and eventual murder. The story is told through the point of view of her adolescent daughter whose anger over her mother’s pre-occupation with politics is mitigated by her growing awareness of the injustice surrounding their comfortable lives.

Social studies and reading standards associated with this unit have been assessed through the group work and class activities. The final assessment, which fulfills the remaining Writing Standards, draws on the “Toolbox for Difference” lesson plan created by Adrianne Billingham, Lexington High School, Lexington, Massachusetts and Jimmie Jones, Senior Program Associate, Facing History and Ourselves as well as Georgia Heard’s Awakening the Heart. Just as students might create a “living poetry museum,” a place where their inner voices would feel safe to express themselves, they might create a box or “tool kit” of tolerance to remind them of the type of person they want to be during difficult time when words from other sources are challenging their values. What will help them make the choice?

Many students, for instance, know someone who is being bullied in their school. The goal is not to gather a gift for the victim of bullying. The idea is for each student to create a “museum of tolerance” to help remind him or her how to act toward others. Some people might call these “anchors.” The “item” for the box might even be a description of a safe place in the student’s life or memory where he or she feels it’s possible to be clear and thoughtful while making a decision. Another could be a quote from a poem or song. It could be a leaf from a tree. In my “tool box of tolerance” I have a whisker from my cat that I found in the carpet which reminds me that all I know will someday fall away to dust but my actions may live on in someone's memory.

Time can be given in class to work on the final assessment.