The Apache Pacification Policy Compared to Nazi Anti-Jewish Policy

by Jan-Ruth Mills and Julia Benites Torres

Subject:

Writing and Reading, World History, American History

Duration:

One to two days

Grade level:

High School

Determining prior knowledge:

Used at the beginning of a Holocaust unit, this exercise can reveal what students already know about the Holocaust and World War II.

Purpose:

As students become aware of other genocides, it is important that they are able to differentiate between the “Final Solution” intended for the Jews and the objectives of other genocides perpetrated to gain territory or good or to “ethnically cleanse” a society of the “other.” The Nazi plan to exterminate Jews had no economic or territorial limits. As Yehuda Bauer explains, the Shoah was unique thus far in human history because the intention was to kill all Jews regardless of where they lived…or moved. As KZ Gusen II survivor Karl Littner said, “They didn’t just take our things. They took us.”

Comparison here is not competition to find the “worst” genocide but a vehicle for students to think through the differences. I try to be careful not to appear to diminish the suffering of victims of any genocide but rather highlight the fact that there was no “rational” basis for the Nazi plans to exterminate the Jews.

Background:

Apache culture prior to colonization by Spain was an oral tradition. As such, the preservation of its practices, values, and beliefs was tied to the language. By luring Apaches to settle near the presidios where they became economically dependent on Spanish speakers, their culture was further assaulted by loss of traditions when the language itself fell into disuse. In this sense, the culture was much more vulnerable than European Jewish culture which was based in written texts. Of course, the Nazi burning of books by Jews was intended to destroy this culture and evidence of Jewish contributions to the broader European culture. But precisely because of the high literacy rate among Western European Jews, this assault on European culture failed. Not only are there numerous diaries such as Anne Frank's detailing the Holocaust, but libraries all over the world contain "the evidence" of Jewish contributions to science, the arts, law and other disciplines. This can help students understand the “attention” given to the Shoah, especially students whose own cultures have been targeted for mass murder or cultural genocide. If those cultures were oral cultures, the record may be in folksongs, gospel hymns, and traditional stories which are not widely known. Exploring these, however, as a follow-up to this lesson might help students understand the variety of ways stories are preserved.  

Arizona Standards:

Social Studies, Writing, Reading and World History

Assessment/Rubrics

Student Handouts on Rubrics for Collaborative Writing on Visual and Written texts based on Six Traits required by AIMS Test with explanation for teacher

Handouts

• The Apache Pacification Policy by Julia Benites Arriola
• Venn Diagram

Procedure

Have students read history of Apache Pacification Policy (may be assigned as homework). Ask students to compare what they have read with their prior knowledge of the Holocaust using Venn Diagram.

Discuss as a class:

Here are some important points that my secondary English students have made and questions to prompt students to think about these issues:

Over time, what prompted the change in the Spanish plans for the Apaches? The Spanish had territorial aims. Once it became apparent genocidal policies against the Apaches weren’t working, they switched to destroying the culture to weaken them militarily. This is in contrast with the Jews of Europe who were not waging a war against anyone when they were targeted. Nor did compliance result end the genocide.

Both communities were made dependent on their oppressors. How was this dependency created? How did they differ? German Jews were made dependent by laws that forced them out of their jobs, their homes, their countries and into ghettoes and then camps. Apaches were made dependent by destroying their culture and the economic basw and enticing them to be addicted to alcohol and dependent on the presidios for supplies.

Important differences:

A major difference in the genocides is the use, or lack of us, of technology. The Spaniards did not have the technology the Germans had. They couldn’t move the Apache around by trains to concentrate them in one area. They didn’t have gas chambers.

The Apaches were eventually allowed to negotiate a peace. Jews could not negotiate a “peace” because they were not a nation. Regardless of how they were depicted in antisemitic propaganda, there was no “one” Jewish community acting in concert in Europe.

One important opportunity to dispel misconceptions about German Jews can arise. Some students will suggest that Jews were numerous in Germany before the war and that they owned a lot of land. Jews made up only 1.5% of Germany’s 70 million people before the war. As Saul Friedlaender points out, “German Jewry, despite being financially significant, politically sophisticated, with some of its members wielding considerable influence on the mainstream liberal and left-wing press, was effortlessly swept aside, together with its natural political allies—liberalism and social democracy—by the rise of Nazism.”¹ The Weimar Republic, after all, a democracy, and Jews accounted for very few of the votes Germans caste as their government disintegrated into a dictatorship.