Assertion One 

“Incorporating art, music, literature and film allows students to better see the people that played a part in this event as more than just numbers and names.  It gives a face and a personality to the victim, the perpetrator, the rescuer, resister, survivor or bystander.  Helping students see the human side of each of these people will also bring home the reality that this event happened in the 20^th century…” (3:14).

“The topic [of the Holocaust] raises questions that transcend any particular discipline…The key to maximizing student learning is to integrate the information/history with the moral questions of the nature of humans and evil.  If teachers can balance these two with a connection to contemporary life and personal application, then a difference can be made for young people…” (5:19).

“[Students must be helped to]… understand that a genocide is an attempt to eradicate an entire race of people…to lay to waste a larger whole…A religion, a cultural heritage, a historical past was sent up in flames and these people [who speak to our classes] are the survivors of that experience” (4:4)

 “It is important…for students to realize the ease with which humans persecute other humans, because it provides historical context for the outbreak of laws revoking Jews’ civil rights.  Armed with historical context, students can study the wave of the anti-Semitism and how it reached a fevered peak” (2:5).

“If one sees perpetrators as monsters capable of extraordinary evil, the student exempts himself and his community/society/nation from such capability.  The essence of understanding the banality of evil is to recognize the possibility of your/your society potentially victimizing others” ( 5:17).

“Many Jews ‘survived’ the Holocaust without ever stepping foot in a camp…as Henry Friedman so effectively demonstrated, anyone who spent time without food, medical services, camped in darkness, engulfed in mental anguish and guilt, anyone who lasted under awful circumstances is a true survivor”  (7:5).

“A more complete definition of survivor must include those who have intimate relationships with the actual survivor.  In this sense, those who lives with survivors are potential victims of the atrocity, even though they did not live through the experiences themselves” (11:5).

“Students need to understand that Jews were not the only victims/targets of the Holocaust.  This point is essential to the study of the issue because people tend to distance themselves from any group targeted for discrimination/persecution by saying to themselves ‘that could happen to me because I am not a _______.’  When students begin to see that the Nazis targeted Jews as well as other religious and racial minorities, marginalized groups such as disabled people, gypsies, Roma and homosexuals, and that the only proof the SS needed to send a person to their death was the suspicion or appearance that one belonged to a targeted group, we begin to understand that anyone could be targeted, any one of us” (10:6).

“The Rwanda incidents seemed intensely personal and individualistic in nature—rapes and mutilations that seemed to offer the same sadistic pleasure that police battalions and Einsatzgruppen and the Nazi guards derived from their horrific actions” (6:12).

“’The duty of Christians is to use the weapons of the Spirit to oppose the violence that they will try to put on our consciences…Loving, forgiving and doing good to our adversaries is our duty.’   This excerpt sums up who Trocme was.  For him there was simply no choice, a reoccurring theme throughout this seminar, but to act to oppose violence” (7:3).

“While it is clearly not OK to call someone “nigger” in class, the word “fag” is used daily in high school classrooms and hallways and too many students (and some faculty) remain guilty bystanders” (10:6).

“Society’s most marginalized, most vulnerable became victims of the Third Reich.  It is significant in our day and age to recognize that marginalized groups still exist and are treated unjustly.  One of these groups is the homosexual.  Certainly a holocaust is not happening, yet marginalizing is occurring” (5:9).

Assertion Two:

“His story (Wiesel’s) is so human in that he struggles with issues of self-doubt, the inability to forgive and forget, the stark images of horror which have remained forever locked in his mind, and the ignobility that can fall on a person when sheer survival is always chewing at the elbow.  Wiesel’s account of his time in the camps is so direct, so poignant and so faithful to the human impulse to survive [that students]…as readers can understand the underlying impulses” (4:2)

“Seeing the footage of Rwandan women facing their rapists in the courtroom and seeing the ovens in Auschwitz helped me see how people could live with evil as part of their everyday lives” (2:12)

 “Teaching students not to hate is a very important part of Holocaust/genocide curriculum…Bonhoeffer’s ideas of the perpetrator, victim, bystander, and righteous Gentile provides students with a better grasp of the different roles people took as the Jews were made to obey the laws of Hitler”  (8:1).

“Studying Bonhoeffer allows for discussion of resistance and of Christian involvement, two issues most high-schoolers do not think about when they are introduced to the Holocaust.  His writing brings up a disturbing but interesting point---There were not innocent bystanders.  This opens a door to serious debate and learning”  (7:2)

 “Dante placed sloth on a level in his Inferno; turning away from a moral responsibility would find you a fiery seat in the after life.  Bonhoeffer’s differentiation between ‘cheap grace’ and ‘costly grace’ clearly help to define what we should expect of ourselves” (4:1).

“Bonhoeffer insisted on keeping the State out of the Church….In the U.S. we often talk about the separation of [the two]….not only does that involve keeping religion out of State-run organizations, but also to keep the State out of religious organizations” (2:1).

“Trocme’s courage is a wonderful springboard to discussions on rescue and resistance, and more specifically to the concept of the banality of evil.  I have already begun discussing these ideas with my students and am both disturbed and delighted with the conversations we have had” (7.3).

“After viewing horrific scenes from “Condemned to Live” I was emotionally numb…I didn’t know how to react.  Those women were so removed from my world, or I from theirs…. This is the tip of the banality of evil iceberg.  When we are so far removed from the evil it is much easier not to be moved by it” (7:7).

“It is essential for students to bestow gratitude on the good during this atrocity rather than focusing solely on the evil which can be a glorification of those which most would categorize as heartless” (12:11).

“The resisters offer an alternative to the ‘heart of darkness;’ perhaps by studying them I can begin to understand how goodness and strength of character can be harnessed in my daily moral challenges and struggles…and help my students see similar possibilities” (6:2)

“Dr. Krell made me acutely aware of the fact that those who survived the Holocaust were not done in 1945.  As the title of Tim O’Brien’s The Things That They Carried suggests about the Vietnam veteran, the psychological and spiritual damage of the Holocaust goes on for the survivor…” (5:10).

“There is no peace [for Holocaust survivors], only a quest to discover a means to outlive the nightmare.  Even their children have become victims once removed” (14:3).

Assertion Three

“I have seen…how examining art and poetry from victims really reaches kids and sparks amazing discussion and reflection, often with little or no prompting at all…” (3:4).

“The listener also becomes more complete by listening.  At some point the listener must ask the questions: ‘How could this happen?  Could it happen again?  What role must I play as an agent to stop future atrocities?’” ( 5:6).

“We help to heal by being engaged in what was experienced, by being a possibly silent, but definitely involved listener.  Not only does this active witnessing provide a vessel for the story, but also we, as the audience, take on the responsibility of knowing and sharing this information.  In doing this, we counteract the softening rub of time and the spiteful reinterpretation of history by some neo-historians” (4:3).

“To listen to testimony is to make complete.  It is important to impress to students the fact that remembering is a mutual experience- a two way street….Learning from someone’s story enables both [teller and listener] to know they have helped to halt the spread of future victimization” (5:9).

[Students need to understand] “…1) that what survivors have to tell us is hard for them, but that in telling their stories, the healing process continues; 2) that it is more important to listen than it is to know the answers; 3) that sometimes, a survivor might react to a question by snapping out a harsh remark or blankly staring, and that this is often a protective strategy on his/her part – sometimes the answer to that question is too dark or disturbing for our students; and 4) that guest speakers appreciate gratitude, personal thanks, handshakes, etc.” (7:2).

“Just last week, …a liberator of Buchenwald visited my students….I emphasized the honor we must feel that he was coming to our classroom.  I also emphasized sensitivity and respect- in the questions we ask and in our body language while he speaks” (6:3).

“Reading excerpts from Wiesel’s Night gives students an attachment, an affective link that is missing from their daily academic work….  Students can identify with Weisel’s struggle with his faith; they are questioning creatures that battle their own doubts on a day-to-day basis.  Clearly, Wiesel’s experience is different from teenage angst, but it can be a powerful springboard for studying the Holocaust in depth.”(7: 3).

“After listening to the survivor’s testimony students engaged in a question and answer period.  One student asked, ‘Do you hate the Nazis for what they did to you and your family?’  The survivor responded, ‘I don’t hate, because I was a prisoner before and I don’t want to be a prisoner again.  If I hate someone I am a prisoner of my own hate.’   After the speaker returned home, students were asked to create thank you notes.  The cover to the note was to contain the students’ perception of the theme of the story they had heard.  Getting students to state the theme enables them to look beyond what words were said to what those words mean.  One wrote: ‘When you hate someone you are a prisoner inside of yourself’”  (9:13).

Assertion Four

“In films like