Holocaust denial: The story of Fred Leuchter

Once again, we are shifting gears to look at the issue of Holocaust denial through the particular case of Fred Leuchter. To do this, we are screening Errol Morris' groundbreaking film: Mr. Death.

Student interviews with people over age 74 are due today.

The Comfort Women

Our discussions today revolved around a series of key questions regarding the comfort women. Most specifically, we focused on the issue of crimes against women and what sort of laws and punishments ought to be established in response to them.

• what should we do with the crime of sexual enslavement, in the context of war, of genocide, etc.? Should it be a war crime, right up there with the others? Is rape/is enslavement a crime equal to that of murder?
• What motivates it?
• What seem to be shared issues for the female victims of these crimes?
• Have the perpetrators (the Japanese) “faced” this history? Should they? How?
• Rape was a major tool during the Rwandan genocide too. What can we do to prevent these crimes?

Back to World War II in Asia: The Comfort Women

We return briefly to our look at the war in East Asia by focusing on the comfort women, specifically the comfort women in Korea. Comfort women were females forced into enslavement by the Japanese military during World War II. This occurred not only in Korea, but in China, the Philippines, on New Guinea (including islands controlled by the Dutch, whose nationals were forced into slavery).

After viewing a clip of testimony from comfort women, we divided into groups and read a variety of testimonies from these women. Their stories were tragic. After students read one testimony and then exchange them with one another (so that they have read at least two), they are to discuss what they've read within their groups and report back to the class.

Tomorrow, we will discuss these stories and key questions about them.

Guest speaker: Claude Kitare

Today's classes had the extraordinary privilege of hearing Claude Kitare, a young survivor of the Rwandan genocide who is now a student at Clark University in Worcester.

Claude's remarks were prefaced by a clip from the PBS film, Valentina's Nightmare.

Thanks to Jimmie Jones from Facing History who accompanied Claude.

Rwanda: Triumph of Evil (continued)

Today's classes completed their viewing of The Triumph of Evil.

Assignment: Rwanda: What Can We Do Differently? (due Wed., Mar. 31)

Rwanda: What happens when good people do nothing

We are leapfrogging a bit in the course to get to the Rwandan genocide, an event that took place in 1994 (so we have shifted dramatically in time from where we were yesterday). Next week is the tenth anniversary of the outbreak of the genocide in Rwanda. Moreover, many of you went last night to Harvard to hear former UN head of forces in Rwanda, Romeo Dallaire, in conversation with Samantha Power, Michael Ignatieff, et al.

In anticipation of our guest speaker, Claude Kitare, a Rwandan genocide survivor, who will be here on Friday, students watched the award-winning PBS film, The Triumph of Evil. The film documents in detail the harrowing unfolding of the genocide and the inaction of many foreign powers and the United Nations.

The Obsession with the Bomb: Atomic Cafe

Due to Ms. Freeman's absence, the Facing History classes will be looking at a series of films (and discussing them with Mr. Aversa) that are related to what is coming up in the course.

Today classes screened a sizable portion of the film The Atomic Cafe, which traces with tragic and delicious irony the march into an atomic era. Watching the natives smiling as they are told that their island will essentially be destroyed tells you something of what happens when those with power confront those without any. I find this one of the most chilling moments in the film.

The consequences of an obsession with atomic and nuclear power are left unexplored--indeed, they become something for us to ponder.

Mr. Aversa

Mr. Aversa took over Ms. Freeman's class today and will be covering for her until she returns. Thank you Mr. Aversa!

The Rape of Nanking

Today we began looking at the rape of Nanking, an expression aptly used by Iris Chang in her book of the same title.

We read (in progression in the class) a series of excerpted testimonies by survivors and/or witnesses of the events that happened in Nanking in 193. We also looked at a video clip of a surviving perpetrator, acknowledging what happened there.

Assignment: Japan and the Rape of Nanking (due Fri., Mar. 19)

World War II in East Asia

Why did we go to war in East Asia? Why did a world war erupt there?

In order to answer these questions, we retraced the history of Japan and its engagement with its East Asian neighbors prior to 1931. We looked at its takeover of Korea, its clashes with Russia, its ambitions regarding Manchuria.

We also looked at the perception of the "other" from both the Japanese and the American perspective by examining stereotypical visual images of the enemy.

Test on the rise of the Nazis and the Holocaust

All students had a test in class today, enabling them to synthesize their understandings about the rise of the Nazis and the Holocaust.

Happy evacuation day tomorrow.

The Sunflower: forgiveness, retribution, justice

We continued our examination of questions of forgiveness confronted in Simon Wiesenthal's The Sunflower. All classes examined the writings of other figures--both prominent and less so--who weighed in on Simon's dilemma. We discussed what sort of forgiveness is possible, who can forgive, and what crimes are perhaps unforgivable. Moreover, we looked at what happens when the victim is granted the power to forgive and what that does for healing and reconciliation.

Tomorrow in class, we will have a test with a single question that assesses our understanding of the rise of the Nazis and the Holocaust.

The issue of forgiveness

After distributing the assignment to interview folks over the age of 73 about what they knew of the atrocities of the Holocaust and the Japanese takeover of East Asia, we turned to the question of forgiveness. Our case study was that of Simon Wiesenthal who was brought to the bedside of a dying German soldier who asks Wiesenthal to grant him forgiveness.

What should Wiesenthal do? We used a filmed version of this story to explore the question and then, in some classes, we looked at the written responses to this in Wiesenthal's book, The Sunflower.

We will continue our investigation of this on Monday.

Assignment: A Question of Forgiveness: Simon Wiesenthal and The Sunflower (due Mon. Mar. 15)

Project: Facing the Holocaust and Atrocities in East Asia and Ourselves: What did Folks in the "Outside World" Learn and When Did they Learn It?" (due Wed., Mar 31)

The intersections of war, the Holocaust, and the liberation of the camps

Ironically, we in fact talk very little about World War II as a war, with battles and the like, in this course. Today, we devoted a bit of time to talking about the war as it played out in the European theater, from the Nazi invasions of Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France to the campaign against the Soviet Union. We speculated a bit on the "what ifs" of history: what if the Soviet Union had not so valiantly "hung on" as it was being pummeled by the Nazis? What if the siege of Stalingrad had turned out otherwise? We took stock of the nearly incomprehensible--and still highly debated numerically--death toll among the Soviets.

We then focused on the fact that, from mid-1942 onward, it was only a matter of time before the Nazis were defeated. As the British and American forces focused on retaking Germany from the west and the south and the Soviets surged westward, through Poland to Germany, the various concentration and death camps were liberated. We discussed the rapid Soviet arrival in Majdanek, the death camp on the outskirts of Lublin, and how intact it was, replete with intact gas chambers, crematoria, etc. (particularly compared to the condition of Auschwitz-Birkenau on its arrival). By contrast, the Amercans and the British liberated many concentration camps where thousands were dying of starvation, mistreatment, and disease.

What does one do at the end of such enormous violence and destruction? You liberate a concentration camp. There are immediate--emergency--needs. There are short-term goals and long-term ones. What might those be? How does one begin to bring about the end of a period of violence and make steps toward a period of healing, of reconstruction, of reconciliation? What does one do about the victims and the perpetrators? And where are the bystanders--from the neighbors of camps who said "they didn't know" to those who stood by and did nothing? What does one do about them?

The British, like the other allies, faced this dilemma when they liberated the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen. Just weeks before they arrived, Anne Frank, one of thousands of prisoners at the camp, died of typhus. Those who had survived to their arrival had to be helped--immediately. Decisions about potential war criminals, collecting evidence, dealing with potentially more disease, getting a local community to confront what was in their midst--all of these were left to the occupying troops and their leaders.

How the British conducted themselves and pursued these strategies was the subject of our analysis today. We looked at a film of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, shot by Alfred Hitchcock, who was working as a filmmaker assigned to the British force. (This film is the opening half-hour of Frontline's Memory of the Camps.) And we were left to wonder: did the British contribute constructively to the beginning of a healing/reconciliation/justice process for Germany and the Allies? A discussion to be continued.

Resistance and Resisters

"They went like sheep led to slaughter." So it's been said about many of the targeted groups--notably most often about the Jews--during the Holocaust.

Is this a myth? Surely it is clear that many of the people targeted by the Nazis faced choiceless choices, if any at all, and often they could do little to prevent what happened. That said, simply surviving one more day than that which the Nazis intended was a clear example of resisting. Anja and Vladek's survival was a clear act of resistance. Their hiding--their refusal to play by the Nazi rules--also was an act of resistance. We examined a poem that surveyed the range of forms of resistance.

So many people were bystanders. The consequences of being an onlooker are significant. As Edmund Burke wrote, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing," and Albert Einstein weighed in, “The world is too dangerous to live in—not because of the people who do evil, but because of the people who stand by and let them.”

What motivates people to rescue? To move them from being bystanders and inactive to upstanders--rescuers--and to participate. We looked at explanations as to why.

We then considered the most well-known act of resistance during the Holocaust: the remarkable Warsaw Ghetto uprising, in which participants, using a limited array of weaponry, fended off the Nazis for more than 3 months. In one class, we looked at a documentary film that accompanied the recent film on the Warsaw ghetto uprising, Uprising. In all classes, we read the letter from the leaders of the ghetto fighters group, urging people "not to go like sheep to slaughter." And we noted the song that became the partisans' fighting song, sung in every forest with resistance fighters throughout Europe.

Every student received an individual account of acts of resistance and/or rescue. The list of individuals, groups, or episodes is below. Tonight each is to post on the nature of resistance and/or rescue and how it plays into our understanding of this history.

Rescuers and/or resisters examined in readings on:
the Rosenstrasse women
Aristide de Sousa-Mendes
Arnold Douwes
Armin T. Wegner
Sempo (Chiuro) Sugihara
Raoul Wallenberg
Kurt Gerstein
Jan Zwartendijk
Sister Anna Borkowska
Walter Suskind
The White Rose (Sophie and Hans Scholl)
The Vilna Ghetto Fighters
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The Danish people resisting the Nazi Occupation
Arie van Mansum
The people of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon
Primo Levi
George Garel
Chaim Asa
Vladka Meed
The Sobibor Uprising
Martin Niemoeller
Miep Gies
Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, on the Sonderkommandoes uprising at Auschwitz, 1944
Dr. Adelaide Hautval

Why resist? Why rescue? Why not be a bystander?"

Susan Dambroff, "There were those" (poem)

Call to Resistance by the Jewish Fighting Organization in the Warsaw Ghetto, January 1943

The Partisans' Anthem

Reading and Post: The Nature of Resistance and Rescue (due Thu., Mar. 11)

Targeted Populations presentations, day 6: Homosexuals

Today we wrapped up our look at various targeted populations during the Holocaust by focusing on the homosexuals.

Targeted Populations presentations, day 5: Artists, writers, and musicians

In today's classes, we looked at the complex situations faced by artists, writers, and musicians who were personally persecuted and their work targeted during the Holocaust.

America and the Holocaust: a wrapup

In Ms. Freeman's absence (she was at a conference on Transitional Justice at the International Center for Transitional Justice in New York City), we watched the remainder of the film, America and the Holocaust, and learned how the Treasury Department of the US government was finally responsible for exposing the behavior of the US State Department about the fate of the Jews during World War II. Moreover, we learned the tragic fate of Kurt Klein's parents.

After the film, we worked on the assignment below, using the strategies of American activists to gain attention for the human rights abuses that are ongoing in 30 nations of the world.

Assignment: Human Rights Abuses in Your Country: Capturing the Attention of Ordinary Americans (due Monday, March 8)

Targeted populations presentations, day 4: Roma and Sinti

Today we had illuminating presentations offered in all classes on the Roma and the Sinti.

Targeted populations presentations, day 3: Afro-Germans/European Africans

Today, groups shared their research into the experience of Afro-Germans/European Africans, a group only recently receiving considerable scholarly attention, with all classes.

Targeted populations presentations, day 2: The disabled

Today's classes had indepth presentations on the fate of the disabled in Nazi occupied Europe.

Targeted populations presentations, day 1: Jehovah's Witnesses

In all classes, groups presented their research on the experience of the Jehovah's Witnesses during the Nazi era and the Holocaust.

Ms. Freeman also distributed permission slips for our trip to Schindler's List and to hear Rena Finder on Thursday, April 8th. These are to be returned asap.