A SHORT HISTORY OF ANTI-SEMITISM
TEACHING LESSON 1

Handout 1A:    You are there

Handout 1B:   Fact—Not Fantasy

Handout 1C:   Where Does It Come From?

Vocabulary:    Kristallnacht (Crystal Night), Gestapo

Read Overview 1 and summarize for students. Point out that throughout history the treatment of Jews has included both demonization and dehumanization. Have students look for examples of ways Jews were “demonized” by the Nazis in the prewar years. The experience of both Walter in Lesson One and Henry in Lesson Three provide many example of deliberate isolation and demonization of Jews in the prewar period.  

Distribute Handout 1A. Have students discuss the reading, using the questions that follow.  

1. Do you think the events described in this story could happen to anyone in the community where you live? Why or why not?
2. Could this happen anywhere? If so, where?

If students say that such events could not happen in their community, have them give reasons for their opinions. What would prevent such events from happening? (public opinion and public protest, laws, police, government leaders) What rights do private citizens have in the United States that protect them from being evicted from their homes or arrested? (Bill of Rights, habeas corpus, due process, and so on)

After a brief discussion of Handout 1A, tell students that the next account they will read is fact, not fiction. It is part of the testimony of a survivor of the Holocaust whose name is Walter. Like the other survivors students will read about in this resource guide, he lives in North Carolina. Tell students that in 1935, when the Nazis took over in Germany, Walter was eleven years old. His mother was a widow. His father, a veteran who had fought in the German army in World War I, had died some years earlier. He and his mother lived in an apartment in the town of Karlsruhe, near Berlin. You may want to review the events of Kristallnacht discussed in Overview 3.

Distribute Handout 1B.   Use the following questions to discuss the reading:  

1. What was the first change Walter noticed in his school?
2. Why do you think Walter was not permitted to say “Heil Hitler” or to wear a uniform?
3. How were the other students and teachers told to act towards Walter and other Jewish students?
4. What was the effect of these restrictions on Walter and other students?  

(Students should recognize that such rules were a deliberate attempt to isolate and humiliate these students, to make them outsiders or different from their classmates, and to encourage their classmates to think of them as both different and inferior.)

Encourage students to think about how they might feel if they were not permitted to dress like others in their school or if they learned that they would be sent to another school in the middle of the year. What might they or their parents do about these rules if they were unhappy about them? Why couldn’t Walter’s mother do anything? Emphasize that these rules were government policy, not school rules. Then ask:

1. What changes did Walter notice after Kristallnacht?  
2. What happened to the teacher and the principal at Walter’s school? Why do you think they were taken away?  
3. How did the “good Nazi” help Walter and his family?  
4. Why do you think Walter says the man was a good Nazi, “if there is such a thing”?
   Conclude by discussing the final sentence in the reading.   Why do students think the grandmother’s neighbor wanted to help Walter’s family, even though he belonged to a political party that actively preached hatred of Jews? (Although the neighbor was prejudiced against Jews, the grandmother did not fit his negative stereotype of a Jew. Because he knew and liked her, he saw her as different from other Jews that he had only heard or read about.)
5. Is a person who helps others whom he knows personally, while carrying out actions that violate the rights of those he does not know, a “good” person?  

The concluding activity gives students a chance to examine the origins of some of their own stereotypes. Explain to students that everyone has stereotypes about others and stereotyping can lead to prejudice. Stereotypes are based largely on generalizations that people make about a person or a group without taking into account the individual differences among group members. Encourage students to think of experiences which have made them question stereotypes or misconceptions that they have had about groups of people. For example, the belief that all women are poor drivers or all Southerners speak slowly may change after driving with or listening to people who don’t fit these stereotypes. Students might think of how their attitudes have changed after meeting and getting to know people from a different social group within the school, from a different neighborhood, another part of the state or country, from schools that have sports rivalries with their school, or who dress or drive a car very different from their own preferences.  

Have students cite groups of people that are “demonized” in the media or within their own peer groups. Immediately after the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building in April 1995, many Americans assumed that this terrorist act had been committed by someone from the Middle East. Ask students how stereo-types of people from this region of the world were formed.  

Next list the names of the following groups on the chalkboard:   

Politicians
Old People
Teenagers
Harvard University Students
North Carolina State University Students
Professional Basketball Players
Professional Ballet Dancers
Welfare Recipients
Computer Programmers
Germans
New Yorkers
Southerners
Migrant Workers
Democrats
Republicans  

Have students number a sheet of paper from one to fifteen. Next to each number, have them quickly list words or phrases they associate with each group.   Tell students that their papers will not be turned in or shared with other class members. Encourage them to be as truthful as possible. Then have them put a plus or minus next to each group on the list, indicating whether the words or phrases they have listed on their paper about this group are generally positive or negative.  

Distribute Handout 1C. This handout lists the most common sources of our attitudes and beliefs about other people. Have each student pick four groups from their list about which they have fairly negative attitudes. Ask students to use the chart to analyze the role each of these opinion sources has had in the formation of their negative stereotypes. Have students consider the extent to which their attitudes and assumptions about a group are based on repeated direct contact with member of this group and to what extent students have generalized from a single experience or from the portrayal of this group in the media. Ask students why they think movies and television often present a one-dimensional portrayal of certain groups. Ask students how such a portrayal contributes to the formation of stereotypes. Conclude by asking students what consequences viewing these groups in a stereotypical way have for both those who are stereotyped and those who hold these stereotypes.  

Published in cooperation with the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust
Copyright © 2002 by the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust. Updated 2005.
North Carolina Department of Public Instruction
http://www.ncpublicschools.org/holocaust_council/