A SHORT HISTORY OF ANTI-SEMITISM
TEACHING LESSON 1
HANDOUT 1A
YOU ARE THERE

It’s late in the afternoon on a weekday. You are home after school watching television. You hear people making loud noises outside on the street, so you get up and look out the window. You see people being marched down your street, at gunpoint by men in uniforms. The people are your neighbors. You also recognize some of the men in uniform. One of them works at the grocery store where your family shops. One of the people being marched down the street is the lady from the corner house with her two kids. “What’s going on?” you call out to people walking quickly by on the street.

• Never mind,” says one.
• Don’t ask,” says someone else.
• It doesn’t concern you,” says a third person. Then the street is deserted again.  

The next day at school you notice several empty seats in your English class. By the end of the week more kids are missing. None of your friends seem to know where any of them have gone. Then one of your teachers disappears, replaced by a substitute. No one knows why. “Never mind,” they say. “A new teacher will come. Maybe she’ll give less homework.”

Then one Saturday you call a friend to see about going to a movie. The phone rings and rings. Finally a recorded message comes over the line: “Sorry—this number is no longer in service.” You hurry over to your friend’s house. The door is open. Strangers are carrying away furniture that belongs to your friend’s family. Your friend is nowhere around. You step into the house, but a police officer stops you. “Sorry,” he says. “This house is off limits. It now belongs to the government.”

• But why?”   you say.
• The people who lived here have been taken away,” he says.  
• What did they do wrong?” you ask.
• People like them, they didn’t have to do anything wrong to get in trouble. Now if I were you, I’d move along and not ask any more questions.”  

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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/