Handout 5A: Esther and Elias

Handout 5B: Susan

Handout 5C: Rena: First Weeks at Auschwitz-Birkenau

Handout 5D: Julius

Vocabulary: Auschwitz, concentration camp, displaced persons camp, commando, resistance, SS, selection, transport, underground, crematorium, death march.

In this lesson students will read about the experiences of four North Carolinians who survived the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. As they read, encourage students to think about the ways in which the Nazis attempted to dehumanize their prisoners. They can also consider what motivated these people to survive, what strategies they developed to help them survive and what part luck played in their survival. Have students discuss why these people wanted to tell others about their experiences even although it is extremely painful for them to do so. Before handouts are distributed, review the vocabulary for this lesson. Definitions of all the terms are found in the Glossary or in this lesson plan.  

Divide the class into four groups of four students each. Give a member of each group Handout 5A, 5B, 5C, or 5D. Provide all groups with Handout 5E which gives additional backgroundinformation on these four survivors. Students can also locate the places named in their readings on a map of Europe. If a detailed map is not available, students might look at the maps in Martin Gilbert’s The Atlas of the Holocaust.

Within groups, have each student read and answer the questions at the end of his or her handout and then summarize the handout for the other members of the group. When all students have shared their findings, have each group use these questions to compare and contrast the experiences they have read about. Ask each group to select a spokesperson to report the group’s answers to the class.

1. In what ways were the experiences of these people alike? (All of them lost their freedom and all control over their time. They all lived in fear and uncertainty, but tried, in accordance with their abilities, to react in a way that would help them survive.)
2. What kept most people from trying to escape from the trains going to the camps? From the camps? How successful do you think the escape attempts were? (Students should be aware that deportees and camp inmates were unarmed, malnourished, and shell-shocked from their treatment in the ghettos or from incarceration in the cattle cars. They had no money or food, no weapons or ways to get weapons, no ration cards or identification papers, were surrounded by largely hostile local populations who were very unlikely to help them, and risked endangering those around them by trying to escape or fight back. For these reasons, escape attempts rarely succeeded.)
3. In her selection, Rena talks about learning to be “camp smart.” In what ways were these survivors camp smart? What do you think helped them survive their experiences? (Students might mention personal courage, resource-fulness, the help of others, religious faith, intelligence or cleverness, determination to survive, luck, the ending of the war. In the case of Rena, having her sister to look after her might also have helped her survive. Point out that although the resourcefulness of these survivors under pressure was an important factor in their survival, they were also just plain lucky.   Emphasize that for every person who survived because of bravery, resourcefulness, and chance good fortune, many hundreds of thousands more who were equally brave and resourceful died in labor camps or gas chambers.)
4. Why do you think the people you have read about wanted to tell others about their experiences? (When one of the survivors was asked why she was willing to visit schools and talk to students about her experiences, she replied, “When you read about something in a book, it’s entirely different from when you meet a person face to face and you realize that they’ve got two hands, two arms, and two eyes, and they’re very much like you. It helps you realize that they have the same right to exist as anybody in this world.”)
5. In her testimony, Susan states that making people eat and drink from the same bowl and use that bowl for urination and defecation was one of the ways prisoners were dehumanized. This enabled the guards to justify treating them like animals or, as Susan says, “like vermin.” In what other ways were people dehumanized at Auschwitz? What do you think the purpose of this treatment was? For a concluding activity, have each group prepare a group statement expressing the members’ feelings about what they have read. The reaction statement might take the form of a poem, picture, or an audio or video sound or sight collage using passages from the readings. Encourage students to be creative in their responses.

Connect to Language arts: Students can compare and contrast the wartime experiences of the people they have read about with the experiences of Anne Frank or of Annie and Sini in the book The Upstairs Room by Johanna Reiss. More advanced high school students might read Primo Levi’s Survival at Auschwitz. Students can note the dates of the experiences described in these handouts and interview adults who lived during this period, asking them to describe what their lives were like and what they knew or did not know about what was going on in eastern Europe at this time.

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/