Handout 3A:    The Shame of Nuremberg

Handout 3B:    Diary Entry: Anne Frank

Handout 3C:    Henry Before and After Kristallnacht

Vocabulary:     Aryan, Nuremburg Laws, Gestapo, Kindertransport, Reichstag

Read Overview 3 and summarize for students. Then write the terms democracy and dictatorship on the board. Have students identify the major differences between these two forms of government. Through discussion, students should recognize that a dictatorship is a government in which power is held by one person or a small group. A key characteristic of a dictatorship is that it is not responsible to the people and cannot be limited by them. Those in power have absolute authority over the people they govern.  

Many modern dictatorships are also totalitarian. This mans that those in power exercise total control over every aspect of their citizens’ lives from school to workplace, from what people read to how they spend their leisure time. In a democracy, political authority rests with the people and democratic leaders govern with the consent of the governed. The rights of citizens are protected by law. The majority rules, but the minority has rights that are protected by law. Among these rights are freedom of religion, assembly and petition, speech, and press.

Review the differences between these forms of government. Then distribute Handout 3A. Tell the class that this is a copy of an actual newspaper article that appeared in the New York Herald Tribune in 1935. Use these questions to start discussion:

1. What lawmaking body passed the Nuremberg Laws?
2. To what political party did most members of the Reichstag belong?
3. The members of the Reichstag were elected by the people of Germany. Does this mean that it was a democratic legislature? Why or why not?  
4. What is meant by the statement in the article that the Reichstag is “now nothing more than a rubber stamp”?
5. Was there any discussion of these laws before they were passed? Did any members of the Reichstag oppose them? How do you think opposition to the laws would have been treated?  
6. Who was hurt by these laws?
7. What restrictions were put on Jews by these laws? What were the penalties for breaking these laws?
8. What do you think the Nazi party hoped to achieve with these laws?

Focus discussion on the following question: What is the difference, if any, between individual acts of prejudice and discrimination and those which are carried out through government laws? (The passage of the Nuremberg Laws by the Reichstag encouraged and supported prejudice and made hatred of Jews acceptable. A society that tolerates or legalizes bigotry through its government is different from a society where discrimination is unlawful.   In a democratic society like the United States, individual acts of discrimination and prejudice do occur. However, they are not sanctioned by the government and are often actively opposed by government laws and regulations. Furthermore, in countries where discrimination is illegal, people who believe they have been treated unfairly can seek redress through the courts.)

Next have students suggest ways laws such as these would have been discussed in a democratic legislature like the Congress. Point out that German Jews had no way of expressing their opposition to these laws, because they had no representation in the legislature. Ask students how Americans opposed to the passage of laws can protest against them before their passage. (by contacting their legislative representatives, public petitions and protests, use of media) How would a minority group in a democracy protest such laws once they were passed? (legal actions, using television and other media as a forum for discussion, public protests, possibly economic boycotts)

Distribute Handout 3B. Have students read the handout. Then list on the chalkboard the restrictions Anne describes such as riding on a train or subway, driving a car, going to the movies. Emphasize that German Jews faced these restrictions solely because they were born Jewish or had Jewish parents, grandparents, or great grandparents. Prejudice rather than illegal activities by Jews made them subject to these laws.  

Connect to Language Arts: Ask students to imagine that these laws were applied to all families with children between the ages of fourteen and eighteen in your school. The reasons why these laws apply only to this set of students has not been made clear to students. However, they must follow the rules or face serious penalties. Have each student write a paragraph or diary entry describing how his or her life would change if they and their families were faced with such laws. Have students describe a typical school day and a weekend day. How would students’ after-school activities change?   their jobs change? their schooling change?

Connect to American/North Carolina History: Encourage students to think of periods in American history when citizens have been treated unfairly as a result of government legislation. Compare and contrast the Nuremberg Laws with such laws as the Indian Removal Act during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, the black codes and Jim Crow laws during the period following Reconstruction, and the internment camps for some Japanese Americans on the West Coast during World War II. Areas for comparison and contrast include purpose or aims of such laws, groups affected by the laws, responses of citizens to such laws, and differences in ways citizens in a democracy and an authoritarian society could respond to such laws. Provide students with a copy of the Bill of Rights. Have students decide which of the Nuremberg Laws and the laws cited by Anne Frank in her diary would be illegal under the Bill of Rights.  

Distribute Handout 3C. Tell students that this survivor testimony examines the experiences of a German Jewish boy in prewar Germany. Locate the city of Dresden on a map. Explain that the Kindertransport, or Children’s Transport, mentioned by Henry in this selection refers to the transporting of Jewish children from Germany and other Nazi-occupied countries during the prewar years. The Kindertransports allowed several thousand children to escape some parts of Europe under Nazi domination at that time. The children were sent without their parents to places of temporary or permanent refuge. Great Britain, where Henry went, provided shelter for some 10,000 Jewish children between the ages of four months and seventeen years. The first trainload of 100 children left Germany on Decem-ber 3, 1938. The last train left Germany at the end of August 1939. The events of Kristallnacht that Henry relates and the round-up of 30,000 Jews by the Nazis put pressure on the British government to admit the young refugees. The following questions might be used to discuss the handout.

1. What two events of 1935 made Henry uneasy? How was Henry personally affected by the passage of the Nuremberg Laws?
2. Review the Nuremberg Laws in Handout 3A. What part of the law forced Henry’s family to dismiss Kaethe? What penalty did Henry’s family face for failing to dismiss her?
3. Why was it so difficult for Henry’s father to find a job after he was dismissed form the bank? How do you think the removal of Jews from their jobs as doctors, lawyers, and other professional positions might have affected the way non-Jewish Germans viewed them? How might it have affected how they felt about themselves?
4. How did Hitler use the shooting of the undersecretary at the German Embassy in Paris to further his own anti-Semitic program? Why does Henry call Kristallnacht a “supposedly spontaneous outburst of popular anger”?
5. How was Henry’s family personally affected by Kristallnacht? What does Henry mean when he refers to his father as a “fatherland-loving” father? Why did Henry’s father think the Gestapo would not take him away once they knew of his status as a World War I veteran?  
6. How did his stay in Buchenwald affect Henry’s father?
7. According to Henry why was it so difficult for people like his family to leave Germany up to 1941?
8. How did Henry get out of Germany? Why did his mother want him sent to Britain instead of Holland? Was her belief that Holland would not be a safe haven correct? Explain.  
9. Why weren’t other members of Henry’s family able to protest his father’s seizure and imprisonment? Why wasn’t the Dresden Jewish community able to protest the destruction of Kristallnacht or the passage of the Nuremberg Laws? How might Americans have responded to each of these events if they had objected to them?

Connect to Language Arts and Literature: Have students read Kinder-transport by Olga Drucker (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1992). This book, especially appropriate for middle schoolers, is a powerful autobiographical account of a young Jewish girl’s struggles as a refugee in England from 1939-1945. For a writing activity, have students imagine they are a young Jewish boy or girl leaving Germany on a Kindertransport. Have students describe their feel-ings about leaving family, friends, and their German homeland. As an alternative activity, students might make a timeline of Henry’s life in the prewar years, adding events in German and world history to the timeline to indicate how the changes in Henry’s life are related to events taking place in prewar Germany.

The ideal state is that in which an injury done to the least of its citizens is an injury done to all.

Solon, Athenian Statesman

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/