REMEMBERING AND FORGETTING
TEACHING LESSON 10
EPILOGUE

Handout 11:          The News from Germany: 1998

Optional Video:   Not In Our Town: Heroes

Vocabulary:         neo-Nazis

Draw a continuum like this on the chalkboard:

TOTAL ACCEPTANCE          PREJUDICE          REJECTION/DEATH

Explain that the term Total Acceptance describes a society in which the poorest, least powerful people and the highest, most powerful people in the society are all subject to the same laws. In such a society, the civil and human rights of all individuals are equally respected. At the other end of the continuum, the term Total Rejection describes a society in which the state is all-powerful and individuals have no rights. The midpoint on this line is prejudice, where the rights of minorities begin to suffer. Have volunteers draw X’s at the points on the line were they would put their own community, North Carolina, or the United States. Working in groups, have students reach a consensus conclusion and then send a representative to the chalkboard to show their placements on the continuum and explain the reasons for their choices.

Then focus on Germany in the late 1930s and the war years. Have volunteers locate on the continuum where such actions as these fall:  

1. Nuremburg Laws  
2. Kristallnacht
3. Yellow star badge introduced
4. Jewish property given to pro-Nazi non-Jews
5. ghettoization
6. death camps built in Poland
7. Jews collected and deported “to the East.”

Have students use the Time Line in the back of the book to pick other events for the continuum. Emphasize that Hitler’s treatment of the Jews was not an abrupt move from protection of human rights by the government to genocide. It was a steady progression from laws limiting civil rights, to ghettos, to the plan for the genocide of the Jewish people. Along the way, the Nazis skillfully built popular support by playing on existing fears or hatred of Jews.

Nazi Hunter Simon Wiesenthal has identified six conditions that he believes made it possible for the Holocaust to take place. These conditions are:

1. The existence of a feeling of overpowering hatred by the people of a nation
2. A charismatic leader able to identify the feelings of anger and alienation that existed within the nation and convert these feelings into hatred of a target group
3. A government bureaucracy that could be taken over and used to or-ganize a policy of repression and extermination
4. A highly developed state of technology that makes possible methods of mass extermination
5. War or economic hard times
6. A target group against whom this hatred could be directed.

Write six of these conditions on the board. Then distribute Handout 11. Have students decide whether any of these conditions existed in Germany in 1998 when this article was written. How many, if any, exist in any country today? Have students locate this event on the continuum. Discuss what students might do or encourage others to do to make sure that situations such as this do not escalate further. Ask:

1. What role should the government play in ending outbreaks of violence such as this?
2. Do religious institutions and private citizens have a responsibility to help defuse such situations?

Point out that Germany has responded to the growth of neo-Nazi groups in a variety of ways including the banning of such parties and of neo-Nazi literature and the organization of anti-hate group rallies. Note also that the two young men who attacked Thavr were being put on trial.

Connect to Civic Participation: Have students report to the class on how individual Americans and the U.S. government have responded to the rise of hate crimes in this country. In 1993, when violence and vandalism by white supremacists threatened Jews, Native Americans, and African Americans in Billings, Montana, the city’s residents fought back in a variety of ways, including the formation of a human rights watch committee and holding anti-hate rallies. After a rock was thrown through the window of the home of a Jewish family where a Chanukah menorah was displayed, the local newspaper printed a full-page menorah for families of all faiths to hang in the windows of their homes to show community solidarity. Nearly 10,000 residents did so. The video Not In Our Town: Heroes tells the story of events in Billings. A second video, Not In Our Town II: Citizens Respond to Hate looks at how communities in the United States have taken a stand against intolerance. Students can also use the Internet to find articles on responses to the hate crimes that resulted in the dragging death of James Byrd in Texas in June 1998 and the murder of Matthew Shepherd in Wyoming in October 1998.

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/