The material used in this lesson plan is excerpted from
Chapter 4 (The Daily Lives of Jewish Children and Youth in the “Third Reich”)
of the book Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish
Life in Nazi Germany by Marion A. Kaplan.
OBJECTIVE: Students will be able to list and describe
changes that Jewish youth living in Germany faced as the Nazis put pressure on
the German Jewish population both politically and culturally.
MOTIVATIONAL
ACTIVITY: At the end of a class period,
assign students to diary their thoughts and movements from the time they leave
your classroom until the time they return.
They should include people they come into contact with either in person
or via electronic communication, problems they or their family or friends are
facing, issues involving school, religion, or work, foods they eat for snacks
or meals, bedtime/wake up times, television shows they watch, video games they
play, music they listen to, concerns for current events, etc. Tell them that it should be a pretty
thorough list of deeds and emotions. In
fact, give them a few minutes at the beginning of the next day’s class to
journal what they did the previous hour or two and during any passing periods.
In class,
ask for volunteers to share all or part of their journals. As a matter of preemption, the teacher might
lay some ground rules for appropriate response/behavior from classmates (if
you’ve not already done this). As the
student or students read or tell in detail about their past 24 hours, lead a
discussion about the rest of the class’ feelings about the freedom to do these
things. Ask, even if “you” wouldn’t do
this or that, is it important that someone can? Are there any things that have been discussed that could be found
offensive by another faction in your community? At the conclusion of the reports of several students, start to
compile a series of lists on the chalkboard under the following headings
(students who did not speak before the group may wish to throw out a thing or
two in this format):
I Would Give Up Maybe
I Could Do Without I’d
Never Give This Up
After the
board is full, ask if there are any changes (discussion will probably have
taken place during compilation of the lists).
You might lead them in a discussion of prohibitions they wish would be
revoked, such as the seatbelt law, no sale of cigarettes to minors, various
school rules, etc. At the conclusion of
this portion of the lesson (Note – you may wish to save the writing on the
chalkboard if possible for use the next day, or try to reproduce it on an
overhead film or PowerPoint…), read to the class the introduction to Chapter 4
from the book Between Dignity and Despair:
Jewish Life in Nazi Germany by Marion A. Kaplan.
In 1933, approximately 117,000 Jewish children and youth
between the ages of six and twenty-five lived in Germany. Compared with their elders, whose loss of
jobs and businesses proceeded erratically, the younger generation faced a more
drastic deterioration in conditions at public schools and among non-Jewish
friends, often finding their first safe haven in a Jewish school. They also experienced a drastic reduction in
their aspirations and lived in tense homes with families on edge. Gender played an important role in
children’s and young people’s lives.
Parents and Jewish communal organizations held different expectations
for girls and boys, and gender framed the ways in which children envisioned
their futures. But from 1933 on, both
girls and boys had to make unprecedented adjustments in their lives while
facing unrelenting assaults on their self-esteem (Kaplan 94).
Pass out
the complete Chapter 4 (pages 94-118) and assign for homework reading.
ENGAGING
ACTIVITY: Assign groups (3-4 students)
to go over the first portion of the chapter labeled “School” (pages
94-103). Have them categorize injustices
perpetrated upon the children discussed in the reading, in a format similar to
the activity the class carried out the day before. Headings for this portion of the reading might be –
Academic Social Mental/Emotional Physical
After a
fair amount of time to complete the charts, the groups can elect a spokesperson
to report their findings to the rest of the class. As the teacher calls for reports, ask each group to cite one item
in a column, give time for any discussion (perhaps another group categorized a
particular idea in a different column and would like to tell why), and then
allow a rep. from another team to give a report.
Upon
completion of this part of the assignment, have students move into the section
of the chapter entitled “Jewish Teens” (pages 109-116). Make a list of the various organizations
open to Jewish Teens and characteristics of each. This part of the assignment might be done in an outline format.
Students
should turn in all paperwork to the instructor for a homework grade.
ASSESSMENT: As the chapter included a section on Jewish
schools, whereby families attempted to segregate themselves voluntarily so as
to avoid the persecution of the public schools, and concluded with a segment
about children leaving home, sometimes to go into hiding, sometimes to go
abroad, the teacher might include an essay question on the test you will give
that covers material relating to Jewish children, or the rise of the Nazis in
the 1930’s. An example follows:
Write a
journal entry for one day expressing the thoughts, hopes, fears, and any events
that might have transpired in the life of a German Jewish youth on the verge
of:
Your work
should reflect information gleaned from the chapter we read in class. There is no specified length for this essay,
but you should include material representative of a full day’s activities in the
life of the teenager of whom you are writing.
RESOURCE:
Kaplan, Marion A. Between
Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany. London:
Oxford University Press,
1999. 290 pages. ISBN #0195130928.