Transcript Remembrance, participation, and reflection

•Why
do people build memorials?
•Why is remembering the Holocaust important?
•To whom is it important?
•What does “Facing History and Ourselves” mean to you?



Juxtapose this with a comment by Hitler in 1939, “Who after all
speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?”
He is referring to the mass murder of over 1 million innocent
Armenians by the Turks during WW I.
Nearly 20 years after that genocide, the perpetrators were
unpunished, the Turkish government denied it occurred, and the
media outside the Armenian community had largely forgotten.
“Unless we keep hammering home the irrefutable
and indisputable facts of the human experience,
history as it was experienced by people, we are
going to find ourselves increasingly unable to
draw distinctions between what was and what we
think was.”
Bill Moyers, journalist

In the postwar years in Germany amnesia
became a contagious national disease, affecting
even postwar children. In this new
world…there was no room for curious children
and adolescents. We postponed our questions
and finally abandoned them altogether.
Bini Reichel, history book writer

Richard von Weizsaecker, President of West
Germany at the 40th Anniversary of WW II



Germany and France have made Holocaust
denial a crime, punishable by a fine and
imprisonment.
Education is encouraged.
“Through his books, Elie Wiesel has given us
not only an eyewitness account of what
happened, but also an analysis of the evil
powers which lay behind the events.”
Nobel Peace Prize chairman awarding Weisel in 1986

To what extent can any memorial help us
truly understand the experiences of victims of
the Holocaust? How can we symbolize the
vast number of victims while still honoring
each unique life that was lost—the
schoolchild, the aunt, the tailor, the physicist,
the sister, etc? Who should decide how the
Holocaust is represented and remembered—
what symbols are used, what facts are
presented, and whose stories are told?
The Paper Clips Project represents what can happen when
individuals and groups participate in their broader community and
world…students have a more confident and informed sense of the
role they can play, however small, in creating more tolerant humane
communities—in their classrooms, their schools, their homes, their
neighborhoods, and in the larger world.
“The problem of democracy is
the problem of the individual
citizen who takes himself or
herself lightly historically…
By that I mean if you do not
believe that you can make a
difference, you’re not going to
try to make a difference,
you’re not going to try to
matter, and you will leave it to
someone else who may or may
not do what is in the best
interest of your values or of
democracy’s values.”
Bill Moyers
In 1938, Hitler told a crowd
of thousands of young
people, “Never forget that
one day you will rule the
world.”
He understood that how the
young are educated
influences their beliefs and
attitudes as adult citizens.
Education can foster the
skills, habits, and attitudes
required for thoughtful, civic
engagement in a diverse
nation.
Hitler’s words, certainly true,
can have an ironic ring now.

Read history: so learn your place in Time;
And go to sleep: all this was done before;
We do it better, fouling every shore;
We disinfect, we do not probe the crime.
Our engines plunge into the seas, they climb
Above our atmosphere: we grow not more
Profound as we approach the ocean's floor;
our flight is lofty; it is not sublime.
Yet long ago this Earth by struggling men
Was scuffed, was scraped by mouths that bubbled mud;
And will be so again, and yet again;
Until we trace our poison to its bud
And root, and there uproot it: until then,
Earth will be warmed each winter by man's blood.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Margot Stern Strom’s entire lesson plan from which
much of this information came is posted on the
website along with several interesting links.
Follow up activities from which to choose:
 Silent then Sound Graffiti Board
 Make a Memorial
 Found Poem or Black Out Poetry