South Carolina Voices: Lessons from the Holocaust

TEACHING LESSON FOUR

Materials: Handout 4A: Rudy in the Ghetto, Handout 4B: Pincus in the Ghetto, Handout 4C: Renee in the Ghetto, Handout 4D: Ben in the Ghetto

Key Terms: ghetto, resettlement, Judenrat, deportation

PROCEDURE

Motivate: Read Overview VI and summarize for students. In this lesson students will learn from firsthand accounts by South Carolina survivors about life in the ghettos. Review the definition of a ghetto with the class and make sure students understand that the ghettos created by the Nazis were not like the ghettos the Jews had lived in during the Middle Ages. Medieval ghettos protected Jews and their institutions. Within them, Jews were able to study, pray, and socialize as they pleased.

The ghettos devised by the Germans were a step in the Nazi extermination plan. They were assembly and collection points for Jews. Within the ghettos, Nazi authorities had complete control. In these places people were deliberately starved. Many died of exposure and the epidemics of typhoid and other diseases that spread throughout the ghettos.

Note that the phrase "resettlement to the East" was a euphemism the Germans used for the forced removal of Jews from Western Europe to ghettos in Eastern Europe. Later, it also refered to removal to the death camps.

Develop: Divide the class into four-member cooperative learning groups. Give each member of a group a different handout (Handouts 4A, 4B, 4C, 4D) for this lesson. Remind students that the people they are reading about were teenagers when these events took place. Write the questions below on the board. Have each student in the group use these questions to summarize his or her reading for other group members. Then have the group as a whole compare the four accounts of ghetto life. Explain that group members will have to get information from all four handouts to answer the questions.

1. Who sent the person you have read about to a ghetto? What happened to their personal belongings and household goods when they were forced into the ghetto?

2. Where was the ghetto in your reading located? How did the person get there?

3. What kept Jews from leaving the ghetto? Why was it difficult to escape? (Students often cannot understand why more prisoners of the ghetto didn't attempt to escape. Through discussion, students should recognize that ghetto life deprived its victims of their dignity, their resources, and their health. Many believed this imprisonment was temporary and would end when Germans came to their senses and rejected Nazi rule. The victims were often old or sickly, and most had no other place to go. Even if residents could have escaped, few countries were willing to accept those trying to flee Europe. The United States and the Western European democracies had strict quotas limiting the number of immigrants from Germany and the Eastern European countries.)

4. What rights, if any, did the person you read about have in the ghetto?

5. What were the most serious problems the people in the ghetto faced? How did they get food? What kind of work did they do?

6. What strategies if any did the people you read about use to stay alive and to keep their spirits up?

7. What do you think would be the worst part of ghetto life for you—loss of home, isolation from friends, lack of privacy, crowding, hunger, or fear of the future?

8. What contact did ghetto residents have with people living outside the ghetto? What can you infer about how non-Jews, living in the communities where ghettos existed, felt about the treatment of the Jews? Why might non-Jews have been reluctant to help Jews in the ghetto? Were the non-Jews in the communities where ghettos existed responsible in any way for loss of the rights of those held captive in the ghettos? (In discussing question 8, be sure to note that local people, many of whom benefitted from the Jews' removal, failed to protest this clear violation of human rights. This failure allowed the level of violence against Jews escalate.)

When the assignment is completed, have each group choose a spokesperson to present the group's answers to the class. Conclude by pointing out that ghettoization further served to dehumanize the Jews and separate them from non-Jews. This isolation made the Jews seem foreign or even dangerous to those around them and served to reinforce existing prejudices.

Putting people in ghettos, forcing them to wear the Yellow Star, depriving them of food, medicine, and sanitary facilities were methods of dehumanization. This treatment reinforced stereotypes of Jews as subhuman or inferior. Making the Jews less than human helped anti-Semites justify their treatment of them.

Extend: Examine ways people with strong prejudices attempt to make the victims of their bigotry seem less than human. Techniques range from ethnic and racial jokes and cartoons to segregation and denial of access to economic and educational opportunities. Parallels may be drawn to attitudes and beliefs about African Americans during slavery, and depictions of Chinese Americans in cartoons of California newspapers in the late 1800s.

The following illustration can help students appreciate the crowded conditions in the ghettos. One of the largest ghettos, the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland, was about 1 1/3 square miles in area. Identify an area within your community that is about 1 1/3 square miles. A university campus or a residential neighborhood might be an example. Choose an area students are familiar with. Estimate the number of people living in this area. Then explain that in this area where (use the statistics for your community) live, the Nazis put anywhere from 330,000 to 500,000 people. This is more than the population of Columbia, Charleston, Greenville, and Myrtle Beach combined.

Students can also be asked to imagine what it would be like to have 20 extra people living in their home.

HANDOUT 4A—RUDY IN THE GHETTO

(When the war began, Rudy and his family were living in Cologne, Germany. In this reading, Rudy describes his family's forced move to the ghetto and their separation from other family members.)

On September 1, 1939, the newspaper on the corner proclaimed that Germany was at war with Poland. Three days later Germany was fighting France and England as well. I had just turned 14 and to me this was all marvelously exciting. There was a small overpass near my house and I saw a German sentry guarding the railroad with bayonet and rifle.

We had many relatives in Cologne. My father had three sisters. My cousins were also there. In 1941 the resettlement orders began coming. All of our relatives were taken away. We were spared to about the beginning of 1942.

On May 30, 1942, Cologne suffered a devastating bombing raid by Allied forces. Around one thousand British and American bombers took part. Cologne turned into a rubble heap.

Two months later we received our notice to report to the railhead with 50 pounds of personal baggage. They had old railroad cars with wooden seats, and we were given one compartment for ourselves. We did not know where we were going. We were nervous, but we were still together. My grandmother was with us. We had my small baby sister with us. We had a baby carriage and food. We had taken some water. I don't think the train stopped anywhere in Germany for anything: for food, for water, anything. It reached its destination in about three days.

We arrived somewhere in Czechoslovakia. We were told to get out of the railroad car. None of us knew where we were. We got out and started marching. Each of us marched with 50 pounds of baggage. We trudged some five miles to an old fortress where we were met by Czech militia. All of our belongings were inspected for valuables. They were very thorough. Not very many people came through with anything but the bare belongings and some food.

It was still daylight when we passed through the outer gates. We had to pass through a checkpoint. At the other end, families were separated, male and female. My mother with the two youngest children went one way. My father, three brothers, and I went another way. We were sent to an old, two-story house with six or seven rooms. We were assigned a room in which there were already eight men. Several days later we learned that our mother and the two younger children were in a large stone barrack for women.

We did not know where we were until the next day when we saw Czech writing on old stores. We were in Czechoslovakia in the Theresienstadt (Tur-Ray-Zen-Stat) ghetto. Over 60,000 people were crowded into a space that had never housed more than 8,000. By the end of 1944 around 120,000 people were crammed into this ghetto. No privacy whatsoever. We did have our small, assigned space. Our suitcases were there and a few blankets that we put on the floor.

The next morning we were given a ration card for food. A man stood there and clipped our coupons. We were given one cup of coffee, a pat of margarine, two slices of coarse bread, and a teaspoon of marmalade for our breakfast.

After two or three days we were assigned work. All the new male arrivals that were capable had one assignment—grave digger. Because we were young and able to lift a spade, we were marched out to the huge burial grounds. There we dug graves. People, especially the older people, 80 and 90-year-olds, were dying like flies. No food or medical attention. We did this job just long enough to learn the ropes. In the ghetto we learned the ropes very fast. You had to know what to do and where to trade what for what.

Then I found out about a separate building within the ghetto were young people ages six to 18 lived and worked. The work was less horrible than our first job. I was able to get into this building with my brothers. My father did not go with us. My mother was still in a barracks for women, with the smaller children.

We made the best of our new life. Books were smuggled in to us by Czechoslovakian Jews newly arrived in the ghetto. We had sort of a library. But we were very much restricted in what we could do. We thought that now that we were in the ghetto we would no longer have to wear the yellow star as we had been forced to do in Germany. But no, even in the ghetto with only Jews around, we still had to wear that hateful yellow star.

HANDOUT 4B—PINCUS IN THE GHETTO

(Pincus Kolender was 14 years old when his family was forced to move to the Bochnia ghetto. Unlike some other families, his family was not required to move to another city because the ghetto was in his hometown. Bochnia was one of Poland's larger cities. In this reading he describes his life in the ghetto.)

In 1940 they put us in a ghetto. It was a small area with thousands of people—just three or four blocks—so it was very crowded. Jews were brought to Bochnia from surrounding areas. It was the main ghetto. We didn't have to move because where we lived was already in the ghetto. But Jews who lived in other parts of the city had to move into the ghetto. There were not enough apartments for everyone. Whole families were put in one room. People lived ten or 15 to a room.

In the ghetto, males from 15 to 55 years old were ordered into forced labor. The Germans came for us in trucks at six in the morning. We had to build highways, dig ditches, and do all kinds of hard labor, but at least we came back in the evenings to our homes.

The Jewish police were our guards inside the ghetto. At work, we had Germans civilians guarding us. At that time there was no military just civilians watching us. We were under guard. In the ghetto there was constant fear. We knew something more was going to happen, but we were trapped. There was nowhere to go. The ghetto was sealed. To go out into a Gentile or Aryan neighborhood, you had to have a pass or go with a policeman. Polish police were outside watching the ghetto. If they caught you without any identification, without any passport or papers, you were shot on the spot.

Food, medicine and supplies were smuggled in at night. That's the only way we got food. We paid a high price for that food. A lot of people went out at night to buy food from the Polish farmers. If anybody was caught, they were shot.

In the ghetto our religious services had to be held secretly. We still went to synagogue. Not in a real synagogue but in homes. It was forbidden to assemble. No more than six or eight people could be together. We had services morning and evening. We always had a lookout to watch for the Germans. When we heard some coming, everybody dispersed so they wouldn't see us. I lived in the ghetto from 1940 to 1942.

HANDOUT 4C: RENEE IN THE GHETTO

(Renee Kolender was born in Poland in 1922 in a town called Kozenice (Co-Za-Nee-Cha) about 90 kilometers from Warsaw. She had two brothers. Her father was an accountant who worked in the town's only bank before the war started. She was 17 when her family was put in the Kozenice ghetto.)

The first thing the Nazis did in the ghetto was to form a Judenrat (U-Den-Rot) which means a Jewish council or committee. The Germans told the council what they wanted and its members carried out their orders. SS officers would tell them we need so many thousands of zlotys, the Polish currency. This money had to be collected from the people in the ghetto. Another job of the committee was to supply men for Nazi work projects. Later the SS came to our houses and picked up young men right off the streets. They put them to work digging ditches and cleaning the streets and apartments of Germans. They did all kinds of hard, physical labor. Next younger girls and boys had to go to work also. They picked us up in the morning and brought us back at night.

At this time, my school ended too—end of everything. We had to move from our apartment to my grandparents' house. Their house was in the part of town where the ghetto was formed. The Nazis also brought a lot of people to Kozenice from smaller towns all around. Apartments were impossible to get. We were lucky. We stayed with my grandparents.

We lived from day to day. There were no paying jobs. Nobody could work. We had nothing to do, nothing. Within the ghetto, we formed a committee to help the poor. A lot of people that came to the ghetto were very poor. Somebody was always at the door crying for food. The poor couldn't feed their children. Twice a day, some of us mixed formulas and gave it to the poor children. But it wasn't enough. The children ate potato and onion peelings from the trash. They ate anything they could get. Children were the first victims. After a while they closed the ghetto to outsiders and kept us inside. We couldn't get out, and even inside the ghetto there was a curfew.

One day, my father was warned by friends in the ghetto to get out of town because the SS were going to arrest him. We had an aunt in Warsaw, so my father and I went to Warsaw. My mother and my brothers stayed at home. Shortly after we arrived, my aunt was warned that she had three weeks to get out of her apartment and move to the Warsaw ghetto.

We went out with my aunt one afternoon to rent an apartment in the section where the ghetto was going to be. When we came back to my aunt's apartment, we couldn't get in. Whatever we had on was ours, and that was it. We had to move to the Warsaw ghetto. At that time the Warsaw ghetto was still open. We could stay outside until 6:00 P.M. A few weeks later, however, the Judenrat spread the word that the Warsaw ghetto would soon be closed. So my father and I came back to Kozenice.

My family stayed in the Kozenice ghetto until 1941. We didn't starve, but whatever we had we sold to buy potatoes and bread. My father sold his gold watch. Anyone who had a piece of silver, sold it. Polish people were eager to buy it because we had to sell it so cheaply.

HANDOUT 4D—BEN IN THE GHETTO

(Ben Stern was born in 1924 in Kielce (Kel-Sa), Poland. He was the youngest of four children. When he was six years old, his family moved to Lodz (Ludge), the second largest city in Poland. He lived there until the age of 15 when the war broke out. In this reading he tells about his first experiences with the Nazis and his life in the ghetto. His story begins in 1939 shortly after the Germans had occupied Poland.)

All Jews in Lodz were told to wear the yellow stars on the front and back of their clothes. Regardless of what we wore, we had to wear a Star of David. If we walked on the sidewalk, we had to step down onto the street if a German walked on the same sidewalk. Otherwise we would have been hit.

At the end of 1939 we moved back to Kielce, the town where I was born. We still lived in our apartment, and we were all together. It wasn't so bad there until 1940 when they formed the ghetto. Life in the ghetto was bad. Bad because you couldn't get any food. Food was rationed. Because I was blond and not easily identified as a Jew, my parents sent me out of the ghetto. Even though it was guarded, I could smuggle myself out to buy a couple of loaves of bread. I hid it in my pants. I didn't use any money. I traded articles of clothing, linens and towels, for potatoes and bread until I was caught.

The ghetto was policed by Jews and by some German soldiers. They were the watchmen over the ghetto. The ghetto was encircled with barbed wire. On the day I got caught, I was returning to the ghetto. I had just picked up the barbed wire and stooped down to crawl under. All of a sudden I tore my pants and some potatoes fell out. A policeman was standing there with an SS soldier, and they saw me. I was beaten and they took away all the food. They told me if it happened again, I'd be hanged. I went back home and told my mother, "I'm not going out because I'm scared to death."

About six months after the ghetto was formed, I was taken to a forced labor camp called Henrykow. That was the last time I saw my parents. In 1943 there was the deportation. They dissolved the ghettos and took everybody away.

Overview V—Resisters

Teaching Lesson Five

Teaching Lesson Five (cont.)

Teaching Lesson Six

Back to Overview IV—The Holocaust