South Carolina Voices: Lessons from the Holocaust

Teaching Lesson Seven

Materials: Handout 7A: Bert in the Resistance; Handout 7B: Three Close Calls for Leo; Handout 7C: Francine Thinks Quickly; Handout 7D: Terrible Choices

Key Terms: Star of David, Resistance, Free France, Occupied France

PROCEDURE

Motivate: Read Overview V and summarize for students. In this lesson, students will read the stories of three South Carolinians who narrowly escaped death. Unlike most of the other survivors students have read about, two of these people, Leo Diamantstein, who now lives in Greenville and Francine Taylor, who lives in Charleston, were never in concentration camps. Both spent the war years in hiding. The third, Bert Gosschalk, whose family lives in Charleston, spent much of the war in hiding until his capture and imprisonment in the Dutch concentration camp Westerbork where he remained until liberation.

Begin the lesson by writing the words "member of the underground" and "resistance" on the chalkboard. Ask students what associations these phrases bring to mind. Where do students' ideas about the work and life of such people come from? (war movies, television dramas, suspense novels) From the media and war stories, students often have the impression that such work is exciting or glamorous.

Develop: As they read, encourage students to think about the personality traits and other factors that contributed to the survival of Bert, Leo, and Francine in these life-threatening situations. Guide the discussion so that students become aware that although the resourcefulness of Bert, Leo, and Francine under pressure were important factors in their narrow escapes, they were also just plain lucky. Point out that for every one who survived because of bravery, resourcefulness, and chance good fortune, many hundreds of thousands more who were equally as brave and resourceful went to their deaths in labor camps or gas chambers.

In Handout 7A students will read about a South Carolina survivor in the Dutch Resistance. As students read, encourage them to consider whether the experience he recounts supports this view. Note as well the dangers of such participation and the way the Germans discouraged resistance activity. Use the following questions for discussion.

1. What helped Bert and his wife avoid capture and survive in hiding? Why did they get caught?

2. Judging by this selection, how had Bert been helping the resistance movement? How do you think the ID and ration cards and the other items the Germans found hidden in Bert's house were used to aid Jews and others persecuted by the Germans?

3. In your own words, restate the Nazi policy of collective responsibility. (See Overview V.) Explain how this policy was applied in the situation Bert describes. Why was this a very effective method of stopping resistance to the Nazis? (People who might be willing to risk their own lives to fight the Nazis would hesitate to endanger the lives of family, friends, and other innocent people.)

4. What did Bert mean when he said, "I was lucky, if you can call it lucky."

5. What do you think would have been the hardest part of being in the Resistance? The most rewarding?

Before distributing Handouts 7B and 7C, make sure students understand the difference between Free France and Occupied France. Jews in Occupied France were subject to the German military government and faced essentially the same threat to their lives as did Jews in other parts of Eastern Europe.

Throughout all parts of France, German administrators and their French collaborators in the Vichy government could rely on a long tradition of French anti-Semitism for cooperation with its anti-Jewish policy. Many thousands of Jews were placed in French concentration camps and then deported to the killing centers and slave labor camps in Eastern Europe. In Free France, a collaborationist government headed by aging Marshal Henri Petain was centered in the city of Vichy. The Vichy government enacted anti-Semitic laws as early as August 1940, forbidding French Jews to serve as teachers, lawyers, and in many other professions.

Eventually all property belonging to French Jews in Free France was confiscated. Jewish refugees who had fled to France from Eastern Europe were placed in French concentration camps and later deported to the killing centers in Poland where thousands died.

Write the following quotation from Leo on the board: "Everybody has stories like these to tell because besides doing things, you had to have luck. Many people tried to do what we did. Most of them did not make it." Divide students into groups; give each group copies of Handouts 7B and 7C. In their own words, have the groups restate what Leo meant when he said, "you had to have luck." What "luck" did Leo, his father, and Francine have? In what sense did each make his or her own luck? How much control or influence did Leo or Francine actually have over the life-threatening situations in which they found themselves? Francine's experience showed that she could not trust strangers to help her. Lacking proper identification and ration cards, neither had much chance of surviving on their own.

Have each group pick one of the episodes described by Leo or Francine and write an alternative ending in which a bystander willingly assists them. When all groups have answered the questions and written their alternative endings, each should select a spokesperson to report the group's answers and read the alternate ending to the class.

Extend: Student groups can be given one of the three dilemmas in Handout 7D. Each group should write a paragraph explaining how it has decided to respond to the situation and the reasons for its decision. Help students recognize that in situations such as these, there is not a best choice, but a least bad choice. Assign student to research and report to the class on the many forms resistance took during World War II in both occupied and Allied countries.

HANDOUT 7A: BERT IN THE RESISTANCE

(Bert Gosschalk was born in the little village of Wihe in Holland in 1920. When he was about two or three, his family moved to the nearby town of Deventer where he grew up and went to college. Bert had two brothers and two sisters. All five survived the war. In May 1940, the Germans marched into Holland, and it became a part of Occupied Germany. For Jews living in Holland, life changed slowly, but in 1942, Bert and his wife decided to go into hiding to avoid capture by the Nazis. In this selection, Bert describes his hiding place and how the actions of the Dutch resistance led to his capture.)

I found a one-bedroom, summer cottage, in the woods near Epe about 20 or 30 miles from Deventer. It did not have electricity or running water. We drew water from a well outside the cottage. For lights we had candles. For heat we had a wood-burning stove, and we chopped wood. We lived under a false identity, but the identity papers were so bad if anybody had looked at them they would have known immediately they were false. We didn't have newspapers or radio. We didn't have anything except the bare necessities. We got out of the woods only every two or three months.

I had a first cousin in Epe. Because he was married to a non-Jew, he was allowed to stay much longer than anybody else. We got food from him. My cousin was active in the Dutch resistance, and before long, I started participating myself. Every little village had a resistance group. We would get a message saying, for example, "Tonight at nine o'clock we are going to blow up the city hall in some little town or rob them of blank identity cards or try to blow up a train." You had to be there to participate if you could. That is how eventually the Germans caught us.

It was pure bad luck that we got caught. It had nothing to do with anything we had been involved in. Usually if the Germans or the Dutch Nazis were planning a raid in a certain area, we got a warning beforehand, and we would disappear into the woods. We lived in a part of Holland that was not densely populated. There were only little villages around there. The resistance groups in our area were not all that active. When the call for action came, we were not involved in the planning, but only in the execution. A lot of planning went into an attack. If one failed, it meant an immediate raid by the Nazis. Then everybody had to lay low for a while before they dared to try again.

A branch of the Rhine River flows through the town of Deventer where I grew up. When the war began, there were only four bridges crossing the river. The Germans going by rail between Germany and Holland had to cross those bridges. By the end of the war three of the four bridges had been blown up. Only one little railroad line was left open. The one bridge and railroad line were not too far from where I was hiding.

I belonged to the resistance in Epe. Another nearby village had a separate resistance group. The two had no coordination between them. One night the resistance group in the other village decided to blow up the railroad track. Unfortunately the charge did not go off. Next morning the Germans discovered it. They took 8,000 or 10,000 men and started combing the countryside to find the people who had placed those charges. Everybody they found was arrested. My resistance group knew nothing about the unsuccessful attack or that their plan had been discovered. Because of this, we had no warning that the Nazis were searching the woods.

On this particular January morning in 1945, I was pumping water at the well outside the house; when all of a sudden, I was surrounded. I couldn't get away. My wife was sick in bed and couldn't get away either. So the two of us were arrested. The house was taken down board by board by the Germans. We had a transmitter going to the Allied forces. We had thousands of stolen ID cards. We had tens of thousands of stolen ration cards all hidden in the house. We had about two dozen German hand grenades stored under the roof. They found everything.

After we were caught, we first went to the local police jail. A couple of days later we were taken to SS headquarters in Zwolle. The men were downstairs and the women upstairs. I did not hear from my wife again until much later. I didn't know whether she was alive or not. I stayed in a prison in Zwolle for about five weeks.

When the SS wanted to question prisoners, they were handcuffed together and shipped to SS headquarters. There we had spent all day on our knees without food or water. I was lucky, if you can call it lucky. I was up there for questioning on the day a Dutch resistance group, south of the town, ambushed the commander of a German police unit. They killed him and several other people right on the highway. In retaliation the prison where we were kept was emptied out. All the prisoners were taken to the place where this German officer was waylaid and shot to death right there on the spot. I was not there because I was in questioning at headquarters. When I came back that night with seven or eight other men, we were the only survivors.

HANDOUT 7B: THREE CLOSE CALLS FOR LEO

(Leo Diamantstein's family was living in Frankfurt, Germany when Hitler and the Nazi party came to power in 1934. Leo's father soon saw that there was no future for the family in Germany, and they moved to Italy. Four years later Germany and Italy formed an alliance called the Axis and in June 1940, Italy entered the war on the side of Germany. One month later the Italian special police began arresting all foreign Jews in Italy. Leo's family spent many months in a large Italian prison and lived for about a year in a small village in northern Italy. Then in September 1943, the Germans occupied Italy and life became much more dangerous for Leo and his family. To escape almost certain arrest by the Nazis and deportation to concentration camps, Leo's family decided to take the train to Milan, Italy where they had many friends who would help them. In this reading Leo describes several experiences he and his family had during this period.)

I. Leo and His Suitcase

We arrived in Milan, but we couldn't leave the train station. There was a curfew. The Italian underground had just blown up some railroad tracks, and the Nazis were looking for the culprits. We had to go into an underground tunnel which was like an air raid shelter.

The next morning the curfew ended, and we started walking out of the station. I was carrying a suitcase full of packages of cigarettes with some clothing to cover them. Cigarettes were hard to come by. We decided they might come in handy. There was a German official and an Italian official checking everyone's luggage. As we came out of the station, we had to pass through a gate. When I came through the gate with my suitcase, the Italian official told me to open up the suitcase, so I did. He asked me what I had in it. He could see the clothes. I said, "I have a gun in there."

The German asked the Italian what I was saying. "He said he has a gun in there," the Italian replied, and they started laughing.

That saved us. I started laughing and closed the suitcase. He said, "Okay, go on." My heart was going a hundred miles an hour. I don't know how I thought of it.

Those cigarettes did come in handy. We went to stay in an apartment belonging to friends who had gone to their country home. Every Italian apartment house has a concierge, a person in charge of the building. When we arrived at the apartment, the first thing the concierge did was to ask us for our papers. We gave her our identity cards. After a few days she said, "You know that's not enough. You need more papers." She was probably suspicious about something.

We said, "Yes later, but meanwhile we want you to have this pack of cigarettes." We kept on doing that. We gave her six or eight packs of cigarettes every day until eventually we ran out of cigarettes. By then father had made some contact with the Italian underground.

II. Father among the Germans

On the night father and my older brother Adolph arrived by train in Milan, there was a curfew. They spent many hours in the tunnel below the railroad station waiting for the curfew to end. Father got tired of waiting and decided to go upstairs and see what was going on. Upstairs he saw this cafe with bunches of German officers. He went in and said good day in German. They said, "Hey, you speak German." He said, "Yah, I do."

They said, "We need somebody here that can speak Italian. Why don't you come and join us for some drinks?"

Father said, "Well, I don't know."

The Germans said, "Come on, let's have some drinks."

So father sat down and acted like nothing bothered him. The idea was always at that time to do the most incredible things because they were the only things that really worked. Father did that very thing. If you tried to run or if you showed you were afraid, you were done for.

III. Unexpected Danger on a Roadside Walk

One day my brother Maurice and I were walking along the road. A German military vehicle with a machine gun mounted on the back came by. The German soldiers in it were picking up not only Jews, but also Italian deserters camouflaged in civilian clothes trying to get home. They came right up to us. Maurice whispered to me, "Well, we've had it."

I said, "Not yet. Keep talking as if nothing has happened. It's our only chance. If we react in any way, we've had it."

He agreed. So we walked by them and the soldiers looked straight at us. The machine gun was about ten feet from me. They looked at us, and we could hear what they were saying because we understood German. One said, "What about those two guys, shouldn't we check them?"

Fortunately, we were dressed in fairly nice clothes. We didn't look like runaways.

The other said, "No, let it go. They look just like regular citizens. Let's not bother with them." Then they went by. That was a terrible moment.

Everybody that survived the Holocaust has stories like these to tell because besides doing things you had to have luck. Many people tried to do what we did. Most of them did not make it.

HANDOUT 7C: FRANCINE THINKS QUICKLY

(Francine Taylor was born in Poland in 1928. Her family moved to France when she was two years old. They were living in Paris on June 14, 1940, when the French capital fell to the Germans. Suddenly the family found itself in Occupied France. Not long after that Francine's parents sent her out of Paris for the summer. She was still there when her father was arrested by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp. A cousin called her from Paris to warn her that the Nazis were rounding up all the Jews in Paris. She could not return to Paris. Instead she was told to make her way across the border to Free France where her mother and sister would be waiting. Taking her bicycle and a small suitcase filled with summer clothes, she began a 1000-kilometer journey. In this passage, she describes the train ride that was a part of her flight.)

I put my bicycle in the last car of the train like luggage and got on the train In those days eight people sat together in one compartment—four on one side and four on another. I was carrying everything I had in my pocket. We were on the train maybe 15 minutes, when it stopped in the middle of nowhere. Someone in my compartment said, "I wonder why we stopped here?"

Another passenger replied, "You know they do that all the time. The Jews are fleeing Occupied France for Free France. The Germans stop the train in the middle of the country to look for Jews."

I thought that if I told the Germans I didn't have an ID card, they would automatically assume I was Jewish. I couldn't show them my ration card because it had Jew on it.

A few minutes later two German soldiers came into our compartment and asked for all IDs. The French law was that anyone over age 15 had to have an identification card. Cards for Jewish people were stamped Jew.

When it came my turn, I took the arm of the man sitting next to me, and I said, "I'm with this gentleman." It worked—just worked. They passed on by.

Of course I had some explaining to do to the gentleman. I wasn't going to tell him I was Jewish because you never knew. He may help me and he may not. He looked at me, and I said, "I lost my pocketbook. You know how these Germans are. If you tell them you don't have any ID, they automatically take you for Jews."

He said, "You're right. You'd better get off at the next stop and go to the police station. Tell them your story and they will make you some kind of temporary piece of paper because you won't be so lucky the next time. They do this all the time."

At the next little town, I got off. I took my bicycle off the luggage car and rode my bike from Tours to Dax, a distance of around 1000 kilometers. It was a long, long journey. It took me close to a month to get there.

When I arrived in Dax, it was crawling with Germans because many Jews came there on their way across the border into Free France. I had an address where I was supposed to go to get help crossing the border. But I didn't know exactly how to get there, so I decided to take a taxi. I went to the train station to look for one, but there were none. There were, however, horses and buggies for hire.

In the station I saw a Jewish family I knew from Paris. It was the mother, father, and five children. I had gone to school with the oldest girl, and we were very happy to see each other. They asked me where I was going. They were also looking for a horse and buggy and were going close to the address I had. They suggested we all get in the same buggy . We called one and showed the driver where we were going. Then he said to me, "If you didn't have your bike, I would take you. But I can't take all that and a bike too."

So we said good-bye, hoping to see each other soon. I went to the next buggy where two nuns were sitting. The driver agreed to take the three of us and my bicycle. Their buggy took off ahead of me and was stopped at once by German soldiers. They took the whole family and didn't stop us. That was an unbelievable escape for me.

HANDOUT 7D: TERRIBLE CHOICES

Situation A

Klaus Schmidt is an SS officer who has just been assigned to a concentration camp. A trainload of 300 prisoners will be arriving shortly. He has been told that as the prisoners get off the train, he should send half to the right to work in slave labor conditions. The other half must be sent to the left to the gas chambers. Which of the following responses should he choose? Select only one.

A.Send the able-bodied to the right; the sick and old to the left.

B.Send men to the right; women to the left.

C. Neither, I'd let all the prisoners escape.

1. Why did you choose the response you chose?

2. What will be its consequences for Klaus? For his family?

3. What will be its consequences for the prisoners?

4. What will he do once they're gone?

5. How will he explain his actions to his superiors?

Situation B

David Klein is the leader of the Judenrat. The Jewish council is responsible for making certain decisions in the ghetto. The people in the ghetto are housed here until they are sent to concentration camps. The Nazi commander in charge of the ghetto tells him that he must ship out 50 people because the ghetto is overcrowded. He will not tell David where the people are going, only that he must choose ten women, ten men, and 30 children. His mother, father, uncle, and first cousin are in the ghetto. Which of the following responses should he choose? Select only one.

A. Should he do as directed?

B. Should he try to save his own relatives in the ghetto?

C. Should he refuse to make any choices?

1. Why did you make the choice you made?

2. What are its consequences?

3. Do you think that all the people in the ghetto would be punished if Klein did not obey?

4. Would the commander make this decision if Klein did not?

5. How should Klein choose those that must leave the ghetto?

Situation C

Anna Berger is a prisoner in a concentration camp. Her job is to help the cook in the kitchen. She washes the dishes. She is working in the kitchen when the cook steps outside for a minute. There are scraps of food left on the plates from the officers' dining room. Many people in her barracks are slowly starving to death. She thinks about taking scraps of food for them. What should she do? Select only one response.

A. Plead with the cook to give her some food when he comes back.

B. Ignore the chance because, if she gets caught, she will be severely punished.

C. Take the food, knowing that she may be searched.

1. Why did you make the choice you did?

2. What are its consequences for Anna?

3. What are the consequences of not taking the food?

Overview VI—Bystanders and Rescuers

Back to Overview V—Resisters