The Triangle: Which Role Would You Choose?

1. The Triangle: Which Role Would You Choose? A pre-reading activity for a Historical study of the Holocaust You’ll need a blank sheet of paper labeled “Night Journal No. 1”. Keep this in the journals section of your binder.

2. Engaging Issues • While the realities of the Holocaust cannot be compared to everyday experiences of pain, camaraderie, suffering, or even death, a study of the Holocaust can raise issues of individual choices and responsible citizenship. • The following exercise was created as part of the educational program at Holocaust Museum in Houston.

3. The Role of Victim European Jews, along with other people who were considered “not good enough to live among Hitler’s Aryan people,” were targeted with death during the Holocaust. These people were victims and although innocent, they had no choice regarding their selection to be persecuted.

4. VICTIM

5. Choices It is important to understand that all the other individuals were in a position to choose the role they wished to follow in the Holocaust. People chose to be either perpetrators, rescuers, or bystanders.

6. RESCUER VICTIM BYSTANDER PERPETRATOR

7. Percentages In your journal, make an educated guess about what roles people chose to take during the Holocaust. • What percentage of people chose to be perpetrators? • What percentage of people chose to be rescuers? • What percentage of people chose to be bystanders?

8. RESCUER VICTIM less than 5% about 85% about 10% BYSTANDER PERPETRATOR

9. Journal Questions Based on your own prior knowledge of this subject and time period, answer the following questions.

10. What occurrences during this time period influenced individual decisions as to the roles they selected? • Why do you believe so few decided to be rescuers? • What qualities do you believe the rescuers had? • What qualities do you believe the perpetrators possessed? • What changes do you think would have occurred during this time period if the bystanders had helped the rescuers in the war against the perpetrators?

11. Connect to Your Life • What percentage of people today play the role of bystander when a decision has to be made? • Make a list of the kinds of actions, words, problems, that you’ve witnessed in the last few years. • Choose one of these. Were you a bystander, perpetrator, or rescuer? If you could change your role, what would you change it to?

12. Respond in your journal: How does this quotation relate to your ideas about bystanders? Is Einstein right? The world is too dangerous to live in – not because of the people who do evil, but because of the people who sit and let it happen. - Albert Einstein

13. The Holocaust – take notes in the notes section of your binder

14. Holocaust – a Greek word meaning “sacrifice by fire” The systematic persecution and murder of approx. 6 million Jewish people by the Nazi regime and its collaborators

15. The Holocaust The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were racially superior and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were "life unworthy of life." Other targeted groups were the Romas (gypsies), the handicapped, Polish, Russians, Communists, Socialists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals.

16. The Holocaust • 1933 – more than nine million Jewish people lived in Europe • By 1945, nearly 2 of every 3 Jews had been killed as part of the “final solution” – the Nazi policy to murder the Jews in Europe

17. Concentration Camps • Jews from Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the Netherlands stand for roll call in the Buchenwald concentration camp soon after their arrival on February 28, 1941.

18. The Holocaust Nazis established concentration camps to imprison Jews and others before WWII began in 1939

19. Concentration Camps • View of the kitchen barracks, the electrified fence, and the gate at the main camp of Auschwitz (Auschwitz I). In the foreground is the sign "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work makes one free).

20. The Holocaust Jews were also forced into ghettos (enclosed city districts where Jews were forced to live) and forced labor camps

21. The Holocaust In the final months of the war, guards forced camp inmates on “death marches” in an attempt to prevent the Allied liberation of large numbers of prisoners

22. Liberation WWII ended in Europe with the unconditional surrender of German armed forces in the west on May 7 and on the east on May 9, 1945

23. Liberation As Allied forces moved across Europe in a series of offenses on Germany, they began to liberate concentration camp prisoners, many of whom had survived the death marches

24. Final Words • The last words of inmates at the death camp at Stutthof are carved into these walls.

25. Elie Wiesel Night is Elie Wiesel’s true story about his and his family’s capture by the Nazi’s and their journey through the Nazi death camps

26. Journal (continued) • Why do people often ignore signs that something is dangerous even when it seems clear? Give an example of how this is part of human nature.

27. Homework: • Read “The Perils of Indifference” by Elie Wiesel and complete the assignment. This is due on your block period on Wednesday or Thursday. Start this assignment in class if you finish before the period is over. • STOP HERE FOR TODAY!

28. Reading: Today we will begin to read Elie Wiesel’s Night, a memoir of one young man’s experiences as a victim of the Holocaust. Assignment: Read Section 1 and do the following things: • Identify/name the characters in chapter 1 • Summarize the chapter’s plot in about 5 sentences • Name about three clues that things are much worse that Wiesel’s family thinks. What does this say about the nature of man? • Two other questions/discussion ideas

29. Section 1 –Night Assignment: Read Section 1 and do the following things: • Identify/name the characters in chapter 1 • Summarize the chapter’s plot in about 5 sentences • Name three changes that occur in Sighet. Why don’t they concern people at first? What does this reveal about human nature? • Two other questions/discussion ideas