Evidence Against Intolerance: A Virtual Symposium on Teaching the Holocaust in the Digital Disinformation Era
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On February 23, 2022, Towson University hosted the online event, Evidence Against Intolerance: A Virtual Symposium on Teaching the Holocaust in the Digital Disinformation Era. With funding from the Towson University Foundation, some of the educators who attended or watched this day-long program developed Holocaust lesson plans informed by the presentations made at the Symposium. This community consists of the lesson plans that those educators produced.
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Item The Impact of hair cutting: Identity and indoctrination during the Holocaust(2022) Nadler, Gayle S.; Evidence Against Intolerance SymposiumThe Holocaust did not occur suddenly. Germany’s loss of World War I, the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, anti-Semitic sentiment and Hitler writing Mein Kampf (My Struggle) in 1924 made way for him to become Chancellor of Germany in 1933. He established and led a government based on obsessive anti- Semitic Nazi ideology which promoted Aryan perfection and expansion of land. With an emphasis on humiliation and hair, this lesson, The Impact of Hair Cutting: Identity and Indoctrination During the Holocaust, investigates one of many factors that contributed to Germany’s leap from hatred toward murder. If students have not studied the Holocaust before, additional background information that can be obtained from Towson University, Azrieli Foundation, Facing History and Ourselves, Echoes & Reflections, Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, USC Shoah Foundation, Yad Vashem, YIVO, among other sourcesItem Document analysis of a Jewish refugee case file(2022) Call, Stephanie; Evidence Against Intolerance SymposiumLearning to analyze primary source documents can enhance students’ understanding of the Holocaust. This lesson provides students with an opportunity to evaluate documents that illustrate “citizen-state interactions” in a case file for Jewish refugees assisted by a refugee organization. To prepare for this lesson, students will learn about the Nazis’ persecution of people with disabilities and the U.S. public charge law to better understand how these policies impacted Jewish refugees during the Holocaust.Item To bear witness: Holocaust opera and the "unreadable"(2022) Steinberg, Nicole; Evidence Against Intolerance SymposiumThe purpose of this course is to encourage learners to reflect on our societal and moral responsibility to bear witness to Holocaust trauma, and to examine how music bridges the accessible and inaccessible for audiences in Holocaust presentation. This lesson hinges on two primary works of scholarship: (1) Jessica Lang’s 2017 Textual Silence: Unreadability and the Holocaust, which further refines the academic concepts “readability” and “unreadability” and examines the potential for a fragmentation of the understanding of Holocaust literature; (2) Maria Cizmic’s 2012 Performing Pain which defines music as a bridge between the unreadable and the readable, making accessible the inaccessible. Cizmic determines, “Music can metaphorically perform the psychological effects of trauma – both the disruptive features and those that occur during recovery… [music] bears witness to [trauma’s] effects, conveying to listeners the ways in which trauma can shape memory and temporality.”Item Bearing witness: (auto-)biography in Holocaust literature(2022) Pappalardo, Salvatore, 1978-; Towson University. Department of English; Evidence Against Intolerance SymposiumIn this discussion-based, upper-level college course students will read literary fiction and historical-philosophical investigations of the Holocaust. We will focus on (auto-)biography as a form of bearing witness in the genre known as Holocaust Literature. Discussions will be centered around questions pertaining to the origin of antisemitism, the rise of totalitarian regimes in Europe in the early twentieth century, and the role that literary fiction plays in the moral imperative of bearing witness to the atrocities of the Holocaust. We will read the autobiography of Stefan Zweig, a text that traces the history of an entire generation of German Austrian and Ashkenazi Jewish intellectuals between 1880 and 1945; the family biography of a Sephardic Jewish family in Ottoman Salonika, roughly in the same years; the works of survivors of the infamous Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz such as the Polish intellectual Tadeusz Borowski and the Italian writer Primo Levi; the Holocaust poetry of Romanian-born, German-speaking author Paul Celan; the memoir of the Slovenian writer Boris Pahor; and the theoretical texts that analyze the rise of Fascism and of totalitarian regimes by Umberto Eco and Hannah Arendt, in particular Eco’s definition of eternal fascism and Arendt’s texts on totalitarian propaganda, the Eichmann trial, and what she called the banality of evil. A viewing of Roberto Benigni’s academy-award winning film Life is Beautiful will conclude the semester. Students will learn about the Holocaust with the help of multiple media: we will use maps; videos of interviews with Holocaust survivors, archived by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; film; as well as literary, historical, and philosophical texts. After an introduction to the history of the Holocaust, the course will be organized in 4 different units, each focusing on a different topic: biographies, antisemitism and the rise of fascism, holocaust literature, the aftermath of the Holocaust.Item How and what was stolen from Jews during the Holocaust(2022) Hallam, Stephanie; Willingham, Pat; Evidence Against Intolerance SymposiumThe Holocaust is known for the millions of lives stolen, but few know of $150 billion in goods the Nazis stole. This was the greatest wide-scale heist in history, the full extent of which is still being discovered, and for which restitution is still being sought. Students will understand ways in which the Nazis systematically stole property from the Jews during the holocaust, including the laws and the types of property.Item Review of photo artifacts of the Holocaust with a focus on culture(2022) Wizer, David R.; Evidence Against Intolerance SymposiumThe general focus of these assignments and the lesson as a whole is for students to learn about the importance of the Holocaust and why it is important for new generations to learn the knowledge about this time period. Specifically, these students should gain knowledge about the Holocaust and how it ties into one of the course themes, culture. Students will gain detailed knowledge from authentic artifacts and historical documents.Item Inspiring humanity through truth: rescue and resistance archived by the Holocaust Museum LA(2022) Gies McLaughlin, Gretchen; Evidence Against Intolerance SymposiumThe Holocaust Museum LA (HMLA) was founded in 1961 by Holocaust survivors and is the oldest survivor-founded Holocaust museum in the United States. HMLA’s mission is “to commemorate those who perished, honor those who survived, educate about the Holocaust and inspire a more dignified and human world” (Mission & History). According to Jordanna Gessler, HMLA’s Vice President of Education and Exhibits, education is a tool to accomplish HMLA’s vision: “inspire humanity through truth.” In summary, this detailed three-part, humanities lesson is intended to augment learners’ general knowledge of Holocaust history, highlight examples of rescue and resistance through inspiring acts of humanity, and inspire an accurate poetic expression of one Survivor’s personal history.