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- Explain to students that the Holocaust was predicated on a long history of anti-Semitism in Germany. A short history of anti-Semitism can be found online at the United State Holocaust Memorial Museum <http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/index.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005175>. Tell students that Hitler was able to build on the existing anti-Semitism within Germany and throughout Europe and that he was successful in making the Jews scapegoats for the ills plaguing Germany because of these preexisting sentiments. Explain to students that Hitler introduced scientific theories to justify anti-Semitism: Hitler and his collaborators saw Jews as an inferior race of people needing to be destroyed. Explain that although this view is totally incorrect (remind students that Judaism is a religion), many Germans bought it because Nazi propaganda played a large role in perpetuating and strengthening Germans’ feelings of anti-Semitism. Children under the Third Reich were taught at an early age to hate the Jews. The Nazi Youth program indoctrinated the young into Nazi goals and beliefs. Children were taught anti-Semitic beliefs in school. NOTE: It is of utmost important to remind students that even though anti-Semitic beliefs are under discussion in class, such beliefs are false, are based on hate, and are totally unacceptable in our society.
- Have students examine an example of propaganda used by the Nazis — a children’s storybook called Der Giftpiltz (The Toadstool). A copy of the book can be found at the Calvin College’s German Propaganda Archive <http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/thumb.htm>. This book was read to German children. Choose an appropriate portion of the story to show students. Refer to the propaganda posters investigated earlier: The Toadstool utilizes similar strategies of fear, half-truth and lies, and demonization. Show this story to students as a group, and encourage students to ask questions and discuss what they perceive. Below are possible discussion questions:
• What do you feel was the purpose of this children’s story?
• What anti-Semitic examples are illustrated in the story?
• How responsible for the Holocaust was the author, Julius Streicher?
• How responsible were parents who read this story to their children?
• How responsible were teachers who read the story to their students?
• How was this piece of propaganda used to manipulate Germans?
- NOTE: Other useful resources for the teaching of the Holocaust are:
• Bachrach, Susan. Tell Them We Remember, The Story of the Holocaust. Little, Brown & Company, 1994. ISBN 0316074845. Available through the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
• Adler, David. We Remember the Holocaust. Henry Holt & Company, 1995. ISBN 0805037152.
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