Tag Archives: Petr Ginz and Ilan Ramon

6 Essential Holocaust Teaching Resources for Middle School Students

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While there are plenty of Holocaust teaching resources for middle school
students, teaching the Holocaust to this age group is still very challenging.
How do you make the Holocaust relevant to them? And what are some
ways to guide them through this incredibly upsetting subject?

Here is a list of six resources that can help you teach middle schoolers about the Holocaust.

The Butterfly Project

This incredible project uses the arts to educate students about the dangers of intolerance. It makes the Holocaust accessible to children, and presents the subject matter in a way that is poignant but not overly graphic or frightening.

The way it works is as follows: schools order kits containing ceramic butterflies, painting supplies, and cards with biographies of children who died in the Holocaust. After learning more about the children, each student receives a butterfly to paint in memory of them. The school or a community center then install the butterflies as a permanent memorial to the children who died in the Holocaust. The hope is one day there will be 1.5 million butterflies on display around the world, one for each Jewish child the world lost.

Visit their website to learn more about The Butterfly Project or to order a kit.

Inge Auerbacher’s I Am a Star

I Am a Star: Child of the Holocaust tells the story of Inge Auerbacher, a young girl
who survived the war in Terezin. The book is a compelling way to bring the Holocaust to life for your middle school students. Inge is the author of several best selling
books, including I Am a Star, which details her childhood and her time in Terezin.
The book can be purchased on Amazon or through the publisher’s website.

I Am a Star is available in many languages and a 30th-anniversary edition was
recently released. The book was also adapted into an award-winning play, “The Star on
My Heart”, which premiered in Ohio in 2015. Her story has also been featured on Butterflies in the Ghetto.

Paper Clips

This documentary tells the story of a Holocaust memorial project started by teachers and middle school students in the small town of Whitwell, Tennessee.

As part of a Holocaust education project the students began collecting paper clips. Their goal was to acquire 1.5 million to represent each child lost in the Holocaust. The project took off and ultimately the entire community created a remarkable Holocaust memorial outside the school.

The Whitwell community built the memorial in an authentic cattle car from Germany. The result is a starkly beautiful memorial to the children of the Holocaust, and a
powerful message about tolerance and acceptance of others.

Brundibár

Composer Hans Krása and librettist Adolf Hoffmeister created the children’s opera in 1938. Incredibly, Krása was able to stage a production of the musical in Terezin.

The musical was later performed when the Red Cross visited Terezin and featured in a Nazi propaganda film. Tragically, Krása and most of the child performers were later sent to Auschwitz. Very few of them survived the war.

In more recent years, the children’s opera has become more popular. It is certainly a great play to bring to a middle school if possible. There are also videos of the production on YouTube that are worth viewing and discussing with your class. An audio CD of the opera called Hans Krasa: Brundibar is available as well.

Vedem

Vedem is a literary magazine produced by the teenage boys of barrack L417 in Terezin. Fourteen-year-old Petr Ginz established the magazine, and he published a new
issue almost every week. Petr created much of the content himself and the other
boys contributed to it as well.

The magazine featured pieces on daily life in Terezin, satirical essays, poems, and
short fiction, as well as artwork. Tragically, Petr and most of the other boys from barrack L417 died in Auschwitz.

Their legacy lives on in the writings and drawings they left behind. You can read more about Petr Ginz and Vedem here.

I have also created a free Vedem study guide for teachers. The guide is available to
all subscribers to Butterflies In the Ghetto.

Nesarim: Child Survivors of Terezin

This powerful book relates the experiences of 10 boys who were imprisoned in Terezin, in their own words. The book was written by Thelma Gruenbaum, whose husband Michael was in Terezin and whose story is also detailed in the memoir Somewhere There is Still a Sun. 

In Terezin, these young boys shared a room with 30 other boys and developed
an incredibly strong bond with one another. They called themselves the
Nesarim, which means “eagles” in Hebrew, and the surviving Nesarim remained
in contact with one another throughout the years. 

This book gives readers a sense of what life was like for children in Terezin and preserves the voices of these child survivors so that children of today and future generations can hear and remember their stories. 

These are just a handful of resources teachers can use to help their middle school students better understand the Holocaust. I’ve found these to be particularly powerful in bringing stories from the Holocaust to light.

Have you used any of these in your teaching, and what have you found to be helpful? Please let me know in the comments below.

Ilan Ramon and Petr Ginz: The Astronaut and the Prodigy

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There is an incredible and tragic connection that exists between the young prodigy Petr Ginz and the astronaut Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli in space. He was born Ilan Wolferman in Ramat Gan, Israel. His father’s family fled Germany in 1935 and his mother and grandmother were Holocaust survivors who were imprisoned in Auschwitz. They left Poland after the war, and emigrated to Israel.

Ilan graduated from Tel Aviv University with a degree in computer engineering in 1987 and joined the Israeli Airforce, where he became a highly accomplished fighter pilot and earned the rank of Colonel. During his fighter pilot training he adopted the surname Ramon. In 1997, he was accepted by NASA and began training to be a Payload Specialist, a process which took five years. He participated in the 113th mission of the Space Shuttle Program, aboard the shuttle Columbia.

Though described as secular, as the first Israeli astronaut, Ilan saw himself as a representative of the Jewish people. He opted to eat kosher food on the mission, and consulted with a rabbi on how to keep Shabbat in space. Ilan also brought with him a variety of objects that held special significance. These objects included a small Torah scroll that was saved from the Holocaust, a dollar bill with the image of the Lubavitcher Rebbe – and a copy of a drawing by Petr Ginz.

Petr’s drawing depicted a lunar landscape, mountainous and desolate, with an image of the Earth shining in the distance, though Petr did not live long enough to see the first pictures of Earth taken from space. Ilan took the image to commemorate Petr, who died in Auschwitz, and all the others who were affected by the Holocaust.

**To view Petr’s drawing and NASA portrait of Ilan, please visit: http://www.science.co.il/Ilan-Ramon/

Ilan and his crew members completed their mission, but tragically, their Shuttle Columbia broke apart on re-entry, killing all on board. The disaster happened on February 1, 2003, which would have been Petr’s 75th birthday.

The copy of Petr’s drawing was destroyed, but part of the diary that Ilan kept on the mission survived the disaster. Though badly damaged, after 5 years forensic scientists were able to restore about 80% of its content. One of the pages was a handwritten copy of the Kiddush prayer, another way Ilan expressed his pride in being part of the Jewish people.

Petr also kept a diary during his time in Terezin and wrote many poems, stories, and which survive to this day. These writings give us greater insight into who this man and boy were, and ensure that some part of them lives on.

I greatly admire their many achievements and I am in awe of their capacity to look beyond their immediate surroundings, to imagine all that lies beyond the confines of Earth and to courageously strive for a better world for all people.

Further Reading

Memorial site for Ilan Ramon:    http://www.science.co.il/Ilan-Ramon/