Yom ha-Shoah Holocaust Memorial Day
Teacher’s Guide

Today they came for my bicycle. I almost caused a big drama. You know, dear diary, I was awfully afraid just by the fact that the policeman came into the house. I know that policemen bring only trouble with them, wherever they go. My bicycle had a proper license plate, and Grandpa had paid the tax for it. That’s how the policemen found it, because it was registered at City Hall that I have a bicycle. Now that it’s over, I’m so ashamed about how I behaved in front of the policemen. So, dear diary, I threw myself on the ground, held on to the back wheel of my bicycle, and shouted all sorts of things at the policemen: “Shame on you for taking away a bicycle from a little girl! That’s robbery.” We had saved up a year and a half to buy the bicycle… I went to the store and took the bicycle home, only I didn’t ride it but led it along with my hands, the way you handle a big, beautiful dog. From the outside I admired the bicycle, and even gave it a name: Friday. I took the name from Robinson Crusoe, but it suits the bicycle. First of all, because I brought it home on a Friday, and also because Friday is the symbol of loyalty, because he was so loyal to Robinson… One of the policemen was very annoyed and said: “All we need is for a Jewgirl to put on such a comedy when her bicycle is taken away. No Jewkid is entitled to keep a bicycle anymore. The Jews aren’t entitled to bread, either; they shouldn’t guzzle everything, but leave food for the soldiers.” You can imagine, dear diary, how I felt when they were saying this to my face. I had only heard that sort of thing on the radio, or read it in a German newspaper. Still, it’s different when you read something and when it’s thrown in your face. Especially if it’s when they’re taking my bicycle away.

Poems

Fear

Written by a child in the Terezin concentration camp, 1942 to 1944.

Today the ghetto knows a different fear,
Close in its grip, Death wields an icy scythe.
An evil sickness spreads a terror in its wake,
The victims of its shadow weep and writhe.

Today a father’s heartbeat tells his fright
And mothers bend their heads into their hands.
Now children choke and die with typhus here,
A bitter tax is taken from their bands.

My heart still beats inside my breast
While friends depart for other worlds.
Perhaps it’s better — who can say? —
Than watching this, to die today?

No, no, my God, we want to live!
Not watch our numbers melt away.
We want to have a better world,
We want to work — we must not die!

Eva Pickova, 12 years old, Nymburk

On a Sunny Evening

On a purple, sun-shot evening
Under wide-flowering chestnut trees
Upon the threshold full of dust
Yesterday, today, the days are all like these.

Trees flower forth in beauty,
Lovely too their very wood all gnarled and old
That I am half afraid to peer
Into their crowns of green and gold.

The sun has made a veil of gold
So lovely that my body aches.
Above, the heavens shriek with blue
Convinced I’ve smiled by some mistake.
The world’s abloom and seems to smile.
I want to fly but where, how high?
If in barbed wire, things can bloom
Why couldn’t I? I will not die!

1944 Anonymous; written by the children in Barracks L318 and L417, ages 10-16 years, Terezin concentration camp.

¤ ¤ ¤

The Big Lie — Part 2

Isabella Leitner was a teenager when the Nazis took over Hungary and started to round up Jews and deport them to Auschwitz. She tells how she and her two sisters escaped from a forced march from one concentration camp to another.

Late in 1944, Cipi, Chicha, Regina, and I were moved from Auschwitz to another prison, a concentration camp, in eastern Germany. It was called Birnbaumel.

Unlike Auschwitz, Birnbaumel was not a death camp. There was no gas chambers, crematoriums, or electrified barbed wire fences. We slept in hutlike wood barracks called Celts.

There were no floors. Each Celt rested on bare earth. Because the walls weren’t very thick we could hear the wind howling outside.

Every day the Germans marched us out of the camp, through the town, to the edge of a forest. There they forced us to dig holes in the cold, hardened earth. The holes were meant to act as traps for the Russian tanks and trucks, should they advance this far into Germany.

When the Nazi guards looked away, I stopped digging. Digging, to me, meant helping the Germans. Not digging meant fighting back. And I fought back as often as I could.

December passed, and now it was January 1945. Snow and ice covered the ground. Our spirits were low. We were cold and hungry. I was sick with a high fever. But we were still alive, we were still together, and we were no longer in Auschwitz. That gave us hope.

At the end of the third week of the new year, the Germans decided to move us again. This time, however, there were no trains. The Nazis lined us up in rows of five and began to march us farther inside Germany to Bergen-Belsen, another concentration camp.

It did not matter that many prisoners were too weak to walk for three weeks on the snow-covered roads. The Nazis beat those who could not go fast enough. When they fell, the Nazis shot them. The journey soon became a death march.

On the third day, a blizzard began. The snow fell heavily, and the wind howled. The column of weary prisoners was much shorter than it had been when we started out. Many prisoners had fallen by the wayside.

As we approached a new village, the Nazi guards alongside us began running to the rear. Some prisoners were trying to escape.

Quickly, Chicha left the column and ran toward what looked like a deserted house off the road. Regina followed Chicha, and I followed Regina. None of us looked back. We all thought Cipa was behind us.

Police Testimony

Kurt Mobius was a police battalion member who served in the Chelmno death camp. In giving testimony he described his reasons for participating in the “extermination” of Jews.

I would also like to say that it did not at all occur to me that these orders could be unjust. It is true that I know that it is also the duty of the police to protect the innocent, but I was then of the conviction that the Jews were not innocent but guilty. I believed the propaganda that all Jews were criminals and subhumans and that they were the cause of Germany’s decline after the first World War. The thought that one should disobey or evade the order to participate in the extermination of the Jews did not therefore enter my mind at all…

There Was One Man

This is the story of a family waiting on a train station platform. A train will soon transport them to a camp. Millions of Jews were deported in ordinary freight cars. Concentration camps were situated along major rail lines. The railcars were extremely overcrowded, there was no food, water or sanitation. In the winter the temperatures were freezing and in summer there was suffocating heat. A large percentage of people, especially older people and children, died before reaching their destination.

There was one man, a very big man physically, a carter, who was accustomed to such terrible things as winter and cold and rain. He had lived outside in the winter, and he could have escaped. He could have run off into the woods.

But he had in his arms a six-month old baby — the youngest of his children. And he was together with his wife and other children. His wife, who also knew all the truth, said “Get away, jump, you will survive. What is the use of dying together?” But he said, “No. I will not leave you.” …

Saved by Sugihara: Nadia’s Story

Nadia escaped the Holocaust and came to Vancouver through the bravery of Chiune Sugihara, who was a Japanese Consul in Lithuania. Against the orders of the Japanese government, Sugihara issued exist visas to Jews, including Nadia and her family who were desperate to get an exit visa in 1940.

I was born in 1907, in Lithuania, which was then part of Russia… We had a lovely home, filled with music, books and art. Around 1932, when swastikas started appearing in Germany, I became very anxious and afraid. When we heard rumours about Hitler occupying Memel, my parents and children fled, leaving everything behind.

The Nazis had invaded Norway, Holland, and Belgium and blocked our intended escape route. We had heard about a wonderful Japanese consul who was giving out transit visas. We rushed to the Japanese consulate but it was already closed and the Japanese consul Sugihara was just driving away. My husband knocked on his limousine window and Sugihara rolled it down. My husband handed him the passport and Sugihara stamped it.

I left with nothing but the brown suit I was wearing and a change of clothes.

The Danish Rescue: Ellen Nielsen’s Story

Denmark stood out in that it rescued most of its Jewish population. The King of Denmark during World War Two, King Christian X said: “If the Germans want to introduce the yellow star in Denmark, I and my family will wear it as the sign of highest distinction.”

Danish Churches published a strong protest and universities closed down for a week to assist in rescue operations. Jews were hidden in homes, hospitals, and churches.

Fishermen, farmers, taxi drivers, doctors, and clergy joined in a coordinated effort to bring thousands of Jewish Danes to coastal towns, where they could be transported at great risk in small boats to Sweden. Any rescuer or Jews who were caught trying to escape were arrested and faced death.

Ellen Nielsen, a widow, supported her six children as a fishmonger on the Copenhagen docks, buying fish directly from the fishermen and selling it to passerby. She had no interest in politics.

During the first week of October 1943, while she was selling fish on the docks, she was approached by two brothers. They were flower-vendors in the flower market adjacent to the fish market. She knew them only because they would occasionally buy fish from her, and she, in turn, would sometimes purchase flowers from them.

“What will you have today, boys?” she asked. “The cod is very nice and I have some fresh shrimp.”

“Mrs. Nielsen, we wonder if you could help us,” said one of the brothers. “You know many fishermen. Perhaps you know one who would be willing to take us to Sweden. We would pay him two thousand Kroner to take us across.”

“But why would you do that?” asked Mrs. Nielsen.

“Because we are Jewish, and the Germans have started arresting all Danish Jews.”

This is the first knowledge Mrs. Nielsen had of the brothers being Jewish and the first she had heard of the German roundup of the Jews.

“But if the Germans are arresting Jews, what are you boys doing walking around here? Shouldn’t you be hiding?”

“Yes, but we don’t know where to hide,” replied one of the brothers.

“You can stay at my house,” said Mrs. Nielsen. “I’ll close early today and you can come home with me. And while you’re in my house, I’ll ask among the fishermen. I don't know whether any of them would be willing to take you to Sweden.”

During the following weeks, over a hundred refugees passed through her home on their way to Sweden. At one time, Mrs. Nielsen, had over thirty refugees squeezed into her small house.

In December 1944, Mrs. Nielsen was caught by the Gestapo and eventually sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp. She was liberated by an agreement between Heinrich Himmler and the Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte and taken to Sweden just before the end of the war.

Garta: Rescued by Dr. Feng Shan Ho

Gerta Gottfried Kraus has lived in Vancouver for over fifty years after escaping Austria in 1939. She arrived in Shanghai on February 2, 1939. “My parents came straight to Vancouver from Shanghai and loved Canada right away,” she says.

Most of the Jews of Austria lived in the capital, Vienna. They rushed from embassy to embassy begging to find a country that would let them in. One man helped them: Dr. Feng Shan Ho, the Chinese Consul. Risking the displeasure of his superiors, he issued Chinese visas to every Jew who asked for one and helped thousands of Jews escape death in the Holocaust.

Our family was not arrested on Kristallnacht but we were all rounded up into a schoolyard and some people were taken away. We didn’t know what was going on, there was such commotion. People were beaten, and in tears, and children were crying. It was horrible. After that my Dad helped a lot of people who came to him for help: women whose husbands were sent away; people whose businesses were taken away, who had nothing to live on. Then my Dad said, “We’ll try different places and figure out where to go.” He started to call relatives and to write letters, and then he heard about Shanghai.

I don’t know how my father heard about Shanghai, but he was very smart. “Not in the next country, or the neighbouring countries” he said, “but far away.” We heard about lots of people who went away illegally to other countries and were caught at the borders, sent back and mistreated. He said, “We must not stay in Europe.” We had relatives in the States, but there was no longer time. So my Dad thought about Shanghai. For Shanghai you could still get a visa. It was a place to save your life and that was of paramount importance to my Dad — to get out — even if you had nothing, to save our lives.

Everyone had to have a transit visa in order to leave. My father lined up at the consulates. These were long lines and sometimes the SS came and took people out of the lines and dragged them away.

My husband Hans, told me once that he lined up for a visa and it looked hopeless. He threw a piece of paper to someone in a car and asked to see him. He got lucky. That was at the Chinese Consulate, but just who it was I cannot tell you.

Things moved very quickly — from the time when we decided to go to Shanghai and when we left Austria. We had to act fast; there was no time to wait. If there was a knock on your door, it could be your last day.

Not a Hero — The Kowalski Story

The following was a posted order in the Warsaw Ghetto:

Ten-year-old Bruno Berl was alone in Warsaw, the biggest city in Poland. His parents had been taken away and he did not know where they were… or even if they were still alive. He hadn’t eaten for three days. Unable to stand the hunger pains, he decided to stop the first person who came his way and ask for food.

He was very lucky because he was approached by Wladyslav Kowalski. Kowalski was a retired Polish army colonel and the representative of Philips, the Dutch-based company. The Germans had occupied Warsaw from September 1939 and had cut off a luxurious sector for Germans only and a constricted area for Jews, the ghetto. Kowalski’s job entitled him to move freely throughout all areas.

The Polish businessmen took the Jewish boy home with him, fed Bruno, and found him a place to hide with some friends. This first act of human kindness encouraged Kowalski to do more. This first act of disobedience to the Germans led Kowalski to many more.

In February 1943 he smuggled seven Jews out of the ghetto by bribing a Polish guard. A short time later he helped a family of four. Soon there were another 12 Jews hiding in Kowalski’s house and together they prepared an underground shelter using building materials that Kowalski brought — despite the great risk — in heavy suitcases. The Jews busily made wooden toys that Kowalski sold in order to help cover the costs of their food.

When the Russian Army was on the verge of liberating Warsaw in the autumn of 1944, Kowalski’s make-shift shelter had become home to fifty-four Jewish peole and by the end they were each living on a ration of three glasses of water per day, lumps of sugar and some vitamin pills. The Jews begged him to escape and to protect himself but their protector said: “Either we’ll all survive or none of us will.” Four Jews did die, but the rest lived long enough to be liberated.

Wladyslav Kowalski’s speech at the ceremony in his honour in Jerusalem:

“I did nothing special and I don’t consider myself a hero. I simply acted on my human obligation to the persecuted and suffering. I want to emphasize that it was not I who saved them. They alone saved themselves. I simply gave them a helping hand… I would like to reiterate that I did no more than help forty-nine Jews to survive the Holocaust. That’s all.”

Theme: HUMAN RIGHTS

First-person Accounts:

• "The Big Lie — Part 1" from The Big Lie by Isabella Leitner
• "The Bicycle" — the story of Eva Heyman from We are Witnesses: Five Diaries of Teenagers Who Died in the Holocaust by Jacob Boas

Discussion Questions:

• Can you identify any violations of human rights in these stories?
• Could this happen to you?
• Who protects your human rights?
• What can you do to ensure that governments, institutions, and laws continue to protect people?

Theme: RESISTANCE

First-person Accounts:

• "Fear" and "On a Sunny Evening" from I Have Not Seen A Butterfly Around Here, poems by children in the Terezin concentration camp.
• "The Big Lie — Part 2" from The Big Lie by Isabella Leitner

Discussion Questions:

• What evidence of resistance can you find in these passages?
• What actions did these people take that gave them some control over their lives?
• What forms of resistance are illustrated in thee stories?

Theme: CHOICES

First-person Accounts:

• "Police Testimony" from Hitler’s Willing Executioners by Daniel Goldenhagen
• "There Was One Man" from The Holocaust by Martin Gilbert
• "Saved By Sugihara: Nadia’s Story" from interviews conducted by the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre
• "The Danish Rescue: Ellen Nielsen’s Story" from Resistance and Rescue from interviews conducted by the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre
• "Gerta: Rescued by Dr. Feng Ho" from Resistance and Rescue (a study guide by the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre)
• "Not A Hero — The Kowalski Story" from Paths of the Righteous by Mordechai Paldiel

Discussion Questions:

• In what ways do the characters in these stories make choices?
• What were the various roles played by the people in these countries (e.g., bystander, helper, rescuer, perpetrator, and victim)?
• What risks did people take to be helpers and rescuers?
• What do you think might be factors that influenced people to make the choices they made?

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