Holocaust
Exhibition Online Activity
The Holocaust was a dark
moment in the history of humankind and the amount of information available on
this period is extensive. Therefore, you will be surveying several online
exhibitions on different areas of the Holocaust.
From the list of recommended
Holocaust exhibitions online, you are to choose three (3) websites. Try to choose three websites that
address different issues in relation to the Holocaust. (For example, one site about music
related to the Holocaust, one site about survivor stories, and one site about
diplomatic rescues of European Jews.)
Once you have chosen your
three sites of interest, open up a new Microsoft Word document and
title it “Holocaust Exhibition Online Activity.” It is required that you complete the
assignment as a Word document. For
each of the three websites, you are asked to answer the following seven (7)
questions. Don’t forget your name,
date and period at the top of your document.
This assignment is worth
75 points total!
Please see the rubric for details!
INVESTIGATIVE
QUESTIONS:
- Write the proper citation for this website.
Author
(Last Name, First Name). Title of the web page. Copyright date (if
available). Available online at
[insert complete web address].
Date visited [insert date].
- After noting the title and author of the web site,
would you consider this site a reliable
source?
- Give a one-paragraph description of the website’s focus. A paragraph is at least 5 sentences
long.
- How does this website covey information to the visitor? (photos, artwork, essays, artifacts,
primary sources, letters, personal narratives. . .)
- List 5
facts you have learned from this website. List the facts in YOUR OWN
WORDS!
- What was the most surprising thing (issue, event,
idea, theory, ideology, story. . . ) you found on this website? Your response should be in narrative
form and 2-4 sentences in length.
- Would you recommend this website to someone
researching a related topic?
THIS
ASSIGNMENT IS DUE MAY 28 AT THE END OF CLASS!!
Holocaust Exhibitions
Online
http://www.ushmm.org/olympics/
For two weeks in
August 1936, Adolf Hitler's Nazi dictatorship camouflaged its racist,
militaristic character while hosting the Summer Olympic Games. Soft-pedaling its
anti-Semitic agenda and plans for territorial expansion, the regime exploited
the Games to bedazzle many foreign spectators and journalists with an image of a
peaceful, tolerant Germany...This site presents an online version of an
exhibition created by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington
DC that was on display at the Museum from July 1996 - June
1997.
www.ushmm.org/doyourememberwhen
Do You Remember
When..., a new online
exhibition presented by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, details the life of
Manfred Lewin, a young Jew who was active in one of Berlin’s Zionist youth
groups until his deportation to and murder in Auschwitz-Birkenau. The exhibition
centers around the 17-page artifact, which illustrates the daily life of the
young couple and their youth group. It provides a vivid account of the hopes and
fears of Jewish youth during the deportations, as well as a glimpse into gay
Jewish life during the Holocaust.
The Last Expression
project is a forum to explore the roles, functions, meanings and making of art
in the Nazi concentration camps if World War II, focusing on the notorious sire
of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
http://motlc.wiesenthal.org/exhibits/visasforlife/
The remarkable story
of Chiune Sugihara, rescuer of Jews during the Nazi Holocaust. When World War II
broke out, Consul Chiune Sugihara's office was flooded with visa requests from
thousands of Jews fleeing German-occupied Poland. With the encouragement of his
wife Yukiko, Sugihara issued Japanese transit visas to as many as 6,000 Polish
Jews, risking his job, his career, his future, and even his
safety.
http://motlc.wiesenthal.org/exhibits/dignitydefiance/
The material contained
in this exhibit, commemorating fifty years since the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in
1943, documents the confrontation of life against death and the struggle for
human dignity waged on a daily basis by the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto. Its
articles, original documents, photographs and other educational materials all
testify to this enduring spirit of physical, cultural and religious
resistance.
http://motlc.wiesenthal.org/exhibits/faces/
Images of Polish Jews
- Those in the photographs do not know yet that soon their houses will be
deserted, the streets of their towns covered with the black snow of fluff from
slit eiderdowns, that the wisdom of the Book will be able to save no one. All
that will remain after them, when the biblical names have left in cattle cars -
could be put in a drawer, hidden in the attic, buried in
junk.
The Hidden History of
the Kovno Ghetto-During the three-year life of the Kovno Ghetto in Lithuania,
members of the terrorized Jewish population engaged in a remarkable, organized
act of defiance. Determined to
leave a record of the ghetto’s history for posterity, many of Kovno's Jews
methodically created secret archives, diaries, drawings, and photographs to
document German crimes against their community. The history begins in the summer of
1941-soon after German troops invaded Soviet territory, including
Soviet-controlled Lithuania.
http://www.holocaustforgotten.com/
Many people understand
that the policies of the Nazi regime targeted Jews. What many people do not know
is that 5 million non-Jews were also victimized during the Holocaust. Here, you
will investigate Hitler's policies of targeting people of mixed races, gays and
lesbians, gypsies, and the handicapped during the
Holocaust.
http://www.holocaustsurvivors.org/survivors.shtml
Beginning in March
1942, a wave of mass murder swept across Europe. During the next 11 months
4,500,000 human beings were eliminated. By the end of World War II the toll had
risen to approximately 6,000,000 Jews, which included 1,500,000 children, who
perished at the hands of the Nazi murderers. When the killing ended those who
survived were released from the concentration camps and came out of hiding. Six
detailed accounts, in audio and transcript form, include family photographs as
well as links to encyclopedia references and related
resources.
http://motlc.wiesenthal.org/pages/rn.html
Non-Jews who saved
Jews during the Holocaust, often at great personal risk, are honored by Yad
Vashem as the "Righteous Among The Nations". By saving Jews, these people proved
that rescue was possible and by so doing they enhanced the dignity of humanity.
http://www.humboldt.edu/~rescuers/
TO SAVE A LIFE:
STORIES OF HOLOCAUST RESCUE--In this book you will find true
stories narrated by six rescuers accompanied by the narratives of thirteen
people whom they rescued. Three stories take place in Holland; the others are
set in Poland and Czechoslovakia.
http://www.yad-vashem.org.il/exhibitions/album_auschwitz/home_auschwitz_album.html
The Auschwitz Album is
the only surviving visual evidence of the process of mass murder at
Auschwitz-Birkenau. The photos were taken at the end of May or beginning of June
1944, by two SS men whose task was to take ID photos and fingerprints of the
inmates (not of the Jews who were sent directly to the gas chambers). The photos
show the arrival of Hungarian Jews from Carpatho-Ruthenia.
http://www.yad-vashem.org.il/exhibitions/museums/histmuseum/home_histmuseum.html
Yad Vashem's
Historical Museum first opened nearly forty years ago; the present
chronological-thematic format was introduced in 1973. The museum combines
contemporary visual and textual documentation with artifacts and brief written
explanations, to tell the story of the Holocaust from the Nazis' rise to power
through the first postwar years. The exhibition focuses on the protagonists of
this darkest time in human history: the Germans and other perpetrators, and the
Jews.
http://www.yad-vashem.org.il/exhibitions/valley/home_valley.html
The Valley of the
Communities in Yad Vashem is a massive 2.5-acre monument literally dug out of
natural bedrock. Over 5000 names of communities are engraved on the stonewalls
in the Valley of the Communities. Each name recalls a Jewish community, which
existed for hundreds of years; for the inhabitants, each community constituted
an entire world. Today, in most cases, nothing remains but the
name.
http://www.yad-vashem.org.il/exhibitions/temporary_exhibitions/childsplay/1_home.html
Approximately one and
a half million of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust were children.
The number of children who survived is estimated in the mere thousands. This exhibition opens a window into the
world of children during the Shoah. Unlike other Holocaust exhibitions, it does
not focus on history, statistics or descriptions of physical violence. Instead,
the toys, games, artwork, diaries, and poems displayed here highlight some of
the personal stories of the children, providing a glimpse into their lives
during the Holocaust.
http://www.yad-vashem.org.il/exhibitions/from_our_photo_archive/home_from_our_photo_1.html
A photo
archive demonstrating various events and holidays before, during and after the
Holocaust.
http://www.yad-vashem.org.il/exhibitions/warsaw_ghetto/home_warsaw.html
Of
particular note among the vast quantity of documentation pertaining to the
Warsaw Ghetto found in various archives and libraries, is the tremendous number
of photographs. There are photos portraying almost every aspect of life and
death there. These photos fall into several categories: from amateur pictures,
through photos taken by journalists and professional propagandists, to
three-dimensional and color photos. Generally speaking there are two types of
photos that were taken in the ghetto, and these can be further divided into
sub-categories: photos that were taken by the Germans, and those that were
photographed by others. These collections cover four completely different
perspectives of the ghetto, and they are a sampling of the various spheres that
were documented on film in the ghetto, as well as the different photographers
who worked there.
http://www.yad-vashem.org.il/exhibitions/museums/art_museum/home_art_museum.html
The Yad Vashem Art
Museum comprises the largest collection of Holocaust Art in the world. This art
was predominantly created by Jewish artists living under German occupation, in
cities, ghettos and concentration camps during WWII.
http://www.yad-vashem.org.il/exhibitions/temporary_exhibitions/visas/home_visas.html
Diplomats
enjoyed a special status in the countries where they served and were in a unique
position to extend significant help to refugees. For persecuted Jews desperately
seeking visas to escape Nazi terror, the actions of these diplomats often were
the difference between life and death. Many used every nuance of the regulations
to keep Jews from entering their countries. Yet a few shine as beacons of light
in the vast darkness...lone lighthouses guiding refugees past the lethal rocks
and deadly minefields of the Holocaust.
http://www.yad-vashem.org.il/exhibitions/kristallnacht/home_kristallnacht.html
On
November 9, 1938, the Nazis unleashed a series of riots against the Jews in
Germany and Austria. In the space of a few hours, thousands of synagogues and
Jewish businesses and homes were damaged or destroyed. For the first time, tens
of thousands of Jews were sent to concentration camps simply because they were
Jewish. This event came to be called Kristallnacht ("Night of the Broken
Glass") for the shattered store windowpanes that carpeted German streets. At
this site there are a variety of on-line resources about Kristallnacht that will
enhance your understanding of the event and provide visual
documentation.
On May 13, 1939, the
German transatlantic liner St. Louis
set sail from Hamburg, Germany, for Havana, Cuba. Almost all of the 937
passengers were Jews fleeing from the Third Reich. Tragically, most would be
sent back to a continent about to be engulfed in Hitler's war. Through
historical research, detective work, and an exhaustive media campaign, Museum
researchers tried to piece together the fates of the
passengers.
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/kristallnacht/frame.htm
Overview of
the events, victims and political outcomes of Kristallnacht, 9 November,
1938.
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/hsx/
Through reproductions
of some 250 historic photographs and documents, Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals
1933-1945 examines the rationale, means, and impact of the Nazi regime's
attempt to eradicate homosexuality that left thousands dead and shattered the
lives of many exhibition is the first in a series about the lesser–known victims
of the Nazi era.
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/szyk/
During the first half
of the 20th century, Polish-born Jewish artist Arthur Szyk raised his pen
against anti-Semitism and Nazi tyranny. Through his artwork, Szyk exposed the
persecution of Europe’s Jews and pushed for international intervention to end
the Holocaust.
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/music/
Music was heard in
many ghettos, concentration camps, and partisan outposts of Nazi-controlled
Europe. While popular songs dating from before the war remained attractive as
escapist fare, the ghetto, camp, and partisan settings also gave rise to a
repertoire of new works. These included topical songs inspired by the latest
gossip and news, and songs of personal expression that often concerned the loss
of family and home.
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/dp/
May 8, 1945, marked
the end of hostilities and a turn toward peace for war-ravaged Europe. For those
who had survived the Nazi Holocaust, however, the end of the war brought the
beginning of a long and arduous period of rebirth. As many as 100,000 Jewish
survivors found themselves among the seven million uprooted and homeless people
classified as displaced persons (DPs)...
http://www.ushmm.org/museum/publicprograms/programs/poetry00/
In conjunction with
National Poetry Month, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum presented a
special one-day program devoted exclusively to poetry inspired by the Holocaust.
This exceptional day of events included a reading by Czeslaw Milosz, recipient
of the Nobel Prize for Literature and the National Medal of
Arts...
The indigenous Jewish
communities of Greece represent the longest continuous Jewish presence in
Europe. These communities, along with those who settled in Greece after their
expulsion from Spain, were almost completely destroyed in the Holocaust. In the
spring of 1941, the Germans defeated the Greek army and occupied Greece until
October of 1944...
During the Holocaust
much of Jewish cultural heritage was destroyed — religious objects melted down
and books burned or sent for pulp. Only the Nazis preserved a sample of Jewish
culture for their own 'scientific' purposes. At war's end Allied forces
uncovered huge stores of looted books, often lying strewn in makeshift depots.
What was to be done with this valuable cultural legacy?
http://www.ushmm.org/bunel/bunel.htm
Relatively few rescued
Jews in German-occupied Europe. Indifference, anti-Semitism, and fear all
deterred efforts. But among those risking imprisonment and death to save Jews
were individual Christian clergy, who hid thousands of Jewish children in
religious institutions or with willing families. Angered at Nazi policies,
Father Jacques made the boys' school in Avon, France, a
refuge...
Josef Nassy
(1904–1976), a black expatriate artist of Jewish descent, was one of 2,000
civilians holding American passports who were confined in German internment
camps during World War II. While imprisoned for three years, Nassy created a
unique visual diary of more than 200 paintings and
drawings.
http://www.ushmm.org/research/doctors/
On December 9, 1946,
an American military tribunal opened criminal proceedings against 23 leading
German physicians and administrators for their willing participation in war
crimes and crimes against humanity. For the 50th anniversary, the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum presents excerpts from the official record: Trials of
War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law
No. 10.
Ken McVay founded
Nizkor to answer the claims of those who say that the Holocaust did not happen.
Although it fulfills that role extremely well, it is also simply an excellent
source for scientific and historical information about the
Holocaust.
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/nurem-laws.htm
This page from the
History Place describes the laws and includes a photograph of a chart used to
explain who the Nazis did and not consider Jewish.
http://www.ushmm.org/misc-bin/add_goback/outreach/evian.htm
This page from the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum gives more information about the Evian
Conference.
http://www.ushmm.org/misc-bin/add_goback/outreach/wannsee.htm
The Wannsee Conference
-- More information on the Wannsee Conference can be found on this page from the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
http://www.ushmm.org/research/doctors/index.html
This page from the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum focuses on the series of Nuremberg
Trials begun in December of 1946. Twenty-three doctors and administrators were
accused of crimes against humanity for their work on Nazi euthanasia programs
and in medical experiments conducted with concentration camp
inmates.
http://www.remember.org/jacobs/index.html
This page offers a
gallery of photographs of Auschwitz-Birkenau taken by Alan
Jacobs.
http://www.nizkor.org/faqs/auschwitz/
This page from Nizkor
gives an overview of the facts surrounding the murders and medical experiments,
which took place at Auschwitz.
http://motlc.wiesenthal.org/text/x32/xm3284.html
The Museum of
Tolerance offers a very thorough and informative online exhibit about the
Treblinka camp.
http://www-lib.usc.edu/~anthonya/war/main.htm
Anthony Anderson wrote
this history of the Netherlands under the Third Reich.