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Compassion Within the Ghetto Walls
Lesson Plan
To print this lesson plan
click here.
Ages: Middle
School Grades 7-9
Duration:
Two hours
Didactic Objectives:
- Students will understand the dire situation of Jews living in ghettos.
- Students will discuss some of the dilemmas that various Jewish
communal leaders faced at the time.
- Students will learn about different organizations that were established by Jews imprisoned in the Warsaw ghetto in order to help other Jews in the ghetto. Through this, they will gain an understanding about how man's inhumanity towards man can be combated by man's humanity towards his fellow man.
- This lesson will focus on some of these people. Whether it was through mutual aid, soup kitchens, youth movements, or the smuggling that was done by the young children, there were hundreds who, despite their own hardships in the ghetto, continued to maintain their dignity
in order to help others.
Introduction
In the dark period of
the ghettos, when dehumanization was rampant in the streets of
Poland, there were Jews who, despite the fact that they themselves
lived in constant fear of
deportation, and were starving for food, were able to rise above the
daily, even hourly, struggle to survive and help others. These
individuals, and groups of people, are an example of those who were
able to maintain their humanity in the face of unprecedented
inhumanity.
Historical Background
On September 1, 1939,
Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany. Below, is the first German order after the outbreak of the Second World
War that deals with the "Jewish Question". Analyze this document:
Instructions by Reinhard Heydrich,
on Policy and Operations concerning the Jews in the Occupied
Territories, September 21, 1939
Berlin, September 21,
1939
To Chiefs of all Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police.
Subject: Jewish Question in Occupied Territory For the time being, the first
prerequisite for the final aim is the concentration of the Jews from
the countryside into the larger cities.
This is to be carried out speedily.
As far as possible, the areas…are to be cleared of Jews; at least
the aim should be to establish only few cities of concentration so
as to facilitate subsequent measures. In this connection, it should
be borne in mind that only cities which are rail junctions, or at
least located on railroad lines, should be selected as concentration
points.
On principle, Jewish communities of less than 500 persons are to be
dissolved and transferred to the nearest concentration center. |
Questions
- This document was written less than
three weeks after the Nazis invaded Poland. What does this denote
about Nazi Germany’s policy toward Jews under their occupation?
-
After reading this document, how would you describe the effects of
this German order on the Polish-Jewish population?
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More Information
On the basis of this German order, Jews were incarcerated in
hundreds of ghettos. Most of this
lesson focuses on this interim period in the ghettos and how the
suffering Jewish population devised ways to maintain their dignity
and struggle to survive.
On the eve of World War II the Jewish
population in Warsaw numbered 337,000, approximately 29% of the
total population of the city. This figure rose to 445,000 by March
1941, with the influx of Jews from smaller towns. From the first
days of German occupation, Jews in Warsaw were subjected to
attacks and discrimination, such as being driven away from food
lines, violently seized for forced labor and publicly assaulted.
Religious Jews in traditional dress were especially targeted,
beaten, and ridiculed. Teachers, craftsman, professionals, and
employees
of welfare and cultural institutions lost their positions, without
any compensation, with little or no prospect of obtaining similar
positions.
Harsh measures against the Jews of Warsaw placed them in dire
economic difficulties. As their resources dwindled, more and more Jews became
penniless. As a result of lack of food and other basic needs, many
Jews became destitute, and gradually the death toll began to rise.
The number of needy cases steadily increased and it became apparent
that a social welfare organization had to be created to provide
assistance wherever possible.
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Only by common
effort,
By genuine and
realistic work,
By great exertion,
By avoiding
unproductive complaints and vicious accusations,
By working with
heart,
By using sense,
By patience,
Will it be possible
to weather the present grave times.
Emanuel Ringelblum, Selected Documents from Warsaw Ghetto
Archives, Oneg Shabbat pp. 352
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Self Help
The
Jewish community organized a social welfare committee known as the
Zydowska Samapomoc Spolczna (Jewish Social Self-Help), or the
ZSS, in order to provide assistance to the Jewish residents.
"Centos", (the "National Society for the Care of Orphans"), ran schools and provided food, clothing and shelter. These self-help
organizations employed hundreds of people, offering a daily bowl of
soup as salary. Amongst the most important elements of self-help
were the "House Committees", which functioned in almost every
apartment house. House Committees were not bodies that were
appointed from above, but rather, emerged voluntarily from amongst
the house tennants. There were almost 2000 House Committees that
fulfilled important functions, such as providing medical care for the needy,
and organizing cultural events.
Masses
of people ate meals at its soup kitchens, which gave out a bowl of soup and
a piece of bread to all those who came. During the first half
of 1940, the organization’s aid activities focused on opening public
soup kitchens and distributing food to the needy. In addition they
also helped thousands of Jewish refugees and captives who were
pouring into the ghetto, and established institutions for child care.
Soup Kitchens
After Warsaw was occupied by the advancing German
forces, Emanuel Ringelblum, the historian of the Warsaw Ghetto asked
a young journalist, Rachel Auerbach, to assist the Jewish residents of
Warsaw and the influx of incoming refugees. A soup
kitchen opened, in an effort to feed the hungry and the homeless. *
Auerbach relates,
| On October 1,
..the day of the Nazis victory march into Warsaw, I marched
through the side streets that we were allowed to walk on, in order
to avoid the Germans. I have with me the necessary documents for the
new kitchen, and a box of dried plums...(p. 64) |
On the first day the kitchen opened, on 40 Lezsno Street, they
served 50 meals.
As
time went on and the need grew, more and more soup kitchens opened
up, and Rachel oversaw their operations.
After the Warsaw Ghetto was sealed in November,
1940, the food coming into the ghetto was restricted. The Nazis allotted only 180 calories per
person, and therefore ghetto inhabitants began to starve. The work
intensified, and the soup kitchens now served thousands of people a
day. By 1942, they were serving more than 100,000 people.
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If, in July 1942, according to the German statistics, there were
over 350,000 Jews alive in the ghetto in the summer of 1942, this
was because of the incredible organization, the desire towards life,
and the wisdom of those who worked in the public soup kitchens as
well as those who were in the civil resistance and all those who..
were able to help out.(p. 76) |
All kinds of
people helped out at the soup kitchens, such as teachers who
would also teach Hebrew, to the children gathered for meals there. For
example, there was a kitchen on Novolipki 22, where the
children would gather for meals there and the teachers would teach
Hebrew. Clearly, the kitchen became more than just a place to eat a
hot meal.
| Soup
kitchen.. its not easy to define this institution. A kitchen meant a
great deal. It was an organization of welfare, and as time went on,
especially once the ghetto was established, it became a unit of
other activities, both underground and not, of the Jews of Warsaw.
Political activities, cultural activities, and later on even the
Uprising.. (p. 67) |
Rachel and her comrades could not have imagined that the kitchens
would become some of the central places in the Warsaw Ghetto.
During the Summer 1942, the Nazis began the mass
deportations of Jews in Warsaw to their deaths in Treblinka. Most of
the soup kitchens closed during this time because most of the
people who worked in these kitchens had been deported. A few
kitchens, however remained active after the deportation, but the
vast majority closed.
Rachel Auerbach, survived the Holocaust and after
the war moved to Jerusalem, Israel.
*All quotes are taken from her book "Testimonies from Warsaw",
Rachel Auerbach, 1985 (Hebrew)
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To the Teacher
Both adults and children
were in need of these kitchens. The feeling of helplessness and
starvation was rampant in the ghetto affecting all ages. There
were different types of soup kitchens. There were kitchens where children were able to sit
down and eat together (take note that there were not enough chairs and tables for
all) and there were kitchens that served a bowl of soup at the
door. |
Emanuel
Ringelblum on Self-Help in the Ghetto
Despite
the will of Jews to help themselves, they were trapped without the
means to operate and maintain soup kitchens. On May 26, 1942, Ringelblum notes:
“…Relief work doesn’t solve the problem;
it only keeps people going a little while. The people have to die
anyway. It lengthens suffering but cannot save them; if it (the
Jewish Self-Help) really wanted to do anything, it would have to
have millions of zloty at its disposal every month, and it does not
have them. It remains a proven fact that the people fed in the soup
kitchens will all die if they eat nothing but the soup supplied and
the dry rationed bread. The question thus arises whether it would
not serve the purpose better to reserve the available money for
selected individuals, for those who are socially productive, for the
intellectual elite, etc. But the situation is such that, first of
all, the numbers even of such select individuals is quite
considerable, and there would not be sufficient even for them.
Secondly, the question arises why should one pronounce judgement on
artisans, laborers and other useful persons, who were productive
people back in their small towns, and only the ghetto and the war
have turned them into non-people, into scrap, into human dregs,
candidates for mass graves. There is left a tragic dilemma: What
shall one do? Shall one (hand out the food) with little spoons to
everybody, and then no one will live, or in generous handfuls to
just a few……?"
Documents of the Holocaust
p. 232 |
Discussion Questions
- In this diary entry, Emanuel Ringelblum
comes to a painful realization about all of the relief work that he
and his comrades are doing. Describe this realization.
- In the above quote, Emanuel Ringelblum is left with a terrible
dilemma regarding food distribution. He asks, “What shall one
do?” Describe the dilemmas he faced.
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 The Children of The Vilner Family, Warsaw, Poland,
Pre-War
Compare and contrast this pre-war
photograph with the photograph below taken in the ghetto as
conditions worsened.
Although these pictures do not show the same children, what do you notice
about the fate of children in the ghetto?
Warsaw, Poland, September 19, 1941, A Woman with a Baby, Begging
in the Ghetto
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Smuggling
The
following poem was written by Henryka Lazawart, a young Polish-Jewish poet who was murdered in the Treblinka extermination camp.
She wrote this poem in honor of the children who
risked their lives to smuggle extra food for their families into
the ghettos.
Read the
poem and answer the questions below:
THE LITTLE SMUGGLER
Henryka Lazawart
Past walls,
past guards
Impudent,
hungry, obstinate
I slip by, I run like a cat
At noon, at night, at dawn
In foul weather, a blizzard, the heat of the sun
A hundred times I risk my life
I risk my childish neck.
Under my arm a sack-cloth bag
0n my back a torn rag
My young feet are nimble
In my heart constant fear
But all must be endured
All must be borne
So that you, ladies and gentlemen,
May have your fill of bread tomorrow.
Through walls, through holes, through brick
At night, at dawn, by day
Daring hungry, cunning
I move silently like a shade
if suddenly the hand of fate
Reaches me at this game
’Twill be the usual trap life sets.
You, mother
Don’t wait for me any longer
I won’t come back to you
My voice won’t reach that far
Dust of the street will cover
The lost child’s fate.
Only one grim question
The still face asks
Mummy, who will bring you bread tomorrow? |
Questions - What were the dangers that the little smuggler
faced in order to obtain bread?
(walls, guards,
fences, extreme weather conditions, risking his life, fear in his heart)
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What did s/he worry about? Was s/he afraid of dying?
(concern
about who will bring his/her mother food tomorrow)
- Who is taking care of whom?
(Children
caring for parents)
- How often does the child smuggler have to risk
his/her life for bread?
(all seasons of the year)
- This poem focuses on 3 groups of people.
Identify these three groups.
Describe the role each one has in the poem.
(smugglers, ladies and
gentlemen, Germans)
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Youth Movements
No description of life in the ghettos would be complete without
relating to the Jewish youth movements that existed in Poland before
the war and then played such a powerful role in the ghetto
rebellions that were organized and led by them in some of
the ghettos. About seventy thousand young Jews belonged to the
different movements and their leadership was pressed into agonizing
decisions forced on them by the war and the oppressive German policy
towards Jews. From a peace-loving, romantic and
idealistic program before 1939, they were forced into a reality of
activity in underground secrecy and finally into violent armed
revolt. (The youth movements played a crucial role in planning and
organizing the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising that began on April 19,
1943. This is an important topic in and of itself, worthy of study
and discussion. Here it is only part of the lesson and not the main topic.
In the following document, the different youth movement
activities and their dilemmas regarding what should
take precedence in the given war-situation are described.
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What must we do in this situation? In which
direction shall we turn our attention?..we must arrange courses in
reading and writing Yiddish, Hebrew, and in arithmetic..to draw the
street youth into warm social surroundings, to attend as far as
possible to their personal future, and to implant in them a feeling
of solidarity and responsibility: and with the aid of singing and
games to create a youthful atmosphere for a Jewish youth that has
become old before its time. The first group must be enabled to
acquire an elementary education; we must arrange courses in reading
and writing Yiddish, Hebrew, and in arithmetic, etc; the other part
of Jewish youth must be helped to a consciousness of its common fate
with the Jewish masses..its feeling for the people must be
awakened..it must be drawn into public activities in every part of
Jewish life..enriched with the spiritual treasures which the Jewish
people have created through the ages. And, finally, we must gather
together the best of the Jewish youth, which has already received
its education in our movement and forge it into a cadre that is prepared for battle and that will
lead the way for Jewish youth..
Documents on the Holocaust, p. 211
From an article by R. Domski (T. Borzykowski)
in the underground newspaper of the Dror-He-Halutz movement in
Warsaw, Dror, No. 3, August 1940
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Questions
- What
should take precedence in the given war situation?
- What are
the different activities suggested in the document?
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To the Teacher
Many different activities are mentioned in the
above document. We think it is important for students to learn about
how Jewish youngters in youth movements grappled with their
situation identified with Jewish history and culture and later
organized a revolt. The youth movement leaders already foresaw
their fate before the ghetto was closed in
November 1940. |
Summary
Concluding Activities- Reflect on your feelings after what you have just
read.
- Choose one of the topics that you read about in the Warsaw Ghetto and
compare it with the situation in other ghettos.
- Often the dilemmas of the Holocaust are referred to as
'Choiceless Choices'. After reading about the
different dilemmas that people faced in
the ghetto, what does this phrase "Choiceless Choices" mean to you?
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