72 Years After Kristallnacht

Kristallnacht -- literally, "Night of Crystal," is often referred to as the "Night of Broken Glass." The name refers to the wave of violent anti-Jewish pogroms which took place on November 9 and 10, 1938 throughout Germany, annexed Austria, and in areas of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia recently occupied by German troops.

Instigated primarily by Nazi Party officials and members of the SA (Sturmabteilungen: literally Assault Detachments, but commonly known as Storm Troopers) and Hitler Youth, Kristallnacht owes its name to the shards of shattered glass that lined German streets in the wake of the pogrom-broken glass from the windows of synagogues, homes, and Jewish-owned businesses plundered and destroyed during the violence. (USHMM - read more)

Personal stories, maps, and more...

How did religious leaders in the US respond?

The events of November 9, 1938 pogrom sparked a wave of outrage among U.S. religious leaders. In the weeks following November 9, 1938, there were numerous editorials, radio broadcasts, and sermons. In a few cases – like the historic Church of the Pilgrimage in Plymouth, Massachusetts – local Christian clergy invited their Jewish colleagues to address their congregations for the first time. (USHMM - read more)

Photos:

Top: Photographer unknown. Synagogue Burning in Siegen, Germany. 1938. Photograph. The Pictorial History of the Holocaust, New York.

Middle: Photographer unknown. Bystanders view the smashed windows of a Jewish shop. 1938. Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team, Germany. Kristallnacht. Web. 9 Nov. 2010.

Bottom: Photographer unknown. Destruction of the Synagogue in Memel . 1938. Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team, Memel. Kristallnacht. Web. 9 Nov. 2010.

An American's Diary of the Concentration Camp Experience

350 American soldiers were captured by the Nazis and sent to the concentration camp Berga in Feb. 1945. They endured terrible conditions, starvation, abuse and finally a death march in April 1945. One of the survivors donated his diary to the USHMM this past month.


'You don't forget': Medic's Holocaust diary tells story of hell
By Wayne Drash, CNN
October 28, 2010

Washington (CNN) -- The tattered journal, its pages yellow with age, contains the painful memories of a U.S. medic, a man who recorded the deaths of soldiers who survived one of World War II's bloodiest battles yet met their end as slaves in Nazi Germany.

32. Hamilton 4-5-45
33. Young 4-5-45
34. Smith 4-9-45
35. Vogel 4-9-45
36. Wagner 4-9-45

"Some were dying," said its author, Tony Acevedo, now 86. "Some died, and I made a notation of that."

Flipping through the pages, you encounter a horrific part of world history through the eyes of a 20-year-old inside a slave labor camp. Amid the horror, the journal captures extraordinary human moments of war. Acevedo sketched beautiful women in the back pages, pinups whose eyes provided comfort amid hell.

Acevedo kept the diary hidden in his pants. He feared death if the commanders saw it. Yet he believed it was his duty as an Army medic to catalog the deaths and the atrocities against the 350 U.S. soldiers at the camp known as Berga, a subcamp of the notorious Buchenwald compound. Read full article...

80+ teachers dedicated a summer day to learning about the Holocaust & genocide

Over 80 teachers attended last week's intensive one-day teacher seminar at Seattle University: Perspectives on the Holocaust, sponsored by the Holocaust Center and the USHMM, in partnership with Seattle University.

Sessions included "Nazi Ideology," "Propaganda," "Guidelines for teaching about the Holocaust and Genocide," and a special presentations by Carl Wilkens, a witness to the Rwandan Genocide and Henry Friedman, a Holocaust survivor.

"I came today because I want to teach this very hard subject better. This day was powerful - I know my unit will be better because of it."

(image below: Carl Wilkens)

"I liked the connection with other genocides."
"The entire workshop was outstanding!"

"I am amazed by the wealth of resources available to me...for free!"

"This was one of the most amazing professional development workshops I have ever attended!"

Can't get to DC but want to attend one of the USHMM's teacher seminars?

On August 24, 2010, the Holocaust Center is partnering with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Seattle University to bring to Seattle

Perspectives on the Holocaust: A Seminar for Educators.

Register Now! (Space is limited.)

This one-day, information packed seminar will provide educators with a solid foundation for teaching about the Holocaust in their classrooms.

We are proud to welcome as our keynote speaker Carl Wilkens, former head of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency International in Rwanda, and one of only a handful of Americans who chose to stay in the country after the genocide began. Wilkens is currently the director and founder of World Outside My Shoes.

Sessions are lead by the Holocaust Center's master teachers and USHMM teacher fellows - teachers who have had extensive training and experience in the subject of the Holocaust and genocide.

If you've been teaching the Holocaust for years, or if you have never taught the subject before - all teachers will find the day challenging, thought-provoking, and insightful. No one will leave without having gained new resources and new ideas.

Sessions include:

Nazi Ideology and the Holocaust: An Historical Overview
Guidelines for Teaching the Holocaust
Breakout sessions (Social Studies, Language Arts, and others)

Nazi Propaganda

Local Resources
Antisemitism and the Holocaust
Understanding Contemporary Genocide: The Case of Rwanda (Carl Wilkens)

Stories from a Survivor (Evening program - open to the public)

This incredible professional development opportunity is FREE. Lunch, snacks, and all materials are provided. Clock hours available. Regsitration is now open and space is limited.

Register Now!

Perspectives on the Holocaust: A Seminar for Educators
August 24, 2010
At Seattle University, Seattle
Sponsored by the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and Seattle University.

Questions or want more information? Please email Ilana Cone Kennedy, Director of Education, Holocaust Center at ilanak@wsherc.org.

Do you know the definition of the Holocaust?

Look in textbooks, in the dictionary, and you will find a myriad of different definitions - most of which are incomplete, and some are just plain inaccurate.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, generally regarded as one of the authorities on the Holocaust, officially defines the Holocaust as:

The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and destruction of European Jewish people by the Nazis and their collaborators between the years 1933-1945. While Jews were the primary target of Nazi hatred, the Nazis also persecuted and murdered Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Poles and people with disabilities. Six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. Of these 6 million, 1.5 million were children.

How do textbooks define the Holocaust? We'd love to know the definitions you find (and the sources in which you find them). Please considering sharing them here!

World is Witness

World is Witness - A geoblog that shares stories, photos, and maps from the field to document genocide and related crimes against humanity.

Photo: A Bangladeshi UN transport helicopter takes off from Duru village in Northeastern Congo while a Moroccan soldier secures the field. Michael Graham/USHMM. April, 2009.

Empty Desks in Duru
Duru, Democratic Republic of the Congo
June 24, 2009
Our MI-17 transport helicopter rumbles to life and lifts up from the UN base outside of Dungu, above American-made Humvees parked next to piles of supplies and prefabricated offices squatting alongside the dirt runway. UN staff in blue Kevlar and helmets buckled in next to me put on a jovial air, but there is an undercurrent of tension. We are flying into the heart of Lord’s Resistance Army ’s territory, just a few miles from their former base in Garamba National Park. Read more...


World is Witness, a project of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, bears witness to genocide and related crimes against humanity around the world. Our staff and guest contributors bring you updates from the field, eyewitness testimony, photographs, interactive maps and more. Includes interactive maps with Google Earth.


If you haven't seen this yet, you need to check it out. These stories and entries clearly remind us how important this education is and how much work needs to be done.

Confronting Violence with Knowledge

Holocaust Museum shooting shows need for continued education about the Holocaust

JT News
By Dee Simon and Laurie Warshal Cohen, Co-Executive Directors, Holocaust Center

The recent fatal shooting at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. is a stark reminder that each of us has the responsibility to stand up to prejudice and hate whenever and wherever we encounter it.

Sara J. Bloomfield, Director of the USHMM in Washington, sent out the following statement: “This incident underscores why the Museum is so important. The Holocaust did not begin with mass murder. It began with hate. The Holocaust reminds us of the dangers of indifference and unchecked hate — and that each of us has a responsibility to stand up to it.”

As individuals and as a community, we search again for answers and solutions to this kind of needless violence.

The Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center is working in our region to reach students, teachers and communities with educational programs that focus on the tragic consequences of bigotry, prejudice and hatreds. The center’s mission of teaching and learning for humanity puts it on the front lines of educating our young people. With a multi-pronged approach to Holocaust education, students who study the Holocaust in the context of human rights and genocide learn that hatred and prejudice have tragic consequences. They tell their teachers they will no longer accept bullying in their classes, and that they know the difference one person can make:

“After studying the Holocaust and hearing a speaker, I feel it is my job to help others to be tolerant towards different races and cultures. I can’t just let things happen anymore,” says one Lynnwood High School student.

As a small non-profit, the center dedicates its resources to programs that include: Holocaust teaching trunks, survivor presentations to classes, teacher training, traveling exhibits, classroom book sets, community programs, and an extensive multi-media library of artifacts, testimonies and other Holocaust materials. With these programs, we reached 40,000 students, teachers and community members this year.

These acts of violence, especially toward Jewish institutions, are a challenge to all of us. We grieve Stephen Tyrone Johns, who lost his life in Washington D.C. At the Holocaust Center, we confront this challenge through education. This is what the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has stood for since it opened its doors, and this is the mission of our local center in Seattle.

Saint George’s Students Finish Study of Holocaust with Visit to U.S. Holocaust Museum on Same Day as Shooting

SPOKANE, WA – Thirty Saint George’s middle schoolers who studied the Holocaust in class have just returned from a five-day tour of Washington DC landmarks that included the disconcerting experience of visiting the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum the same day it was attacked by a neo-Nazi gunman.

The students and two Saint George’s teachers toured the museum from 10:30 – 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday, June 10, and were on the opposite side of the museum building just over an hour later when the shooting occurred at 12:50 p.m. They were not in any immediate danger and didn’t learn what happened until later that day.

“It was a lesson we weren’t counting on, but it certainly reinforced what they had learned about hate crimes,” says Ruth Ann Johnson, SGS Middle School English teacher who was on the tour. Her 7th grade class reads Anne Frank’s diary, leading to student research projects on topics such as the Kristallnacht persecutions of the Jews and Nazi concentration camps.

The 7th and 8th grade students on the tour took both their visit to the museum and the news of the shooting very seriously. “We had an excellent discussion about the reality of violence that specifically targets certain people,” says Johnson. “This is why I teach the Holocaust, because this still happens today.”

The students’ tours that day had a broader theme of remembering acts of violence. They had begun with a tour of Ford’s Theater where President Lincoln was shot, before viewing the Holocaust Museum and ending their day at the Pentagon memorial to the victims of the September 11th attack. Now they have something else to remember from that day that will keep the lessons they learned in class very real for a long time to come.

Johnson serves on the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center’s advisory board. The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous has named her an Alfred Lerner Fellow at its Summer Institute for Teachers, and she has toured Holocaust sites in Amsterdam and Berlin on educational trip sponsored by the Holocaust Center and Museum Without Walls.

To arrange an interview with Ruth Ann Johnson about the school’s Holocaust curriculum and the students’ experiences in Washington DC, contact John Carter at 466-1636 x397 or at john.carter@sgs.org.

Shooting at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM)

All of us at the Holocaust Center send our colleagues at the USHMM and the family of Officer Johns our condolences, thoughts, and prayers for safety and healing in this difficult time.

Such acts of violence and hatred reiterate the need for the work we are doing.

Holocaust museum closed in tribute to slain guard (CNN)

The President and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar offer condolences.
From the White House Briefing Room Blog:

President Obama:
I am shocked and saddened by today’s shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. This outrageous act reminds us that we must remain vigilant against anti-Semitism and prejudice in all its forms. No American institution is more important to this effort than the Holocaust Museum, and no act of violence will diminish our determination to honor those who were lost by building a more peaceful and tolerant world.

Today, we have lost a courageous security guard who stood watch at this place of solemn remembrance. My thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends in this painful time.

Secretary Salazar:
Today, we witnessed an act of violence and hatred in one of our world's most sacred sites of remembrance. This horrible crime took the life of Officer Stephen Tyrone Johns, whose courage in the line of duty saved lives and protected the hallowed halls of the Holocaust Museum. Americans' thoughts and prayers tonight are with Officer Johns’ family.

We are also reminded of the great sacrifices our law enforcement officials, including security guards and the Park Police who protect the National Mall, make every day on our behalf. This tragic act of violence only reaffirms the lessons of peace and human dignity that the Holocaust Museum teaches.