Seventy years have passed since the Nazis exterminated approximately six million Jewish people from across Europe. (Willoughby, 2001, p. 4) Seventy years later and scholars and students alike are still asking the question, “Why?” How is it possible that such an atrocity could occur amongst intelligent, civilized human beings? Teaching the Holocaust poses a series of problems: the subject is vast, the material is dense, and time is often limited. In order to organize an effective unit of instruction, Totten advises educators to develop clear rationales that “will assist teachers in emphasizing particular aspects of the history, thus helping to ensure that the study is neither so broad nor so limited that it becomes meaningless (2001, p. 3)”. To develop a rationale, teachers may wish to ask themselves the following questions: Why is the Holocaust important to study? What do I perceive as the most important lesson(s) to be learned? If I only have time to teach five different topics/themes, what would they be and why? (Totten, 2001, p. 3) With the intention of teaching Art Spiegleman’s graphic novel Maus in my upcoming practicum, I needed to find a point of entry into the maze of material. One element that stood apart was the realm of propaganda. Through various forms of media such as print, posters, books, and film, the Nazis created a formidable picture of the “Jewish enemy” which overshadowed any rational thought. While propaganda was certainly not the only factor contributing to the Holocaust, it played a large part in the brainwashing process of the German people. From a pedagogical approach, exploring the Holocaust via propaganda allows the students to critically analyze various forms of media and language, whilst also introducing the students to the Nazi’s establishment of an “Us Versus Them” mentality which served to rationalize genocide.
Maneuvering through the propaganda machine is tricky. Stollznow states, “Dehumanisation is a cognitive process with a multi-faceted social production (i.e. a way of thinking that can result in linguistic, semiotic, and physical manifestations) (2008, p. 177)”. In order to effectively disseminate their message, the Nazis used many different formats to reach their audience, one of which was oration. Students may be interested in learning that as a dictator and leader of Germany’s Nazi party, Hitler was a great orator. With his remarkable charisma, Hitler had the ability to “play on people’s hopes and fears” (Willoughby, 2001, p. 10). Through his speeches, which often lasted upwards to two or three hours, Hitler lifted people’s spirits by inspiring them with his vision of Aryan dominance. Finding videos of Hitler’s speeches is easy – YouTube provides a variety of clips for consideration. Students would also need to comprehend the psychological fragility of the German people in the post-World War I, which led them to be more impressionable.
Although Hitler’s oratory skills were powerful, they were only one part in the Nazi’s othering process. Students need to also consider the significant linguistic strides that were taken to isolate Jewish people. After the Nazis assumed control in 1933, the party moved quickly to define non-Aryan “as a designation for any person who had a Jewish parent or grandparent (Hillberg, 2003, p. 64)”. Through a linguistic separation, the Jews no longer existed in the same sphere as the German people. The Nazis took this separation one step further by referring to these decrees as racial laws. Anti-Semitism had taken on a new perspective under the Nazi regime; “Whereas the ‘old’ Christian anti-Semitism was religious, the ‘new’ anti-Semitism of the Nazis was ‘racial’ (Falk, 2008)”. As a potential classroom activity, Kalfus recommends using primary source documents to analyze the Nazis’ use of euphemisms in office memorandums. (1990) Kalfus provides an example of one such memo in which details are provided regarding a van and its technical aspects. Throughout the entire memo, words like “merchandise” and “load” replace “Jews”. If students were to replace every euphemistic term with its intended meaning, a very different picture would become apparent. Even within the Nazi party, words were thoughtfully selected to convey a pre-determined meaning. Throughout Maus there are many examples of posters and signs which contain carefully crafted messages that need to be decoded.
Most Nazi propaganda was distributed through easily accessible media forms such as newspapers and posters. Subsequently, after 1933 approximately two-thousand German journalists were excused from their positions. These numbers included Jews, liberals, Communists, Social Democrats, conservatives, and apolitical writers. (Herf, 2006. p. 11) Thereafter, control of the press went to Nazi members. Editors had to be Aryan and marriage to non-Jews was prohibited. According to Herf, “By 1945, the Nazi – controlled press accounted for 82.5 percent of the total circulation (2006, p.19)”. Students need to understand that having control of the press meant that the Nazis, or more specifically, the Nazi Party Central Propaganda Office, had the freedom to distribute whichever message they desired. Hitler himself stated how propaganda should function:
Such being the case, all effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare essentials and those must be expressed in stereotyped formulae. These slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward (Welch, 1983, p. 3).
Through propaganda, particularly in print form, the Propaganda Office created an image of the Jewish people that was simple, repetitive, and devoid of humanness; “One of the principal means through which the perpetrator attempts to clear his conscience is by clothing his victim in a mantle of evil, by portraying the victim as an object that must be destroyed (Hillberg, 2003, p. 12)”. Therefore, Jewish people were often depicted as rats or insects in propaganda posters in order to remove them from the human arena; making them extinguishable. Understanding the use of animals in propaganda connects well to Spigelman’s animal representations in Maus. Students can draw correlations between the attributes portrayed in Nazi propaganda and Spiegelman’s characters.
Numerous examples of Nazi propaganda in print form are available on the Internet for students to analyze. One of the more popular publications was Paroche der Woche; a weekly propaganda poster designed for public display. Although all its messages are not anti-Semitic, there are a couple of relevant examples that can be discussed in class. To make the concept of representation more relevant to the students, it may be advantageous to first consider the function and role of stereotypes. As a practical example, I intend to review stereotypes in the media and advertisements, followed by a viewing of the PBS film, A Class Divided. The film shares the story of a classroom teacher, Jane Elliot, who in 1968 introduced the concept of discrimination to her class of grade three students. Given the homogenous makeup of the class, Elliot divided the students into two groups: brown eyed students and blue eyed students. Following this distinction she thereby awarded certain traits to the groups; making the blue eyed students smarter, the brown eyed students less smarter, and so forth. Remarkably, through tears and frustration, the students displayed a tendency to embody their assigned traits and to act out towards their classmates. The film offers a poignant look into the physical (there is a fight at one point between two students) and emotional effects that stereotyping can manifest. For a class studying the Holocaust, this provides a relevant connection to propaganda’s intended outcome.
Having established a clearer picture of how to approach teaching the Holocaust, one must also consider the implications. Any time a political subject is brought into the classroom (especially outside the social studies realm) there is bound to be a reaction. This reaction may come from the students, their parents, or school administration. In terms of the classroom, I realize that the students need to think critically about the messages portrayed by the media otherwise they may completely misinterpret the materials. Not to mention that teaching the Holocaust means delving into a particularly sensitive and emotionally charged piece of history. Although I intend to provide my students with the necessary tools and materials to share their thoughts, I am concerned that they will leave the classroom feeling rather despondent. I also worry that parents may find it inappropriate to discuss the Holocaust in grade nine, when it is not discussed in social studies until grade eleven. Regardless of these implications, it is my hope that teaching the Holocaust will increase the students’ awareness and empathy; both of which are powerful tools for anyone to acquire.
Works Cited
Falk, A. (2008). Collective psychological processes in anti-semitism. Jewish political studies review, 18(1-2). Retrieved from
www.jpa.org/phas/phas-falk-s06.htm
Herf, J. (2006). The Jewish enemy: nazi propaganda during WWII and the Holocaust. Cambridge: The Belkings Press.
Hillberg, R. (2003). The destruction of the European Jews. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Kalfus, R. (1990). Euphemisims of death: interpreting primary source documents of the Holocaust. The history teacher, 23(2): 87-93.
Stollznow, K. (2008). Dehumanisation in language and thought. Journal of language and politics, 7(2): 177-200.
Totten, S., Feinberg, S., Fernekes, W. (2001). The significance of rationale statements in developing a sound Holocaust education program. In Totten, S. & Feinberg, S. (Eds.) Teaching and studying the Holocaust. (pp. 1 – 23). Needham Heights: Allyn & Bacon.
Welch, D. (1983). Introduction. In Welch, D. (Ed.) Nazi propaganda: the power and limitations.(1-9). Beckenham: Croon Helm Ltd.
Willoughby, S. (2001). The Holocaust. Chicago: Heinemann Library.
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Herf, J. (2006). The Jewish enemy: nazi propaganda during WWII and the Holocaust. Cambridge: The Belkings Press.
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