Artistic Representation of the Holocaust

Lesson Plan

The following lesson plan(s) are flexible; depending on how much or how little time you want to spend on the Holocaust. (1 day = a 45 min. class period.)

My lesson plans are for the teaching of the artistic representation of the Holocaust. Because I am a grade 7-12 French teacher I will be focusing on two French artists who are Jewish and their work from the Holocaust. They are David Olre and Charlotte Salomon. David was a Sonderkommando at Auschwitz, survived the Holocaust, and died in 1985. Charlotte did not survive the Holocaust. David Olre was an artist/artisan before the Holocaust. However, his art was created afterwards, from his memories of what he had seen and done. Charlotte Salomon's art was created before she was deported from Nice, France to Auschwitz where she died. I am also including other information for the historical teaching of the Holocaust as well, if the art aspect does not interest you.

Some or all of these ideas could be taught in the target foreign/world language depending on the language level of the student. Some information may not be suitable for 7th grade students due to graphic content (naked/dead bodies at Auschwitz) and mild swearing (a graduate student made film has the F-word). Use your judgment and/or get parent permission.

Resources

Web Resources

University of Minnesota website for the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies - This site contains a multitude of resources, information, word definitions, and art exhibited from various Twin Cities galleries, and elsewhere for the study of the Holocaust.

The History Channel - There is a series of shows which include interviews and real footage aired August, 2002. The titles are "Invasion" "Decision" "Ghetto" "Resistance" "Mass Murder" and "The Final Toll".

Jewish Foundation For the Righteous - Offers a book titled, Voices & Views: A History of the Holocaust. Editor: Dwork. Cost=?

http://fcit.coedu.usf.edulholocaust/resouret/gaRery/Olere.htm* - This specific site contains a picture of the artist, David Olre pictures of some of his works, with titles in French and English and descriptions of them. This site gives some information about "Sonderkommandos."( These were camp prisoners selected to remove dead people from the gas chambers and transport them to the crematoria.)

http://feit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust* - This is the main site where the previous resource comes from. (The Florida Center for Instructional Technology.) As well as Olre's artwork, this site has maps, quizzes, videography, virtual reality of camp layouts, museums, teacher resources, age specific student activities, and other information about the Holocaust.

www.learntoguestion.com - This site has some of Olre's artwork on it. However, sometimes it is difficult to access the Holocaust art information. (a possible glitch on their end.)

http://personal.centenary.edu/~aschiffn/camp/Credits.html* - This site also has some of Olre's artwork. The way the site is set up, you click on the work and only the art shows, no other junk. These pictures are perfect for printing out for classroom use.

www.ushmm.org/nassy* - This site is an on-line exhibit of Josef Nassy's work. He was a black, Jewish, American living in Paris at the time of the German occupation. He was interned in a camp with other Americans and was given drawing supplies while in the camp by the Red Cross. Due to treaties, Americans in internment camps were treated well compared to everyone else. Josef Nassy died in the mid-seventies. Go to this site to read more about him and see his artwork.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - in Washington D.C. This site also gives you access to finding all sorts of books in many different languages, as well as other Holocaust information. Click on Catalog search, Keyword: French, and you will find hundreds if not thousands of all sorts of foreign language books.

High Beam Encyclopedia, French Art - This site allows you to look up French art by title, artist, etc.

Musée des enfants d'Izieu (Izieux, France) (sic) This is an on-line museum (you can click French or English once you get to the site) that commemorates the 44 Jewish children gassed in Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944. Francois Mitterrand, the then President of France, publicly opened the museum on April 4th, 1994.

Film Resources

Class time needed to show the film is given at the end of each description. This is showing time only, without time for discussion. Figure accordingly.

"Shoah" by Claude Lanzmann. (He's French) Made between 1979-1983. "Shoah" means "Holocaust" in Hebrew. It is a 9 and 1/2 hour documentary of survivor interviews. Available at Blockbuster and the University of Minnesota Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, phone: 612-626-2235 for info.) One excellent interview on this tape is of a barber named Abraham Bamba regarding his experience as a barber at Treblinka. (You might want to show an hour's worth, or certain clips. Preview parts to see if some interviews are better than others for what you want to do for the Holocaust.) 1 day

"Night and Fog" a.k.a. "Nuit et Brouillard" by Alain Resnais (in French with English subtitles) Dated 1955 and is about 40-50 minutes long. This is a very good documentary (my opinion) with concentration camp footage. (some graphic footage) Also, it shows the camp post war, when no one is there. Also, the background music is classical and eerie. Please watch this BEFORE you show it to your students to see if it is appropriate! Suitable for older students, 15+. (My opinion.) 1 day

"Untitled Video" by Seth Kramer of Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. About 14 minutes. This video was done as his Master's project in the 1990's. This is a good short movie for teenagers. This graduate student tries to count out the number of people who were slaughtered during the Holocaust. It uses modern music and is a thoughtful look at large numbers of Jewish Holocaust victims (6 million) and HOW we can think about and/or try to understand this history. (Note: He says the F word twice, otherwise it's a fine film.) (The University of Minnesota has this, call to see if they can lend it to you 612-626-2235, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.) 1/2 day

"From the Bitter Earth" Artists of the Holocaust talk about the Holocaust. (30,000 drawings survived the ghettos and camps through hiding them in the walls, the ground, or from smuggling them out.) 65 min. 1 day and 1/2

"Weapons of the Spirit" about the rescue in southern France. The length of the film is unknown.

"Genghis Cohn" 1994 (originally aired on A&E) from the book, The Dance of Genghis Cohn. Romain Gary, 1968. This movie is hilarious, in a black comedic way. The perpetrator becomes victim. The movie takes place post WWII. The mostly English cast includes Diana Rigg. More suitable for 10"' graders and up due to content and understanding the significance of the Holocaust and post-war attitudes. (my opinion) Running time about 2 hours. 3 days

Literary Resources

Charlotte: A Diary in Pictures by Charlotte Salomon. New York. Harcourt, 1963.

Witness: Images of Auschwitz. N. Richard Hills, TX: West Wind Press, 1998. David Olre and Alexandre Oler. (sic) Contains Olre's artwork with text by his son.

The Eves of a Witness/L'Oeil du Témoin. Serge Marsfeld. New York: The Beate Klarsfeld Foundation, 1989. Contains a three-page summary of the artist's life and shows 100 pages of his artwork- pencil sketches and color paintings. The text is in French and English.

Journal d'un coiffeur juif à Paris, sous l'Occupation. Albert Grunberg 1898-1976. editor: Roger Grimberg. Pub: Paris: Atelier, 2001. ISBN: 2708235583 This is a diary of a Jewish hairdresser/barber in Paris under the Nazi occupation.

Dieu à Buchenwald. Albert Simon, 1925- . Pub: Paris: Atelier c2000. ISBN: 2708235419

Auschwitz and After . Charlotte Delbo. (She was a Roman Catholic political prisoner.)

Explaining Hitler. Ron Rosenbaum (He was a reporter for the New York Herald Observer.)

Local Contacts of Interest

Jewish Community Relations Council: 612-338-7816

Speaker's Bureau

Speakers are FREE of charge. Please call the Jewish Community Relations Council 1 to l and 1/2 months BEFORE you want the speaker so they can arrange for the person to come to your school.
Ask for Liora (sounds like Leeora) 612-338-7816

Also, Jodi Elowitz, 612-338-7816, is highly educated in the Holocaust and works for the JCRC. She can come to your class and speak about the Holocaust. Call her for more info and details about what she can do for you.

Local speakers: (There are many others.)

Nelly Trocme Hewitt (French) - Holocaust survivor, but not an artist, taught French at Breck and is docent at Mpls. Inst. of Arts and gives tours.

Robert Fisch, M.D. (Hungarian) - Pediatrician at the Fairview-University Hospital. He also wrote a book about his Holocaust experience with his own artwork added.

(copies of his book, Light From the Yellow Star are available for your classroom from the JCRC. Call the above number and talk to Jodi Elowitz.)

Lesson Plans

Day 1

Ask students what they know about the Holocaust and discuss it with them. Things to talk about:

Day 2

Show a film. The film you choose depends on how much the students already know. Night and Fog is good, if you want the students to see atrocities, if they are truly clueless as to what went on. Possibly use Genghis Cohn, if students are older because the film has a lot of opportunity for higher thinking and analysis of the film itself. It also shows the Holocaust and post-Holocaust reactions of the perpetrators. The graduate school made film is excellent for younger students, 7th and 8th grade because it addresses the issue of large numbers - the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis. How many is 6 million? The movie presents a way to think about the numbers, visually.

Start discussion of film. Perhaps talk about the things people lost during the war. Possessions, rights, family/people they knew and loved, dignity, etc.

Day 3

Continue film. Start discussion of film or finish the discussion of the film.

Day 4

Art and the Holocaust: Talk about art specifically as a way of self expression. Link art to the Holocaust. Not only is art (and music) an expression of "self," it can be used to express thoughts, emotions, and memories too painful to talk about.

Introduce any artist or more than one that you want to talk about. Give background/biographical information regarding their life and their art.

The following three are all deceased.

  1. David Olre (French)
  2. Charlotte Salomon (French)
  3. Josef Nassy (American/Jewish/Black)

Or

Have a guest speaker come to talk about their art. Ask JCRC if they have other Holocaust survivor artists who could speak. Remember, some people were artists before the Holocaust, others were not trained artists and just made art because they wanted to or felt that they had to in remembrance of others who did not survive.

Robert Fisch, M.D. (Hungarian - local doctor/artist)

Day 5

Continue discussion about chosen artist(s). Show actual works of art from these artists, found in books, on the web, or on slides. Try to show accurate pictures of artists' work. i.e.: if the painting was done in color, try not to show it in black and white. Try to stay true to the artists' vision.

Day 6

Have students try to put themselves in the place of the victims of the Holocaust. Using what they know about the Holocaust, have the students try to express in a drawing (pencil or color) or painting the feelings and emotions of the Jews and others who were afraid and suffered during that time. Make sure to tell them they can't use any symbols like barbed wire, Star of David, smoke stacks, emaciated people etc. Using these symbols is hackneyed. It might help to have the students think of a: time when they were afraid, in pain, or had something really bad happen to them or a member of their family. I would leave the end product open to students and their interpretation of the Holocaust, it can be abstract. Tell students that they will have to explain their pictures to the class one at a time and say why they chose to use a certain color or why they put something in their drawing. This will, hopefully, deter students from spending an un-thoughtful S minutes swirling a bunch of paint together and saying, "I'm done!"

Assessment

Units like this are sometimes hard to assess and grade. By talking about things and seeing a film or hearing a speaker, students do learn information: But, what about a grade? You can always tell students to take notes during the film, a speaker, and during a biographical/historical lecture and test them on each item afterwards or later on in the unit. (These are tests you will have to make up based on the information presented.) For grading the art project, you could give them a grade based on completion, is it finished and in on time? And did the student spend his/her class time wisely? (That is, if you give students time in class to start or work on this artwork.) You could grade them on the oral and physical in-class presentation. Was the student's reasoning logical? Did it seem like they were trying to explain how, what, and why they felt a certain way in regards to their artwork? Or was it two sentences that were B.S. just so they could sit down? You could also just grade this project on a pass/fail basis and if it's complete, they pass. It's always hard to try to grade students on what you think they feel or believe, and that's open to interpretation! Grade this project how you see fit.

An alternate art project could be a type of a sculpture using found materials, junk, whatever the student wants to use. Also, instead of assigning only drawing and painting projects or sculpture projects you could give students the choice of any of the three.

Final Comments

Feel free to add more discussion time, other projects, more films or clips. You could cover artistic representation of the Holocaust in 3 days by omitting a film and/or a guest speaker and just talking about the artist and presenting their works. You can also stretch it out and show more films, have more discussions, etc., especially if you are covering more than one artist.

Sometimes, I think that there is no possible way that I could represent the Holocaust any better than the survivors, much less expect my students to do it; I wasn't even alive then. What right have I? In this lesson plan, I think that it would be all right to present the information to the students, and perhaps debate whether artists have the right to represent the Holocaust, through their artwork, even if they weren't there. An alternate project could be a debate paper, instead of an art project. I realize that students then, would only be writing about art, instead of creating it. However, how do you represent, through art something (The Holocaust) which seems un-representable? It's a challenge.