"I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." "There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest." "Not to transmit an experience is to betray it." "Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds." "I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead. and anyone who does not remember betrays them again." "I write to understand as much as to be understood." |
DIRECTIONS: Affirmation and encouragement are a plus, but remember that the bulk of your posts and responses to one another should address the subject matter of the week and its impact on your learning. In the pre-writing stage, you are advised to use KWL charts (What you knew. What you wanted to know. What you learned.), your daily reflection journals, and tree maps to generate and organize your content. Remember that you must Tell. Tell. Tell. Type your draft into a Word Document. Edit for focus and conventions (spelling and grammar). Then, and ONLY THEN, post. Each time you write an entry, consider the above quotes of Elie Wiesel, survivor of Auschwitz concentration camp. How are your words combating genocide? How are they attaining the quality of deeds? How are you gaining understanding...being understood? ***As it is an academic site, this is not a forum for evangelizing or criticizing the faith of others. Respect for diversity is to be adhered to at all times. |
“So to begin, we have a storage problem in Germany, with these Jews.” (Heydrich from “Conspiracy.”)
We did things differently this week, and I have to say, it was nice for a change in what we normally do. We watched the movie “Conspiracy,” wrote and acted out monologues, and finished the book Milkweed. The movie “Conspiracy” was awesome. I really liked watching this movie. I thought it was good at capturing the essence of what happened at the Wannsee Conference and captured the kind of men those officers were. It hurt to see those men laugh and joke about the Jews and their lives. They quite literally referred to the Jews as a “storage problem,” and hearing that made me sick. They were completely comfortable treating the Jews like animals. They laughed about wiping a whole generation of people from the face of the earth and exterminating those people in horrible ways. What really got me was that they all were completely fine with putting the Jews to work, using them as slave labor, but when they talked about outright killing them, that’s when problems arose. They were okay with making them useful until they were used to death, but outright killing them? No, suddenly it was a problem because the man who wrote the Nuremburg laws was being pushed aside and his laws being extinguished. I couldn’t believe the things that the men were stressing about. How was anything they talked about funny or a light subject? It disgusted me. We were all assigned a chapter from the book Milkweed, and we had to write a monologue from someone’s point of view in the chapter. I hate acting, and when we were assigned this, I was extremely nervous. It was amazing to see what people could do with their monologues, and I am glad we were assigned this. When I wrote my monologue, it was amazing to see how much more I started to understand Misha. The assignment we had was amazingly good at giving us an even closer view of what was going on. I loved seeing how when people did their monologues, they really got into it and did an amazing job of really feeling the character and were great at portraying it. It gave me different views to things that happened and what the characters were going through specifically. I am so glad we did that assignment. Finishing Milkweed was awesome. The end was so touching, and the thing that really touched me was how Misha finally identified himself as “Poppy-noodle.” He was called stupid, thief, Misha, silly, Jew, gypsy, and so many other things, but I loved that what made him content and made everything go away was when his granddaughter called him “Poppy-noodle.” I was so glad that after everything he saw and went through, that he finally had some peace. I also thought it was touching that his daughter waited four years and searched for him so that he could give Wendy her middle name. It was sentimental when he named her Janina, and I thought it was a wonderful name to bestow on her, seeing how much Janina truly meant to him. The end of the book was really well-written, but I am sad that we are done with Misha and the book Milkweed. I hope the next book is just as good! I loved the new approaches we took to this class this week. I hope we do more things like what we did. We watched the movie “Conspiracy,” wrote and performed monologues, and finished Milkweed. I am sad the upcoming week is only two days, but hopefully they will be two really informative days! |
The monologues really brought home to me the events of the chapters, especially with the ones from Parallel Journey's. For me Parallel Journey's holds a lot of information to process as quickly as we do. I had not looked at Parallel Journey's from a personal story perspective until the monologues. It was as if I had forgotten that it was composed of the stories of two actual people. The monologues really brought home the fact that this really happened to someone. |
(Janel)
I think it's funny how you refer to the Nazi leaders as "those men". Just like they refered to the Jews as "those people". The doctor wasn't completly for it. In the end he went along with the plans, but he did warn them... At the very end. I liked the ending of MILKWEED minus Uri becoming Nazi and Janina dieing. But I was happy that he ended up having a life and a real family. |
HI my name is Johanna Messer. I go to Murphy High and we are beinging to read "Night" tomorrow. How hard is it to learn so much about the Jews and everything they go through? |
Johanna,
Our class sent you an envelope full of letters in response to your inquiries. Let us know you received them please. I hope your year is going well. Mrs. Parker CCHS |
