DOCUMENT 1
Abraham Lincoln wrote the following in 1855:
As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it, "all men are created equal except Negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics." When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty.
http://fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/activity/912plan/Lincoln.htm
Questions :
A. What American document uses the phrase "All Men are Created Equal"? Why do you think Lincoln was using this phrase here?
B. EXPLAIN - How does this speech & the phrase coincide with a study of the Holocaust?
Abraham Lincoln wrote the following in 1855:
As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it, "all men are created equal except Negroes." When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics." When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty.
http://fcit.usf.edu/Holocaust/activity/912plan/Lincoln.htm
Questions :
A. What American document uses the phrase "All Men are Created Equal"? Why do you think Lincoln was using this phrase here?
B. EXPLAIN - How does this speech & the phrase coincide with a study of the Holocaust?
![Picture](/uploads/8/2/1/6/82168202/1465851078.png?250)
Document 2 : Propaganda Poster
Questions :
A. What symbols are used in the cartoon? Explain them.
B. In your opinion what is the purpose of the cartoon AND who is the intended audience?
Questions :
A. What symbols are used in the cartoon? Explain them.
B. In your opinion what is the purpose of the cartoon AND who is the intended audience?
![Picture](/uploads/8/2/1/6/82168202/5412225.png?250)
Document 3 : Map of the Jewish Holocaust death toll as a % of the total pre-war Jewish population by country/region Light pink = 0-1% Pink = 2-34% Red = 35-59% Brown = 60-79% Dark brown = 80-90% Sources: http://frank.mtsu.edu/~baustin/jewvicts.html
Questions :
A. Which areas had the highest percentage of Jewish deaths by percentage?
B. Where are the lowest percentages? Why do you believe that is?
Questions :
A. Which areas had the highest percentage of Jewish deaths by percentage?
B. Where are the lowest percentages? Why do you believe that is?
Background : Oscar (Oskar) Schindler was a German industrialist. He was provided Jewish prisoners to work in his factory which he itially saw as free labor and greater profits. As the war continued Schindler had a change of heart & thorugh his actions was eventually able to save over 1200 Jewish prisoners. Of all the people in these documents Schindler is the best known, due in major part tot eh award winning movie directed by Steven Spielberg.
Document 4
A letter written by Oskar Schindler’s former workers, signed: Isaak Stern, former employee Pal. Office in Krakow, Dr. Hilfstein, Chaim Salpeter, Former President of the Zionist Executive in Krakow for Galicia and Silesia.
"Brothers!
We, the undersigned Jews from Krakow, inmates of Plaszow concentration camp, have, since 1942, worked in Director Schindler’s business. Since Schindler took over management of the business, it was his exclusive goal to protect us from resettlement, which would have meant our ultimate liquidation. During the entire period in which we worked for Director Schindler he did everything possible to save the lives of the greatest possible number of Jews, in spite of the tremendous difficulties; especially during a time when receiving Jewish workers caused great difficulties with the authorities. Director Schindler took care of our sustenance, and as a result, during the whole period of our employment by him there was not a single case of unnatural death. All in all he employed more than 1,000 Jews in Krakow. As the Russian frontline approached and it became necessary to transfer us to a different concentration camp,Director Schindler relocated his business to Bruennlitz near Zwittau.
There were huge difficulties connected with the implementation of Director Schindler’s business, and he took great pains to introduce this plan. The fact that he attained permission to create a camp, in which not only women and men, but also families could stay together, is unique within the territory of the Reich. Special mention must be given to the fact that our resettlement to Bruennlitz was carried out by way of a list of names, put together in Krakow and approved by the Central Administration of all concentration camps in Oranienburg (a unique case). After the men had been interned in Gross-Rosen concentration camp for no more than a couple of days and the women for 3 weeks in Auschwitz concentration camp, we may claim with assertiveness that with our arrival in Bruennlitz we owe our lives solely to the efforts of Director Schindler and his humane treatment of his workers. Director Schindler took care of the improvement of our living standards by providing us with extra food and clothing. No money was spared and his one and only goal was the humanistic ideal of saving our lives from inevitable death.
It is only thanks to the ceaseless efforts and interventions of Director Schindler with the authorities in question, that we stayed in Bruennlitz, in spite of the existing danger, as, with the approaching frontline we would all have been moved away by the leaders of the camp, which would have meant our ultimate end. This we declare today, on this day of the declaration of the end of the war, as we await our official liberation and the opportunity to return to our destroyed families and homes. Here we are, a gathering of 1100 people, 800 men and 300 women.
All Jewish workers, that were inmates in the Gross-Rosen and Auschwitz concentration camps respectively declare wholeheartedly their gratitude towards Director Schindler, and we herewith state that it is exclusively due to his efforts, that we were permitted to witness this moment, the end of the war.
Concerning Director Schindler's treatment of the Jews, one event that took place during our internment in Bruennlitz in January of this year which deserves special mention was coincidentally a transport of Jewish inmates, that had been evacuated from the Auschwitz concentration camp, Goleschow outpost, and ended up near us. This transport consisted exclusively of more than 100 sick people from a hospital which had been cleared during the liquidation of the camp. These people reached us frozen and almost unable to carry on living after having wandered for weeks. No other camp was willing to accept this transport and it was Director Schindler alone who personally took care of these people, while giving them shelter on his factory premises; even though there was not the slightest chance of them ever being employed. He gave considerable sums out of his own private funds, to enable their recovery as quick as possible. He organized medical aid and established a special hospital room for those people who were bedridden. It was only because of his personal care that it was possible to save 80 of these people from their inevitable death and to restore them to life.
We sincerely plead with you to help Director Schindler in any way possible, and especially to enable him to establish a new life, because of all he did for us both in Krakow and in Bruennlitz he sacrificed his entire fortune.
Bruennlitz, May 8, 1945."
Translated from the original document in German
Source: The Oscar Schindler file, Department of Righteous among the Nations, Yad Vashem
YAD VASHEM, The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority
http://oskarschindler.com/9.htm
Questions
A. What does this letter tell you about Oscar Schindler?
B. What do you see as reasons for Schindler's change of heart (bring in outside information)?
Document 5 :
Background : The stories of true heroes are timeless and must be passed from generation to generation. They provide a legacy of hope and inspiration. Raoul Wallenberg, a Christian Swede and Third Honorary Citizen of The United States, is just such a hero.
At the behest of the United States government during World War II, Wallenberg, at age 31, a businessman and artist from a prominent Swedish family, went to Budapest, Hungary in 1944. In a six month period, he saved more than 100,000 Jewish lives from the Nazis. He never resorted to violence. For yet unknown reasons, Raoul Wallenberg was arrested by the Soviets in 1945 and has never again been seen as a free man. His fate remains a mystery…
HJ 47 IH
101st CONGRESS
1st Session
H. J. RES. 47
Designating October 5, 1989, as `Raoul Wallenberg Day'.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
January 3, 1989
Mr. WEISS introduced the following joint resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Post Office and Civil Service
JOINT RESOLUTION
Designating October 5, 1989, as `Raoul Wallenberg Day'.
Whereas in January 1944, the United States War Refugee Board asked Sweden to send a representative to Hungary to organize rescue operations for the Hungarian Jewish community which was marked for liquidation by the Nazis;
Whereas the Swedish representative, Raoul Wallenberg, through a combination of what has been described as `bluff, heroism, and a contempt for convention' waged a bold campaign in Hungary to thwart the `final solution';
Whereas in the 6 months he was in Budapest, Raoul Wallenberg managed to, directly and indirectly, save the lives of some 100,000 men, women, and children;
Whereas Raoul Wallenberg risked his own life countless times during his work, dragging Jews from trains bound for gas chambers, bringing food and blankets to those on death marches, and unflinchingly challenging Nazi authorities;
https://www.congress.gov/bill/101st-congress/house-joint-resolution/47/text
Background : The stories of true heroes are timeless and must be passed from generation to generation. They provide a legacy of hope and inspiration. Raoul Wallenberg, a Christian Swede and Third Honorary Citizen of The United States, is just such a hero.
At the behest of the United States government during World War II, Wallenberg, at age 31, a businessman and artist from a prominent Swedish family, went to Budapest, Hungary in 1944. In a six month period, he saved more than 100,000 Jewish lives from the Nazis. He never resorted to violence. For yet unknown reasons, Raoul Wallenberg was arrested by the Soviets in 1945 and has never again been seen as a free man. His fate remains a mystery…
HJ 47 IH
101st CONGRESS
1st Session
H. J. RES. 47
Designating October 5, 1989, as `Raoul Wallenberg Day'.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
January 3, 1989
Mr. WEISS introduced the following joint resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Post Office and Civil Service
JOINT RESOLUTION
Designating October 5, 1989, as `Raoul Wallenberg Day'.
Whereas in January 1944, the United States War Refugee Board asked Sweden to send a representative to Hungary to organize rescue operations for the Hungarian Jewish community which was marked for liquidation by the Nazis;
Whereas the Swedish representative, Raoul Wallenberg, through a combination of what has been described as `bluff, heroism, and a contempt for convention' waged a bold campaign in Hungary to thwart the `final solution';
Whereas in the 6 months he was in Budapest, Raoul Wallenberg managed to, directly and indirectly, save the lives of some 100,000 men, women, and children;
Whereas Raoul Wallenberg risked his own life countless times during his work, dragging Jews from trains bound for gas chambers, bringing food and blankets to those on death marches, and unflinchingly challenging Nazi authorities;
https://www.congress.gov/bill/101st-congress/house-joint-resolution/47/text
Document 6 :
Background : Over 70 years ago Archbishop Damaskinos Papandreou, the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Athens and all Greece, sat in his office in Athens, which by then had fallen under the flag of Nazi Germany, and signed his name to a document unlike any other during World War II. He was leading his faithful in protesting the Jewish deportations and, eventually, interment in death camps that would come to be called the Holocaust.
“According to the terms of the armistice, all Greek citizens, without distinction of race or religion, were to be treated equally by the Occupation Authorities.”
“In our national consciousness, all the children of Mother Greece are an inseparable unity: they are equal members of the national body irrespective of religion or dogmatic difference.”
“Our Holy Religion does not recognize superior or inferior qualities based on race or religion, as it is stated: ‘There is neither Jew nor Greek’ (Gal. 3:28) and thus condemns any attempt to discriminate or create racial or religious differences.”
“Our common fate, both in days of glory and in periods of national misfortune, forged inseparable bonds between all Greek citizens, without exemption, irrespective of race.”
http://myocn.net/72nd-anniversary-of-archbishop-damaskinos-letter-of-protest-against-holocaust/
Questions :
A. No other European leader, religious or political, was this vocal in their support of the Jews. Why do you think the Archbishop was so direct?
Document 7 :
Irena Sendler Rescuer of the Children of Warsaw By Chana Kroll
Irena Sendler was a Polish Catholic social worker who saved 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazis.
Almost as soon as the Nazi occupation began, Irena began making forged documents for Jewish friends. She also offered food and shelter to the increasingly persecuted Jewish population. Then, in 1940, she witnessed the imprisonment of nearly 500,000 Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto—an area the size of New York’s Central Park. She continued making false documents for those who escaped or had gone into hiding and avoided the Ghetto. Between 1939 and 1942 Irena, with the assistance of a few trusted friends, forged over 3,000 documents to save Jewish families.
In the fall of 1942 two Polish women founded Zegota—the Council for Aid to Jews in Occupied Poland, a branch of the Polish underground. The members of Zegota asked Irena to head the Children’s Department. She readily agreed. “I lost no time in reflecting [on the danger],” she later explained,“knowing that I and my heart had to be there, had to be a part of the rescue.”
With the assistance of other social workers, as many as 25 at one time, Irena began rescuing the children of the Ghetto. By that time, she was an administrator in the Welfare Department. Taking advantage of both her official position and the Germans’ paranoia of germs, she would go into the Ghetto under the ruse of wanting to stop the spread of disease beyond the ghetto walls. Officially, she was examining Jews for signs of contagious diseases. In reality, she was looking for children to save
At first, Irena and her helpers took orphans living on the streets of the Ghetto. Later, she would meet with parents and ask them to let her take their children out. Irena always made it clear to the families, convents and orphanages who took in children that these children were to be returned to their families after the war. She kept detailed lists for this reason—so that families could be reunited.
There were two common routes used to smuggle the children out, through two buildings that straddled the border between the Ghetto and the rest of Warsaw. One building was an old courthouse, the other was a church. Children old enough to be taught some basic Catholic prayers would be sneaked into the church from the Jewish side. Once inside, they would remove their yellow stars and take on their new identities as Polish Catholic children. They would exit through the front door of the church, which was guarded by Nazi soldiers who questioned them when they came out. The Nazis used various tricks to try to catch Jews escaping this way. Irena and her helpers trained the children well—they were never caught coming out of the church with Jewish children.
Younger children could not be rescued through the buildings. Instead, Irena would place them in gunny sacks or toolboxes and carry them out of the Ghetto, or she would hide them under potatoes in a cart. Once, she took a child out concealed in a coffin. On other occasions, she was able to legally take seriously ill children out of the Ghetto in an ambulance. At other times, the ambulance was used to conceal healthy children. She had the assistance of the ambulance driver and of a dog. When the children would start to whimper, and she feared detection, she would hit her dog on his paw, and he would begin to bark. This set off a chain reaction among the Nazis’ dogs, and chaos would erupt. At that point, the Nazis would let her pass.
The people who helped Irena, twenty-four women and one man, all took tremendous risks. There were even ten who alternated entering the Ghetto with her, but it was Irena herself who entered the Ghetto day after day for eighteen months—and walked out each time with a child. Her life was in constant danger. Ultimately, the Nazis began to suspect her. She changed her address numerous times, but continued her work. Her careful list-making almost betrayed her.
“The names of the saved children, I wrote down on thin tissue paper. There were two identical lists in two bottles,” recalled Irena. “When I once had the list at home, that same night the Gestapo arrived. Fortunately, one of my liaison girls demonstrated her presence of mind and hid the list in her underwear. After that, for safety reasons, I never kept the lists at home.”
Tragically, Irena was arrested by the Germans on October 20, 1943—five months after the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto. Her address had been revealed by an informer. Irena was tortured and beaten for several days; one leg and one foot were fractured. She refused to reveal the whereabouts of the children, or the names of anyone in the Resistance. She was scheduled to be executed, but members of Zegota found out and bribed a guard to instead leave her in the woods, where they found and rescued her. Her name was printed on public lists of those who had been shot by the Gestapo, and she spent the rest of the war in hiding.
After the war, she worked to track down the children and reunite them with relatives, but nearly all of them were by then orphans. Copies were made of the lists and given to officers of Zegota, who helped Irena search, but few relatives were ever found. Only one percent of the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto survived the war.
http://www.chabad.org/theJewishWoman/article_cdo/aid/939081/jewish/Irena-Sendler.htm
Questions :
A. In what ways did Irena Sendler help Polish Jews?
B. What was "Zegota" & what was its purpose? Using outside sources explain how they helped Polish Jews?
Irena Sendler Rescuer of the Children of Warsaw By Chana Kroll
Irena Sendler was a Polish Catholic social worker who saved 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazis.
Almost as soon as the Nazi occupation began, Irena began making forged documents for Jewish friends. She also offered food and shelter to the increasingly persecuted Jewish population. Then, in 1940, she witnessed the imprisonment of nearly 500,000 Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto—an area the size of New York’s Central Park. She continued making false documents for those who escaped or had gone into hiding and avoided the Ghetto. Between 1939 and 1942 Irena, with the assistance of a few trusted friends, forged over 3,000 documents to save Jewish families.
In the fall of 1942 two Polish women founded Zegota—the Council for Aid to Jews in Occupied Poland, a branch of the Polish underground. The members of Zegota asked Irena to head the Children’s Department. She readily agreed. “I lost no time in reflecting [on the danger],” she later explained,“knowing that I and my heart had to be there, had to be a part of the rescue.”
With the assistance of other social workers, as many as 25 at one time, Irena began rescuing the children of the Ghetto. By that time, she was an administrator in the Welfare Department. Taking advantage of both her official position and the Germans’ paranoia of germs, she would go into the Ghetto under the ruse of wanting to stop the spread of disease beyond the ghetto walls. Officially, she was examining Jews for signs of contagious diseases. In reality, she was looking for children to save
At first, Irena and her helpers took orphans living on the streets of the Ghetto. Later, she would meet with parents and ask them to let her take their children out. Irena always made it clear to the families, convents and orphanages who took in children that these children were to be returned to their families after the war. She kept detailed lists for this reason—so that families could be reunited.
There were two common routes used to smuggle the children out, through two buildings that straddled the border between the Ghetto and the rest of Warsaw. One building was an old courthouse, the other was a church. Children old enough to be taught some basic Catholic prayers would be sneaked into the church from the Jewish side. Once inside, they would remove their yellow stars and take on their new identities as Polish Catholic children. They would exit through the front door of the church, which was guarded by Nazi soldiers who questioned them when they came out. The Nazis used various tricks to try to catch Jews escaping this way. Irena and her helpers trained the children well—they were never caught coming out of the church with Jewish children.
Younger children could not be rescued through the buildings. Instead, Irena would place them in gunny sacks or toolboxes and carry them out of the Ghetto, or she would hide them under potatoes in a cart. Once, she took a child out concealed in a coffin. On other occasions, she was able to legally take seriously ill children out of the Ghetto in an ambulance. At other times, the ambulance was used to conceal healthy children. She had the assistance of the ambulance driver and of a dog. When the children would start to whimper, and she feared detection, she would hit her dog on his paw, and he would begin to bark. This set off a chain reaction among the Nazis’ dogs, and chaos would erupt. At that point, the Nazis would let her pass.
The people who helped Irena, twenty-four women and one man, all took tremendous risks. There were even ten who alternated entering the Ghetto with her, but it was Irena herself who entered the Ghetto day after day for eighteen months—and walked out each time with a child. Her life was in constant danger. Ultimately, the Nazis began to suspect her. She changed her address numerous times, but continued her work. Her careful list-making almost betrayed her.
“The names of the saved children, I wrote down on thin tissue paper. There were two identical lists in two bottles,” recalled Irena. “When I once had the list at home, that same night the Gestapo arrived. Fortunately, one of my liaison girls demonstrated her presence of mind and hid the list in her underwear. After that, for safety reasons, I never kept the lists at home.”
Tragically, Irena was arrested by the Germans on October 20, 1943—five months after the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto. Her address had been revealed by an informer. Irena was tortured and beaten for several days; one leg and one foot were fractured. She refused to reveal the whereabouts of the children, or the names of anyone in the Resistance. She was scheduled to be executed, but members of Zegota found out and bribed a guard to instead leave her in the woods, where they found and rescued her. Her name was printed on public lists of those who had been shot by the Gestapo, and she spent the rest of the war in hiding.
After the war, she worked to track down the children and reunite them with relatives, but nearly all of them were by then orphans. Copies were made of the lists and given to officers of Zegota, who helped Irena search, but few relatives were ever found. Only one percent of the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto survived the war.
http://www.chabad.org/theJewishWoman/article_cdo/aid/939081/jewish/Irena-Sendler.htm
Questions :
A. In what ways did Irena Sendler help Polish Jews?
B. What was "Zegota" & what was its purpose? Using outside sources explain how they helped Polish Jews?
Document 8
Ho Feng Shan: The 'Chinese Schindler' who saved thousands of Jews By Wayne Chang, for CNN Fri July 24, 2015
During 1938 to 1940, Ho, the consul general of the then Nationalist Chinese government's consulate in Vienna, saved thousands of Jews from the Holocaust with just a stroke of his pen. When Jews desperately sought visas to escape from Nazi-occupied Austria, he issued thousands — in defiance of his superior's orders.
Ho is often hailed as "the Chinese Schindler," in honor of the industrialist Oskar Schindler who saved 1,200 Jews by employing them in his factory located in Poland.
"Nowadays most people believe that he saved more than 5,000 lives at the time," said Xu Xin, a professor and a leading expert on Jewish studies at Nanjing University.
"More importantly, Ho was probably the first diplomat to really take action to save the Jews."
While other countries refused to issue visas in fear of aggravating the Nazi government, Ho threw his weight behind the Jews.
And when the Nazis confiscated the premises that housed the embassy because it was owned by a Jew, Ho opened a new office with his own money to continue the rescue.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/19/asia/china-jews-schindler-ho-feng-shan/index.html
Questions :
A. According to the article Ho Feng Shan was probably the first diplomat to help Jews immigrate. Use outside sources to find out when he began?
Ho Feng Shan: The 'Chinese Schindler' who saved thousands of Jews By Wayne Chang, for CNN Fri July 24, 2015
During 1938 to 1940, Ho, the consul general of the then Nationalist Chinese government's consulate in Vienna, saved thousands of Jews from the Holocaust with just a stroke of his pen. When Jews desperately sought visas to escape from Nazi-occupied Austria, he issued thousands — in defiance of his superior's orders.
Ho is often hailed as "the Chinese Schindler," in honor of the industrialist Oskar Schindler who saved 1,200 Jews by employing them in his factory located in Poland.
"Nowadays most people believe that he saved more than 5,000 lives at the time," said Xu Xin, a professor and a leading expert on Jewish studies at Nanjing University.
"More importantly, Ho was probably the first diplomat to really take action to save the Jews."
While other countries refused to issue visas in fear of aggravating the Nazi government, Ho threw his weight behind the Jews.
And when the Nazis confiscated the premises that housed the embassy because it was owned by a Jew, Ho opened a new office with his own money to continue the rescue.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/19/asia/china-jews-schindler-ho-feng-shan/index.html
Questions :
A. According to the article Ho Feng Shan was probably the first diplomat to help Jews immigrate. Use outside sources to find out when he began?
Document 9
Chiune Sugihara, Japan Diplomat Who Saved 6,000 Jews During Holocaust, Remembered 01/24/2013
Most Americans know of Oskar Schindler, the German businessman who saved more than 1,200 lives during the Holocaust by hiring Jews to work in his factories and fought Nazi efforts to remove them. But fewer know about Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese diplomat who disobeyed his government’s orders and issued visas that allowed 6,000 Jews to escape from Nazi-occupied territories via Japan.
On Sunday, as Holocaust survivors and descendants of survivors observe International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a growing and widespread community of Jews — linked by their gratitude toward Sugihara for saving them or family members — remembers a man once forgotten.
In 1940 Sugihara became the Japanese consul general to Lithuania, an area where Polish Jewish refugees had relocated during World War II. As Nazis threatened to invade Lithuania, thousands of Jews surrounded the Japanese consulate and asked for visas to escape. Disobeying his bosses in Japan, Sugihara issued thousands. From July 31 to Aug. 28, 1940, Sugihara and his wife stayed up all night, writing visas.
The Japanese government closed the consulate, located in Kovno. But even as Sugihara’s train was about to leave the city, he kept writing visas from his open window. When the train began moving, he gave the visa stamp to a refugee to continue the job
The refugees typically followed a route that took them via train to Moscow, then via the trans-Siberian railroad to Vladivostok and on to Kobe, Japan. Most stayed in Kobe for a few months, then went to Shanghai, China, and elsewhere. Salomon’s father went from Shanghai to India and eventually settled in the U.S, where he met his wife Marian in Chicago.
Meanwhile, Sugihara was transferred to Prague, where he worked in 1941 and 1942, and then to Bucharest, where he worked from 1942 to 1944. When the Soviets invaded Romania, he and his family were taken to a prison camp for 18 months. They returned to Japan in 1946, and a year later, the foreign office told him to resign. Years later, his wife, Yukiko Sugihara, who died in 2008, speculated the forced resignation was because of the unauthorized visas.
In 1968, a survivor who had become an Israeli diplomat, Joshua Nishri, finally made contact and in 1985, a year before his death in Tokyo, Israel named Sugihara “Righteous Among the Nations,” a title given to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.
“There are so many people living today because he took the time and made the effort. It was not easy and it was not a matter of sitting down and saying, ‘Here, I’ll write you this,’” said Anne Akabori, an author who translated “Visas for Life,” Yukiko Sugihara’s memoir, and wrote “The Gift of Life,” an account of Chiune Sugihara’s life.
“Most people have this idea that you can’t really help the whole world, so what’s the point?” said Mark Salomon. But Sugihara showed that “whatever you are doing with yourself, you are having a much broader impact. Sometimes it’s hard to see the forest through the trees, but it’s important in every aspect of your life to remember you are having an effect and to make it a positive effect.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/24/chiune-sugihara-japanese--jews-holocaust_n_2528666.html
A. Besides being Asian, what similarities do you see between Chiune & Ho Feng (previous document)?
Document 10
Muslims who saved Jews in WW2 honored at exhibition By: GIGI SILK Source: New Daily
There’s a little-known story about Muslims and Jews in World War II that helped to create a code of honor that still exists today.
A new exhibition will paint a picture of how Muslims saved the lives of many Jewish people in Albania during World War II.
The exhibition is in part an attempt to combat the rising Islamophobia in the Western world, as well are recent incidences of anti-Semitism – such as the recent attack on a Jewish kosher supermarket in Paris just days after the Charlie Hebdo massacre.
While other occupied European countries folded under the Nazi Party’s power and had their Jewish population systematically sent to concentration camps, Albania resisted Adolf Hitler’s orders and refused to hand over their Jewish citizens.
This move helped to found a sort of ethical code in Albania, called ‘Besa’, that still survives today.
Besa, meaning ‘to keep the promise’ comes from the notion that you can trust someone to protect your life and keep a secret. It spurred the mainly Muslim population of Albania to protect their persecuted countrymen and women as well as Jewish refugees that arrived in Albania.
The Albanian government provided many Jewish families with false papers so they would not have to live in hiding and opened their borders to Jewish refugees.
Not a single Jew was taken from Albania to a concentration camp.
Ali Sheqer, whose father rescued Jews, says that the Albanians risked their own lives to save and shelter Jews from Hitler’s regime.
“Why did my father save a stranger at the risk of his life and the entire village? My father was a devout Muslim. He believed to save one life is to enter paradise,” Mr Sheqer says.
Albania, the small country nestled between Greece and Macedonia, was the only European country that experienced a growth in its Jewish population during World War II, with up to 1800 Jews moving to Albania during the period.
http://muslimvillage.com/2015/03/15/73902/muslims-saved-jews-ww2-honored-exhibition/
Questions :
A. Given the religious & political climate in the world today, could you see the same type of events occuring as in this article? Explain your answer (be sure to take info in the article into account as well as outside information from our studies).
B. Why do you believe Albania was so successful in defying the Germans when other countries, large & small, were not?
OVERALL QUESTIONS :
A. What similarities do you see in the people discussed in the articles, letters & resolutions?
B. Presented with a similar situation - If you had the ability to help, would you? WHY?