• Not long after Andre Trocme and his family settled in Le Chambon, he wrote, “The humblest peasant home has its Bible and the father reads it every day. So these people, who do not read the papers but the scriptures, do not stand on the moving soil of opinion but on the rock of the Word of the Lord.” How do his comments help explain why people there were willing to risk so much for strangers? Would the villagers have been as willing to take a stand if they lived among people who did not share their convictions?

• As Protestants in a nation of Catholics, the people of Le Chambon knew what it was like to be an oppressed minority. How do you think that experience shaped their response to the plight of the Jews? Encouraged them to respond as a community?

• Emile Durkheim, a French sociologist who lived in the early 1900s, believed that no society can survive unless its members are willing to make sacrifices for one another and their community. He argued that altruism is not a “sort of agreeable ornament to social life” but the basis of society. Would the people of Le Chambon agree? Do you agree?

• Magda Trocme wrote, “We had no time to think. When a problem came, we had to solve it immediately. Sometimes people ask me, ‘How did you make a decision?’ There was no decision to make. The issue was: Do you think we are all brothers or not? Do you think it is unjust to turn in the Jews or not? Then let us try to help!” Compare her response with that of the professor Milton Mayer interviewed (Chapter 4, Reading 15). He, too, had no time to think, but his response was very different from Trocme’s. How do you account for that difference?

• Albert Camus was staying near Le Chambon when he wrote a novel called The Plague. Some think he was referring to the village and its people when the narrator states, “There always comes a time in history when the man who dares to say that two plus two equals four is punished with death... And the issue is not a matter of what reward or punishment will be the outcome of that reasoning. The issue is simply whether or not two plus two equals four. For those of our townspeople who were then risking their lives, the decision they had to make was simply whether or not they were in the midst of a plague and whether or not it was necessary to struggle against it.” Was the decision that simple for the people of Le Chambon?

• What does Magda Trocme mean when she says the decision she and others made was not about other people but about oneself? What circumstances today require that kind of courage? For what reasons?

• Sauvage’s film about the villagers, Weapons of the Spirit, is available through the Facing History Resource Center. So is The Courage to Care and the book that accompanies the video. The film features the work of five rescuers in France, the Netherlands, and Poland. Among those included are Marion Pritchard and the Trocmes. The accompanying book includes many more rescuers from both Eastern and Western Europe.

• What did you learn from the stories of rescuers? What do they teach us about human behavior? Elie Wiesel offers one answer in the preface to The Courage to Care, “Let us not forget, after all, that is always a moment when the moral choice is made. Often because of one story or one book or one person, we are able to make a different choice, a choice for humanity, for life. And so we must know these good people who helped Jews during the Holocaust. We must learn from them, and in gratitude and hope, we must remember them.”

• After a visit to El Salvador in 1990, Rembert George Weakland, the archbishop of Milwaukee, commented on the life of Oscar Romero and other Catholic priests killed for trying to bring about change in El Salvador. “What set these people apart is that they stood for a kind of religion – a religious belief – that influences lives. Religion, for them, was not a case of obeying rules but of influencing lives – and that is a very threatening thing to those who want to keep order. But if religion doesn’t influence lives why bother with it?”³ How do his comments apply to Le Chambon?

• After reading this story, a boy said that “this is like a world upside down – the children have the power.” Do you agree? Did the children really have power? If so, what was the source of their power?

• The boy’s mother hoped to reclaim her son. How was he lost? The father wanted to protest but feared the consequences. What were the consequences? What did he mean when he said his son would have to pay for the father’s “courage”?

• Today people speak of “family values.” What are they? How do they relate to life in Nazi Germany?

• Walter K., the only Jewish boy in a German classroom in 1935, lamented that when he was treated unfairly by his teacher, there was “no one to complain to.” Because his teacher was a Nazi, neither his parents nor the principal could be of help. Have you ever felt helpless? Unable to secure assistance from the adults in your life? How did you feel? How did you cope? For more about Walter’s experiences, see Elements of Time, pages 234-238, and the video Childhood Memories available from the Facing History Resource Center. Also available is the video Blood and Honor, which offers another view of Hitler Youth.

• How would you answer the questions Wiesenthal raises? Wiesenthal’s tale is followed by the responses of theologians, philosophers, historians, and writers to the two questions. In his response to the questions, Hans Habe wrote:

One of the worst crimes of the Nazi regime was that it made it so hard for us to forgive. It led us into the labyrinth of our souls. We must find our way out of the labyrinth – not for the murderers’ sake but for our own. Neither love alone expressed in forgiveness, nor justice alone, exacting punishment, will lead us out of the maze. A demand for atonement and forgiveness is not self-contradictory; when a man has willfully extinguished the life of another, atonement is the prerequisite for forgiveness. Exercised with love and justice, atonement and forgiveness serve the same end: life without hatred. That is our goal: I see no other.³

• Why does Habe believe that “We must find our way out of the labyrinth – not for the murderers’ sake but for our own?” Do you agree?

• Primo Levi argued that it was right to refuse to pardon the dying man because it was “the lesser evil: you could only have forgiven him by lying or inflicting upon yourself a terrible moral violence.” Are there lesser and greater evils? What “moral violence” would the man have inflicted upon himself through forgiveness? How do you think Habe would respond?

• When asked about forgiveness, Elie Wiesel replied, “No one asked for it.” What is he saying about the perpetrators? About the bystanders?

• What does Drucker suggest about the way the Nazis won control over his university? About the way the Nazis were likely to take over other parts of German life? A liberal is one who favors individual freedom and tolerates differences. Why do you think the Nazis chose to take over the most liberal university first?

• Max Planck, a German physicist, asked Hitler to let Jewish scientists keep their jobs. Hitler replied, “If the dismissal of Jewish scientists means the annihilation of contemporary German science, then we shall do without science for a few years.” What does Hitler’s response suggest about his priorities? What does Planck’s question suggest about his?

• Students often look to their teachers to set an example. Heidegger provided one kind of example. Max Planck and a few of his colleagues offered another when they arranged a memorial service for Fritz Haber, a non-Aryan chemist who died in exile. Despite the efforts of the Ministry of Education to keep professors from attending, many chose to pay their respects to a former colleague. Planck summed up their position. “Haber remained loyal to us; we will remain loyal to him.” How did Heidegger define loyalty? How did Planck define it? What kind of example did each man set for his students? For the nation?

• Fritz Stern writes, “We must not forget… that in the first weeks of the new regime the possibility of cautious criticism still existed without the price of martyrdom. It was a period in which the National Socialists themselves were still uncertain, in which the new wielders of power attacked Communists, Social Democrats, and prominent Jews with massive violence but were cautious and experimental in their dealings with ‘respectable’ people.”² He goes on to note that even though a few individuals and groups did protest, most did not. How do you account for their failure to do so? What part did obedience play in their responses? The need to conform? Fear? Racism? Career aspirations?

• Scholars share research and ideas by publishing their findings in books and journals and speaking at international meetings. By the summer of 1933, a few American and British scholars feared that academic freedom in Germany was being subordinated to “political and other considerations ulterior if not irrelevant to true scientific research and scholarship.” They then had to decide whether to cut ties to their German counterparts. They chose not to do so. What may have motivated them? Were they right?

• Jacob Bronowski said, “When Hitler arrived in 1933, the tradition of scholarship in Germany was destroyed, almost overnight... Europe was no longer hospitable to the imagination – and not just the scientific imagination. A whole conception of culture was in retreat: the conception that human knowledge is personal and responsible, an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.”³ Drucker was one of many scholars who left Germany in 1933. The others included Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Max Born, and Leo Szilard. How did their leaving affect German scholarship? German society? Bronowski discusses the shift from a search for truth to blind obedience in “From Knowledge to Certainty,” a part of a series of documentaries entitled The Ascent of Man. Individual programs as well as the series as a whole are available from the Facing History Resource Center.

• Each of the individuals quoted in this reading reached a decision as a result of the events of Kristallnacht. How did each make his or her decision? What values and beliefs shaped the choice each made?

• What were the short-term consequences of each choice described in the reading? The long-term consequences? For example, what do you think happened to non-Jews who resigned from the Nazi party? Tried to emigrate? Protested? What does each decision tell you about the person’s “universe of obligation”? How were the choices open to each individual different from the ones he or she could have made in 1933? In 1935?

• What did Melita Maschmann mean when she says “I constructed for myself a justification of the pogrom”? Why did she find it necessary to do so? What did she mean when she says as the years went by, she grew better and better “at forcing the memory of events like the pogrom out of my consciousness as quickly as possible”?

• Evaluate Goldschmidt’s explanation of why public outrage did not last long. Did the good outweigh the “other things”?

• Now...After All These Years, offers a glimpse of Kristallnacht by combining interviews with current citizens of Rhina, a small town in Germany, and the town’s former citizens. The video, which is available from the Facing History Resource Center, raises questions about how one’s perspective affects his or her view of an event.

• Hitler demanded that the nation produce a “violently active, dominating, intrepid, brutal youth.” What part did the schools play in carrying out that goal? What part did youth groups play? The media? Society as a whole? How do your answers explain why Erika Mann called her book A School for Barbarians? What type of society would graduates of a “school for barbarians” create?

• Hitler described his ideal youth. What is the ideal in American society? Do you know of anyone who fits either ideal?

• Why do you think Hitler referred to German youth as “my young men”? Why didn’t he mention young women?

• What does Hitler mean when he says that after joining a Nazi youth group, young Germans “will never be free again, not in their whole lives?” What characteristics did the youth groups foster in young people? For example, why did members wear uniforms and arm bands? Have a special salute? Take part in rallies and parades?

• Write a working definition of the word indoctrinate. How does it differ from the word educate? How did Hitler indoctrinate young Germans? Why did he focus his efforts on them rather than their parents?

• Compare Hitler’s view of education with traditional views of education in Germany (Chapter 3, Reading 7). What parallels do you notice? What differences seem most striking? How difficult would it be for a teacher in a traditional German school to teach in a Nazi school?

• Describe the messages a child would hear in Nazi Germany. How would those messages affect the way he or she viewed the world? How does such an atmosphere turn hatred into a habit?

• What did Erika Mann mean when she said that after a time the child did not feel anything? Does hearing the same message over and over again affect you in the same way? Is Mann’s book propaganda?

• The Klan Youth Corps, a CBS News Special Report produced in 1982, documents the efforts of the Ku Klux Klan to recruit young people. The video is available from the Facing History Resource Center. Today the Klan has competition from various neo-Nazi groups. Morris Dees, the founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, says of young people attracted to such groups. “Psychologists say that these young haters generally come from deeply troubled, dysfunctional families and are fundamentally damaged long before they swing their first baseball bat at someone or plant their first pipe bomb. Vulnerable but streetwise youngsters, who are looking for an excuse to fight, they are easy prey for older white supremacist leaders, who cynically offer a sense of family and purpose – along with a hate-filled ideology.”23 Compare members of neo-Nazi groups with members of the Klan Youth Corps and Hitler Youth. What traits do they share? What differences seem most striking?

• Morris Dees and the Southern Poverty Law Center are described in Chapter 11, Reading 2. See also Choosing to Participate, pages 205-212.

• What part did peer pressure play in the massacre? What part did opportunism play? Antisemitism? What other factors may have influenced participation? Compare the massacre to others you have read about. What differences seem most striking?

• The officers described in the reading were concerned for their own psychological wellbeing and that of their men. Yet they showed no concern for their victims. What does this suggest about their sense of morality – of right and wrong?

• What does Browning mean when he writes, “After Jozefow, nothing else seemed so terrible”?
• What insights does Stanley Milgram’s research (Chapter 5, Reading 1) offer in understanding the massacre at Jozefow? In Chapter 5, Philip Zimbardo was quoted as saying: “The question to ask of Milgram’s research is not why the majority of normal, average subjects behave in evil (felonious) ways, but what did the disobeying minority do after they refused to continue to shock the poor soul, who was so obviously in pain?” How do his comments apply to the soldiers who refused to take part in the killing? To Major Trapp?

• Browning writes of the men who took part in the murders, “A few who admitted that they had been given the choice and yet failed to opt out were quite blunt. One said that he had not wanted to be considered a coward by his comrades. Another – more aware of what truly required courage – said quite simply: ‘I was cowardly.’” Write a working definition of the word coward.

• The film Genocide, available from the Facing History Resource Center, shows Heinrich Himmler visiting a pit during an Einsatzgruppen action. As he bent forward to see what was happening, he “had the deserved good fortune to be splattered with brains.” According to witnesses, he was more shaken by the damage to his uniform than by the murders. How do you account for his response?

• Why did the professor obey? What factors led to his decision? How did he evaluate that decision nearly twenty years later? How do you evaluate it? Why does he emphasize the small steps he took? How do each of those small steps make it easier to take no action at all?

• Draw an identity chart for the professor. What aspects of his identity may have influenced the decisions he made in 1933? How do you think life in a world dominated by fear affected the choices he made?

• Reread Peter Drucker’s decision (Reading 8). Compare it to those described in this reading. Does an individual have the responsibility to take a stand? When? Under what circumstances?

• How might “thinking” have made a difference in the professor’s decisions? At what point did the state take on so much power or the person give up so much power that human qualities were suppressed in the name of patriotism? Is it possible to think too much? Can thinking too much paralyze one’s responses?

• Would you want to live in the society Vonnegut describes? Would your opinion change if you could alter one thing in that society? If so, what would you change? What difference would that change make?

• What is the “race of life?” How important is it that everyone approach it equally?

• How would Harrison Bergeron define freedom? Democracy? Equality? How would Diana Moon Glampers define these terms? How do you define them? Record your working definitions in your journal.

• Was Diana Moon Glampers a censor? Add a working definition of the word censor to your journal.

• Why were the people in the story so obedient? So willing to conform? What could they have done to change things? Why didn’t they do so? What were the consequences of their failure to act?

• Make an identity chart for Harrison Bergeron. What things influenced him? Did Harrison have the power to define himself or did society do it for him? Harrison tried to break the rules of his society. Should an individual go against society? If so, under what circumstances? What might the consequences be?

• Does it take courage to fight for the things you believe in? What opportunities have you had to stand up for what you think is right? How difficult was it? What might have made it easier? Should it be easier? Record your answers in your journal so that you can refer to them later.

• Many individuals and families have a “grand plan” for their future. It may involve sending their children to college, buying a home, or starting a business. Nations also devise “grand plans.” Often those plans aim at improving society. If you were to design a “perfect” society, what would it be like? What rights would you give individuals? How would you balance their rights with the rights of others?

• Before you share your “grand plan” with the class, develop a list of criteria for critically evaluating ideas. In creating a list, consider the following questions:

• How can one judge whether an idea is good or bad?
• What values are assumed in the plan?
• What are the implications for those who do not share those values?
• Is a popular idea always a good one?
• What would the world be like if everyone accepted this plan?
• What strategies would you use to convince others that this plan is the “right” one?
• How can one keep the ideas that inspired this plan from being abused?

Post your list so that you can refer to it as you read about the “grand planners” of history.