Forgotten Daughters

Subject: Social Studies/English/Literature

Grade Levels: 9 through 12

Objectives:

• Develop awareness for the forgotten women of the Holocaust
• To explore emotional anguish of the unknown
• To research gender oppression in Nazi Germany
• Identify patriarchy and Fascist policies in the "Fatherland"
• To make connections between women authors and victims

Sunshine State Standards:

• Grades 9 - 12
  • LA.E.2.4.5, 1.4.5
  • SS.A. 1.4.3, 3.4.9, 5.4.5

View all Sunshine State Standards

Procedure:

Day One

Divide classroom into groups or teams, have each group research topics using the Web sites listed below under Resources.

Parcel out this list according to number of groups:

• Ways of interconnections
• Patriarchal fathers as individual tyrants
• Patriarchal family structures
• Patriarchal social institutions
• Facism in general
• National Socialism in particular
• Gender relations
• Women's lives
• Victimization
• Guilt
• Responsibility
• Masculinity
• Aggression
• War

Day Two

• Have groups give a preliminary report on their findings from the Internet and other resources.
• Help them focus on their subject area: e.g. for war look at the subtext of violence and specific gradations of violence; the bittersweet power of paternal authority versus the overt violence of war.

Day Three

• Have each group formulate questions for another group about topics on their list.
• Exchange questions among groups.
• Have teams organize their presentations addressing issues from their group and the contributing group.

Day Four

• Teams will present to the class.

Day Five

• Have students write an essay discussing an issue they feel passionate about.

Resources:

Authors: (suggestions) Eva Zeller, Carola Stern, Elisabeth Reichart, Bridgette Schwaiger, Ruth Rehmann, Christa Wolf, Luise Rinser, Ingeborg Drewitz, Barbara Bronnen, and Monica Kohler.

Women and the Holocaust: A Cyberspace of Their Own is an excellent collection of articles dealing with often overlooked gender-specific issues of the Holocaust.

Hermine Braunsteiner, a female guard in Nazi death camps.

Why did some German women support, and others oppose, the Nazi regime?

Abbreviated Story of Corrie ten Boom, a heroic Dutch woman who rescued Jews from certain death.

The Hannah Project. This site preserves access to the stories and voices of women in resistance to the Holocaust.

Jewish Women's Archive. This site provides a legacy of Jewish women and their contributions to families and communities. This site also includes a list of resources, exhibits, and a virtual archive.

A 1998 review by Julia M. Klein written for The Philadelphia Inquirer of Women in the Holocaust, edited by Dalia Ofer and Lenore J. Weitzman. The book contains a series of essays about women in ghettos, camps, and various resistance movements.

"...tell him that I..." Women writing the Holocaust by Catherina A. Bernard. This site traces the voices of women throughout the Holocaust narratives in searching whether and why theses voices have been marginalized. Bernard looks at three examples of Holocaust memoirs written by women: Lucille E, Anne Frank, and Charlotte Saloman.

Holocaust Heroes. This site is dedicated to honoring the brave men and women, primarily from church groups, who risked their lives to save Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi terrorism.

Assessment:

The quality of the student's work can be assessed by:

Peer and/or teacher review.

A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust
Produced by the Florida Center for Instructional Technology,
College of Education, University of South Florida © 1997-2013.