Miami, Sunday, May 21, 2000
http://www.herald.com/content/today/news/dade/west/digdocs/083610.htm Students
create mock Nazi concentration
camp BY EUNICE
PONCE A message over the
library doors at South Miami Middle School
reads: Arbeit Macht Frei -- Work Will Set
You Free. Eighth-grade students dressed in mock
Nazi uniforms barked orders as they lined
visitors up and pasted yellow stars
bearing the word Jude -- Jew -- on their
clothing. The premise: Visitors to the library
had just arrived on a cattle car at
Auschwitz,
one of Nazi Germany's most notorious
concentration camps. Reality: On Wednesday and
Thursday, Alicia Carver's
gifted language arts students
transformed the library into an
interactive Holocaust memorial,
with student-guided tours
scheduled every 20 minutes. Carver's students brainstormed
the project after reading Elie
Wiesel's book Night, which
chronicles Jewish life in the
ghettos and concentration camps
built by the Nazis. | | | Disturbing,
said 14-year-old Jason Edelstein.
It's kind of hard to believe that
this happened.
|
"Each day the kids came up with new
ideas," Carver said. She had been planning to give them a
test on the subject, but the test-weary
kids preferred something else. "So I chucked the test," Carver said.
"This way, I think the knowledge is going
to stay with them -- it's not just
something they read in a book." Some kids dressed as Nazi soldiers,
others dressed as Jewish prisoners, their
faces smudged with black paint to resemble
dirt, their simple clothing torn and
dirty. As they took visitors through each
library exhibit, they explained the
Holocaust in their own words. "If you lived in nearby areas, ashes of
dead people would fall down on your city,"
said Chad Kishick, 13, as he talked
about a wood-and-cardboard model of a
crematorium at Dachau,
another concentration camp. "They forced the prisoners to dig their
own graves deep enough so they wouldn't be
able to crawl out as they were shot," said
Kristian Naess, 14, as he pointed
out black-and-white photographs of Jewish
prisoners digging ditches in a field as
Nazi soldiers watched nearby. At the end of the tour, visitors were
put through the "selection" process. "Men, women and children, if you are
amputees, ill or lazy, make a line to your
right," shouted one girl dressed as a Nazi
soldier. "If you are a twin, triplet, or
have had experiments performed upon you,
make a third line to your left." The students then turned over a
cardboard sign in front of the line to the
right, reading "Gas Chamber." People in
the line of twins and triplets were told
medical experiments would be performed on
them. The experience made some visitors
uncomfortable, even though they knew it
was just a simulation. And how did the kids describe their
project? "Disturbing," said 14-year-old Jason
Edelstein. "It's kind of hard to
believe that this happened."
Related story: Students'
Day in Concentration
Camp |