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Miami, Sunday, May 21, 2000

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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