Jakub Bulzak

Script for a HISTORY lesson
(for grade 8th of primary school and grades 1st to 4th of secondary school)

Class duration: ~45 minutes.

I. Subject of the lesson: Underground education in the Sądecczyzna region

II. The objectives of the lesson.

Student:
– discusses the policy of German occupation administration in the field of education;
– describes the ways to try and prevent the so-called “educational gap”;
– knows what happened with the educational institutions of Nowy Sącz in the period of the German occupation;
– can explain the role Felix Rapf played in local underground education.

III. Methods:
– lecture;
– teaching conversation;
– work with a source text;
– work with a map;
– work with an iconographic source.

IV. Teaching resources:
– the www.wojennysacz.pl website;
– the article: J. Bulzak, Education – www.wojennysacz.pl/en/education/

V. Lesson course:

1. Greetings

2. Organisational activities (roll call, writing down the lesson subject)

3. Recapitulation: The teacher asks students to recall what were the goals of the third Reich policy toward the Polish population.

4. Binding link: The teacher reads a section of the research article:

Educational policy was an important element of the general Nazi concept for the future of the Polish nation. The Polish school, especially the secondary school (Polish gymnasium and lyceum) and the higher education, which educated the society’s elites, was to be liquidated, while the primary and vocational education were to be severely limited. It was supposed to educate Polish workers to be able to sign their name and count to five hundred. The desired outcome was not only the elimination of elites, but also the prevention of the formation of new generations of Polish intelligentsia. […] Education policy was limited to providing all Poles with basic skills: writing, reading and counting and to providing elementary knowledge in natural sciences. Geography, history and literature classes were forbidden (textbooks for these subjects were confiscated), as well as, interestingly, physical exercises. […] it was this construction of the place and role of the Polish school (educational and pedagogical system) in the system of German occupation that was to secure the occupying forces from the possibility of the re-formation of the intelligentsia (replacing those who were murdered or died in camps), while the development of vocational education allowed the German economy to source qualified workers.

(J. Bulzak, J. Chrobaczyński, W latach okupacji niemieckiej (1939–1945) [w:] Podegrodzie i gmina podegrodzka. Zarys dziejów, pod red. Feliksa Kiryka, Kraków 2014, s. 450. [Eng. “In the years of the German occupation (1939–1945)])

5. The teacher asks selected students to use the map from the www.wojennysacz.pl website to read what happened to school buildings after the Germans entered Nowy Sącz.

6. The teacher explains the concept of “educational gap” to students.

7. Students answer the question: How could students and teachers try to prevent the creation of an educational gap?
(for example: reading books on their own, teachers in official classes could include the curriculum of the prohibited subjects, teachers and students could meet secretly for secret teaching)

8. Students answer what were the risks connected with conducting secret lessons and what were the problems faced by teachers and students.

9. The teacher presents the heroic attitudes of teachers conducting secret teaching on the example of Feliks Rapf. The teacher reads a fragment of a historical study:

When, on some occasion, the keys [to the storage at Narutowicza 2 Str.] got into the hands of Prof. Feliks Rapf, he made their imprints in plasticine and made copies of the keys that he kept for himself. From now on Prof. Rapf would secretly carry out textbooks and literature and then distribute them among the secret teaching groups. He also secured the most valuable teaching aids and stored them in the vocational school at Długosza 11 Str., where he created a physics classroom. In there he conducted secret teaching, many exams were also often held there. On another occasion, when the occupying administration school office instructed several teachers to pick out books in German from the school libraries collections, which were stored at Narutowicza str., a lot of school books and school literature was taken from the storage for the purposes of secret teaching.

(M. Wieczorek, Tajne nauczanie w Nowym Sączu, powiecie nowosądeckim i gminie Ujanowice powiatu limanowskiego w okresie okupacji niemieckiej w latach 1939–1945, „Rocznik Komisji Nauk Pedagogicznych” 1962, nr 3, s. 36-37. [Eng. Secret teaching in Nowy Sącz city, Nowy Sącz poviat and in gmina Ujanowice of the Limanowa poviat in the period of German occupation of the years 1939–1945])

10. The teacher presents the scanned Protocol of the Secret Teaching Verification of Halina Kondolewicz, from the Repository of the www.wojennysacz.pl website.
The teacher asks students to:
– calculate how old Halina was at the time the war broke out;
– answer how extensive was the curriculum of the education she finished during the occupation period;
– calculate how old Halina was at the end of the occupation and what level of education she had reached by then;
– answer what was the negative impact the war and occupation had on Halina’s life.

11. The teacher summarizes the lesson by presenting the importance of secret teaching as the largest underground operation of the German occupation period. The teacher also points out that although the armed underground movement did not bring military victory over the Third Reich, the secret education operation was one of the greatest successes of the Polish underground.

12. End of lesson.

Łukasz Połomski

Script of a HISTORY lesson

Estimated duration: 45 minutes.

CURRICULAR CONTENT:

I. Subject of the lesson: Extermination of Jewish and Romani people in the Sącz region.

II. The objectives of the lesson.

Student:
– describes how the extermination of the Romani and Jewish people happened;
– knows the most important locations connected with the German crimes in Polish lands;
– discusses the attitudes of the society toward the crimes that were committed;
– knows the most important places connected with the extermination of Jewish people in Nowy Sącz.

III. Teaching forms, methods and techniques; teaching resources:

1. Forms of teaching: working together (whole class), individual work, group work.

2. Teaching methods and techniques:
– information-giving methods – explanation, lecture;
– activation methods – discussion, working in groups;
– curricular methods – working with a textbook.

3. Teaching resources:
– source texts:
– map of Nowy Sącz.

IV. Lesson course:
1. Organizational activities:
• greeting the class students;
• roll call;
• students write down the subject in their notebooks: Extermination of Jewish and Romani people in the Sącz region.

2. The teacher introduces students to the subject. The students listen to the teacher’s lecture on restrictions towards the Jewish and Romani populations introduced after Hitler’s rise to power, and later, during the German occupation. The teacher should discuss in detail things like:

– the Nuremberg Laws – the teacher lists the laws restricting the Jewish and Romani populations, he discusses with students which, in their opinion, were the most harmful;

– the Star of David – the teacher discusses the meaning of this symbol, both in the context of history and war. He refers to the documents introducing the obligation to wear it during the occupation. He talks to the students about the importance of such way to marks the others;

– ghetto – the teacher discusses the history of ghettos, starting from the Middle Ages. He explains to the students how the closed Jewish districts turned out to be  death traps which nobody could avoid;

– extermination – the teacher explains the term, referring to earlier examples of genocide, e.g. in the colonization era or the slaughter of the Armenians;

– concentration and extermination camps – the teacher explains the difference between the two, at the same time pointing out the locations of the most significant of the camps created by the Germans in the Polish lands.

2. The teacher discusses the situation of the Romani and Jewish populations in the Sącz region. To prepare for this part the teacher can use the following publication: Pamiętając dla przyszłości. Historia Żydów na Sądecczyźnie: konteksty – nawiązania – refleksje, Nowy Sącz 2016. Key points to discuss:

– lack of broader knowledge about Romani people, based solely on stereotypes;

– an outline of the Jewish history of Nowy Sącz, especially in the context of Polish-Jewish relations until 1939;

– listing and mentioning national minorities, the multicultural mosaic, of people living in the Sącz region until 1939 (including Lemkos and Germans).

3. The teacher divides the students into groups. Each group receives one source text (all texts are included in the attachment) and reads it.

GROUP I – memories of Markus Lustig;

GROUP II – memories about the extermination of the Romani people;

GROUP III – memories of Janina Gołosińska-Maćkowiak;

GROUP IV – memories of Jadwiga Fiszbain.

After reading the texts, each group should take a piece of paper and draw on it one item, one thing that in their opinion symbolizes the story they just learned. For example it can be a feather or a bed for Lustig’s story; fire or wagons for the Romani story; a school briefcase or threads for the memories of Gołasińska; pears for to the memories of Fiszbain. Students should be given complete freedom in this regard.

4. After analyzing the source texts and creating drawings, we go to the map of Nowy Sącz, which should be displayed or should hang on the board (alternatively, the teacher can try to sketch it schematically by hand). Each group tells about the location where the events of the source text took place. We try to mark these points on the map that everyone can see. We put up the groups’ drawings in these point. Each group needs to explain why it chose the symbol they drew for their story.

GROUP I – Pijarska Street;

GROUP II – bank of the Kamienica River;

GROUP III – former ghetto near the castle;

GROUP IV – Batory Avenue/Evangelical cemetery.

Then the teacher asks the students to use their smart phones to search for information about places connected with the extermination of Romani and Jewish people that are commemorated in Nowy Sącz. The students should find:

– the pedestal on the Trzeciego Maja Square;

– the Jewish cemetery;

– the plaque on Franciszkańska 8 Str.;

– the plaque on the Nowy Sącz synagogue.

Then we mark these points on the map for everyone to see.

5. The teacher discusses the source texts read by the students. He points to the similarity between the extermination of the Romani and Jewish people. He tries to start a discussion with the class about memory and the need for other forms of commemoration of the tragedy of the Second World War. Are they needed? How can it be done? Why should we remember these events – what should people’s goal be?

6. Recapitluation of the discussion and conclusion of the lesson.

ANNEX – GROUP I

Memories of Markus Lustig (born 1925)

But not this time. This time fortune did not smile upon us. No, it is not possible to calm down. From the lower floor banging on the door can be heard, the door opens a moment later, creaking, German curses, choked scream. A round of machine-gun fire scares me. Another one. Crash of heavy furniture, the smash of broken glass. I start to tremble. I can’t control my hands and legs. Suddenly silence.

– Maybe they will now go somewhere else? Please! – I beg. But no. They are walking up the stairs, I hear the clatter of heavy heels on the floor. Heavy steps reach our floor. I pull the covers over my head. Maybe they will go to the attic, to the apartments on the top of the stairs, maybe they go past us? I’m trembling, I’m afraid. They killed the Herzberg family, I am sure. I no longer hear the voices in their apartment. It’s my turn to die. I know the creaking of the Szeinfeld family apartment door. The soldiers leave it without shooting. Now they are in the apartment next to ours. A round of machine-gun fire scares me. I pull the covers even more over my head. I stop breathing. How lucky, that Mojżesz Józef is asleep. He won’t move, they won’t see him, he will survive. The gunshots get closer. I hear objects falling and shattering, I hear heavy bodies sliding to the floor. Murderers’ shouts in German, crying.

Now the murderers, may their name perish, break down the door and walk into our apartment, into mine and my brother’s, Mojżesz Józef’s, room. Haman and his gang of murderers are in a hurry and go to the parents’ room. I do not breathe, I listen to what is happening in the other room.
– What will they do to father and mom, intimidating fear – I whisper into a pillow.
– What do you do? – the soldier asks my father in German.
– I am a bookbinder – the father responds weakly. These are his last words.
– Turn around! – a brutal order can be heard. I hear shots and the sound of a body sliding down to the floor. I huddle in horror.  – Dad! – I whisper to myself. Mother bursts out crying terribly. Terror can be heard in her sobbing. Shots. Silence. – Mommy! – I whisper from under the covers. I hear Rachel, terrified, crying and screaming:
– Mommy! Mommy!

Shots. Silence. I clench my eyes as hard as I can under the covers. I feel cold sweat all over my body. I tremble helplessly. On their way out they pass through our room. I hear their steps next to our bed. – Let them leave! – I pray fervently.

– And what do we have here? – one of the murderers says.
– Leave him, he’s just a little boy – another voice answers. This does not help little Mojżesz Józef, dreaming his dreams. The gun gets loaded. Blood freezes in my veins. A shot straight into my little brother’s head. I lie, trembling and holding my breath, hidden under the covers, I feel my brother’s warm blood running down my legs. Finally, they leave our room.

– Good night! – the devil did not forget to say in Polish and he laughed. I stay in the bed petrified. I can’t move or breathe. Are they really gone? Will they come back? I don’t cry and I don’t scream. I lost my tongue. My body turned into stone. The brain was fogged. My heart… is full of fear. I lie in the bed and wait for the shots in the building to stop. Finally, there is silence. Dead silence. Feathers, red with blood, fall on the floor.

– I have to get out of the bed – I command myself. I sit, my legs tremble, my body is weary. There is horror in my eyes. Death and destruction My brother lies in our bed with no signs of life. His shattered head still rests on the pillow, as if he was still deep in a dream. The terror makes me close my eyes. I move toward my parents’ room. Father lies in a huge pool of blood. His head is shattered. – Dad, what did they do to you, Dad… – my clenched lips say.           Mother and Rachel lie mangled and mute on their beds, covered with bloodied red feathers. The walls and floor resemble a slaughterhouse.

– Mom, Rachel… – I whisper with horror. Then it strikes me, like a club, the awareness that I am now an orphan without a father, without a mother, without a brother and without a sister. Fate? Luck? I don’t know and I will never know. Those terrifying scenes will remain in my soul forever. I carry them inside like a force pushing me to success, to pride, to a rich and happy life, to creating a wonderful family, indeed, toward the essence of victory and retribution for this ultimate evil.

ANNEX – GROUP II

Memories of Barbara Świdzińska (born 1935)

The month of July started soon, so we finally got to go over the Kamienica River. However, when we came to the footbridge (not from the side of Hell, but from the other side, from the city), we were stopped by an unbelievable view! The entire opposite shore, which we used to call a “beach” – a huge number of Gypsies was sitting, walking, standing or lying, and the footbridge we wanted to walk over the river on was completely “swarmed” by their children. And along the road that ran by the river, that we used to walk on, there was a lot of wagons, and even horses, which apparently did not fit among the bushes. When we were standing in bewilderment on the side of the river forbidden to Gypsies, immediately a few of the children on the footbridge gathered their courage and came to us, begging for anything to eat. Mommy immediately took what she had brought from home for us out of the bag , gave it to them and told them to “scamper off” quickly, so that nobody would catch them. I don’t remember today whether it was sugar cubes or a piece of bread. The only thing I remember is that she had tears in her eyes and she wanted to go back home right away. However, we begged her to walk further along this side of the river, and try to find a spot clear of bushes to put down a blanket. And we found one, although quite far away, which even had a meander where the water was a little deeper, enough to swim. When on our way back we visited aunt Tabaszowa, she told us that it was the Germans who had been bringing Gypsies here since the spring, even from places very far, and that many of them were dying, undoubtedly from hunger. She also said that despite the ban, they keep coming over to this side of the river and beg, or simply steal, anything that can be eaten, especially from gardens. A few days we went back to this “beach” we found last time, we did not go to the footbridge to avoid looking at all of those unhappy children – hungry and naked – whom we were not able to help. And it was there, in this remote corner, when I went into the bushes to pee, suddenly a completely naked little girl stood in front of me, with brown tan and very long black hair, which covered almost her entire face; she stretched out her hand and whispered to me:

 “Give something to eat”…

 “But I have nothing, nothing!” – I replied, also whispering, shaking from fear

And then she said:

 “Then tomorrow bring me… candy, also here. I will come here. I am Raissa, and you?”

 “Basia” – I whispered, and at that same second she disappeared in the bushes. Of course, I did not tell anyone about this meeting, but I kept thinking where to get some candy for Raissa, since I haven’t even seen any since Christmas. Although mom would give us each a suger cube once every few, but I did not know when this “sugar day” was coming… However, it was raining the next day and it kept raining for a few days mor, and one of them turned out to be a “sugar” day. So I took my sugar cube and quickly hid it under clothes in my “dolly corner”. I couldn’t wait for the sun to give Raissa the sugar cube and see her joy! When the right day for the beach finally came, I insisted on wearing one particular dress, already too short for me then, because it was the only one with a pocket in which I could have hidden the sugar cube. I was in such a hurry to meet her, that I kept running in front of mommy and Kazio, or I kept jumping up and down. We were still quite far from the river when we were suddenly stopped by an unpleasant stench and thin streaks of smoke floating up as if from above the water. Mommy wanted to go back immediately, but Kazio kept explaining that we should first see what burned down. Maybe it was somebody’s house? And so we went slowly and carefully forward looking around, until we came close enough to see the beach on the opposite side of the Kamienica River, which was completely empty, save for a skinny mutt running there and back with a pitiful howl. From the burned bushes, where there were wagons and horses before, streams of smoke were still raising, stinging the eyes, and the entire old beautiful beach was covered with rags, budnles, pots and pieces of some objects and maybe even human bodies… I was not sure because mommy told us to turn away at once and quickly pulled us back home. But I kept turning back, all the time hoping that somewhere out of this burned ruin Raissa would suddenly run out, so that I could give her that little bit of sugar…

But I also ended up not eating this sugar.

ANNEX – GROUP III

Memories of Janina Gołasińska-Maćkowiak (born 1931)

In the morning, instead of books, I loaded two loaves of bread in my school briefcase and I went to the ghetto for bartering. I was quite easy to slip past the workers hanging around the wall construction site. No one paid attention to a schoolgirl with braided hair and a stuffed briefcase. Right on the first street I was surrounded by jabbering Israelites and asked questions like: – What is the miss selling? I explained what I have and what I need. One Jew, still young, about 28 years old, turned up and said that he has threads, and he can arrange saccharin. Not without fear I followed him from one gate to another, and then through long and winding galleries. He opened the door and led me into a room, which was so stuffy that the stench almost pushed me back onto the gallery. In this little room, in conditions that were an affront to any rules of hygiene, there dwelled: a grandfather and a grandmother, a father and a mother, three little Jewish children playing on the floor and a half-year-old child crying in a cradle. The father shouted from the threshold: – There is bread! The little room stirred – three pairs of small dirty hands stretched towards me. One of them, probably the biggest, started to tinker around the briefcase lock, but the mother used a kitchen cloth to chase the raiders away and into a corner, and she asked me to sit on a chair, she quickly wiped with the cloth. She started apologizing for the tight and dirty room, explaining that they used to live completely differently, until she finally burst into tears reapeating: – What will happen with us, what will happen with us. Then she pulled out a couple of thread spools from some nook – first she communicated with her husband in their jargon – and one bread “went” for the threads. They did not have saccharin, but I was stubborn and I did not want to trade both loaves for threads. I needed saccharin and nothing else. They told me to wait and all four adults – grandparents and parents – sat down to deliberate. They jabbered loudly, arguing and convincing each other, looking in my direction every now and then. At some point I remember the stories my friends told me years before, when we were little children that Jews take away Catholic children to make matzah. They push the taken child into a barrel with nails inside, and they roll the barrel until the child is drained of blood, because blood is necessary for the real Jewish matzah. I got cold and hot by turns, I felt an unpleasant knot in my throat. I didn’t want threads or saccharin anymore, I was even ready to throw down the briefcase with bread, just to get as far away from this room as possible. I was measuring the distance to the door with my eyes, if I could get to it and run away, or if they would catch me. But apparently the Jews did not have the taste for matzah with my blood in it, because before I made up my mind, the grandfather said: – Wait a little more, miss, there will be saccharin. He waddled to the door and after a quarter of tensely waiting, as I was still not sure about the blood, he came back with the saccharin. So we made the deal and showered with blessings and requests to come back with bread again, with relief I closed the locks of my briefcase, in which the bread turned into threads and saccharin. Coming out, I took a look behind. Squatting on the floor, the trio of curly-haired children busily teared slices of bread sprinkled with a little sugar with their teeth. The smallest one in the cradle also got a piece of crust, which it rotated inside its toothless mouth.

Whenever I entered with my briefcase into the small dirty room, I was greeted by a choir joyous screams. The little ones would pull out the briefcase from my hands mercilessly and ferret around it, right down to the bottom, because there  would always be three pieces of candy or three lollipops on long sticks waiting there. I was no longer afraid that I would be used to make matzah. Besides getting threads and saccharin, which I would later go with to the countryside, I was drawing a kind of great satisfaction from the fact that I am such an expected guests in that family, that I am helping someone, because in the countryside we would just simply barter.

ANNEX – GROUP IV

Memories of Barbara Świdzińska (born 1931):

In 1942 (it must have been early autumn, because pears were ripening) the ghetto was liquidated. Some people were transported out by trucks, but there alsow were the so-called death marches – the Jewish people were driven like cattle throughout the city and loaded into freight wagons. On the way there they were mocked and those who could not keep up, who were walking slower, were shot at like fish in a barrel. The escort guards were on motorcycles, a car with the blue police followed at the back, and after them there walked some people, probably Jews too, who collected the dead bodies.

For us the death march turned out to be a salvation march. Mommy, falling down on the cobblestones, pulled me with her and ordered me to lie down quietly. When the column was far away, we crawled toward the bushes of the nearby Evangelical cemetery. I remembered her saying that she had no hope to survive, that the only thing she wantedwas for us to die together, and not let us be separated before death. Despite all the horror, I felt safer being close to Mother.

That is how we found ourselves outside the ghetto. We were hiding at many people’s places. First, Mrs Anna and Mr Antoni Ptaszkowski gave us shelter on Kunegundy 20 Street (my uncle Stan Fiszbain has been liviung with them for some time already). Then we moved to Mrs Janina and Mr Józef Mazurek on Sikorskiego 25 Street (in the Hell district). Finally, we were offered a helping hand by Mr Professor Giesing from Kołłątaja 29 Street, by whom we also spent some time.

We had to change our place of residence often. I didn’t have the “good appearance”: Semitic features and black curly hair drew attention. It was more difficult to stay safe. I was hidden in various, most unpredictable places: in a bee box and in a bread oven, in a made up bed covered with a bedspread, in cellars, in gardens and in haystacks. I spent six weeks under the ground, in a special compartment dug out for me.

Aneta Święs

Script for POLISH LITERATURE lesson
(for grades 7th/8th of elementary school)

Class duration: ~90 minutes (two class periods)

The objectives of the lesson:
– improving the ability to analyze and interpret witness accounts as a form of documenting events;
– expansion of vocabulary related to the Holocaust;
– learning new words to characterize attitudes;
– improving the ability to draw conclusions and generalize;
– training the ability to read metaphorical and symbolic meanings;
– improving the group work skills;
– forming the competence in searching and selecting information in various book and electronic sources,
– review and systematization of knowledge of literary terms;
– exercising the ability to create and use poetic devices;
– forming the competence to express feelings;
– exercising the competence of creating coherent written texts, correct in terms of language and style.

Methods and forms of work:
– practical exercises method;
– elements of heuristics;
– demonstrating.

Resources and teaching materials:
– photographs;
– fragments of witness accounts;
– definitions of stylistic devices and literary terms;
– sheets of kraft paper;
– note cards with names and definitions of poetic devices and literary terms;
– dictionaries or other sources of information, e.g. “Dictionary of Foreign Terms”, “Universal Encyclopedia”, or the Wikipedia.

1. Introduction: The teacher shows the film “History of the Jewish population in Nowy Sącz district from the German incursion to the liquidation of the ghetto” (excerpts from Samuel Kaufer’s testimony) to the students.

– students work in four-person groups and explain the terms written on the board (notes on kraft paper). They can use dictionaries or other sources of information.

I.
JUDENRAT
JEWISH ARMBANDS
LABOR CAMPS

II.
DISPLACEMENT
FOOD RATIONING IN THE GHETTO
JEWISH SELF-HELP

III.
GHETTO
PROPAGANDA POSTERS
ANTI-SEMITISM

IV.
DEATH CAMPS
SEGREGATION OF PEOPLE
WORK MAKES ONE FREE

V.
GHETTO A
GHETTO B
BLUE POLICE
e.g.
JUDENRAT– administering Jewish councils, which were appointed duringWorld War II by theNazi German authorities for the purpose of implementing directives and orders.
JEWISH ARMBANDS – Jewish people over 12 years of age were forced to wear a white band with a blue star of David on the right shoulder.
LABOR CAMPS – a place of detention where the prisoners are forced to perform work.
DISPLACEMENT – forcing someone to leave their place of residence.
FOOD RATIONING IN THE GHETTO – hunger was the biggest enemy of the people living in the ghetto. The Germans would gradually reduce the amount of food delivered, and steadily increase its prices.
JEWISH SELF-HELP – organization of voluntary social care over the Jewish population in the General Government. Its tasks included serving food in open kitchens and other establishments, distributing dry food, clothing, medicine and financial aid; it organized and maintained closed care institutions; it also helped those seeking employment, searched for missing persons, and took special care of children.
GHETTO – an isolated part ofthe city, intended as a place of residence of a national, ethnic, cultural or religious minority, which was forbidden to live in other parts of the city.
PROPAGANDA POSTERS – posters and announcements in occupied Poland.
ANTI-SEMITISM – an attitudeof aversion, hostility toward Jews and people of Jewish descent resulting from various kinds ofprejudice; persecution and discrimination of Jewish people as a religious, ethnic or racial group and views justifying such actions.
DEATH/EXTERMINATION CAMPS – camps created by Nazi Germany during the II World War, as part of the “final solution of the Jewish question”. They were places of mass genocide by immediate murder of people brought in.
SEGREGATION – actual or legal separation of groups of people for ethnic, racial or religious reasons within a single state.
WORK MAKES ONE FREE – the inscription “Arbeit macht frei” is one of the most important symbols of the mass extermination system created by the Germans, whose victims were mostly Jews. Today it is still located above the gate of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.
GHETTO A – for those working.
GHETTO B – for the “non-productive”.
BLUE POLICE – police force financed by Polish local authorities, subordinate to local commandants of the German order police,

– students present the effects of their work, pinning up the conclusions written on paper.

2. Analysis and interpretation of the documentary text:
– the teacher shows the film again
– students work in the same groups and write down keywords (names of items, terms, significants) that they remember from the testimony they have listened to, for example
• tears,
• poor wretch,
• chain,
• first,
• armband,
• telegram,
• poster,
• labor,
• dignity,
• hunger,
• contraband,
• infected,
• sowers,
• surprise,
• separation,
• hair,
• mirror,
• sentence,
• news,
– the teacher writes the words on the board, eliminating repetitions,
– students work in groups and write associations of the selected terms, e.g.:
tears – crying, despair, lament, pain, suffering.

3. Review tasks
– students receive definitions of poetic devices written on note cards:

STYLISTIC DEVICES:
ANAPHORA – repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of subsequent segments of the text.
ANIMISATION – giving inanimate objects, natural phenomena or abstract concepts the attributes of living beings.
ANTITHESIS – contrast of two segments of text (most often sentences) with opposite meanings.
ALLEGORY – a type of unambiguous personification; general truths and human relations are disguised as animals, plants, objects.
APOSTROPHE – direct address to a person, a deity or a personalized object.
EPIPHORA – repetition of the same word or phrase at the end of the subsequent segments of the text.
EPITHET – a word (adjective, participle, noun) defining a noun, emphasizing the characteristic features of people or objects.
HIPERBOLE – a metaphor containing elements of intentional exaggeration.
METAPHOR – an expression within which the meaning of words that make it up is intentionally changed.
NEOLOGISM – a new-coined word, created in accordance with the word-forming norms.
OXYMORON – a set phrase comprising two words which semantically exclude each other.
ONOMATOPOEIA – imitation of various non-linguistic acoustic phenomena by speech elements.
PERSONIFICATION – depiction of inanimate objects, natural and cosmic phenomena, animals or plants as acting or speaking human characters.
CIRCUMLOCUTION – replacing the name of a phenomenon by a more complex description of it.
SIMILE – direct comparison of two objects or phenomena due to some common characteristic which is the basis for the comparison.
HOMERIC SIMILE – a very complex comparison, one element of which is a detailed image, it usually refers to human deeds compared with animal behavior or natural phenomena.
REPETITION – multiplication of the same language element within a specific section of the text.
RHETORICAL QUESTION – a sentence in the form of a question which is not expected to be answered.
SYMBOL – an ambiguous motif or a set of motifs appearing in a literary work, which signifies content not directly disclosed, but is intended to indicate their existence.
ECPHONESIS – a short exclamatory sentence interjected in the course of speech.
ENUMERATION– consists in consecutive listing and sometimes also describing of all of the components of a certain set, indicated in the text.
DIMINUTIVE – a word created with a proper affix to indicate an object smaller than the original. The name of the original object becomes the word stem of the newly created word.
AUGMENTATIVE – a word formation (noun, adjective, adverb), which usually refers to an object larger than the one signified by the word which is its base. May have a negative undertone.

4. Creative tasks:
– students choose any definitions and by themselves create stylistic devices connected to any of the keywords, e.g.:
tears – painful, penetrating, burning, sea of tears, ocean of suffering, dry tears, marching like sentenced to death, irritating smiling faces.

5. Homework:
Students use the effects of their work to create their own poetic works.

HOMEWORK SUBJECT:
Based on the fragments of the heard testimony, express your feelings using any type of poem. Use the stylistic devices learned during the lesson.

– students review the terms:
LYRICAL SUBJECT – the person speaking in the poem.
BLANK VERSE – poem without rhymes at the end of lines.
SYLLABIC VERSE – poem with the same number of syllables in each line, with constant accent on the penultimate syllable of each. If the line is longer than eight syllables, then there is a caesura in it. It is usually written with 13 syllables or 11 syllables per line.
SYLLABOTONIC VERSE – a poem with the same number of syllables in each line, as in the case of a syllabic verse. It is more rhythmical – this is due to the evenly distributed accentuation (in subsequent lines the same syllables are stressed).
FREE VERSE – without the same number of syllables or accents in the line. The lines can vary in length, verses are often enjambed, rhymes are created by repeating lines.
TONAL VERSE – a type of poem in which the number of syllables in the line does not have to be the same, but there must be the same number of accents. Their distribution is not constant.
STROPHIC VERSE – every poem with a division into strophes/stanzas. This means that the lines are connected in equal fragments of a closed structure.
NON-STROPHIC VERSE – every poem built from verses, but without division into strophes.
RHYMES:
Perfect – identical sound of the stressed vowels.
Imperfect – similar but not identical sound of the words.
Grammatical – rhyming words of the same part of speech.
Feminine – rhyming words with more than one syllable; 1.5-syllable rhyme.
Masculine – rhyming single syllable words.
RHYME PATTERN:
PAIRED (neighboring): aabb,
INTERWEAVED (crossed): abab,
ENCOMPASSING: abba
RHYTHMICAL POEM STRUCTURE – a fixed number of syllables in verses (in the syllabic verse), a fixed number of syllables with the same order of accents (in the syllabotonic verse), a fixed number of accents(in the tonal verse), regularly occurring caesura and rhymes.

Artur Franczak

Script for a HISTORY lesson
(for grade 8th of primary school)

Comments: This is a lesson for primary school students. Its aim is to make them aware that during the last war, the Nazi policy resulted in the greatest crime in the history of humanity being committed on the Jewish nation. Students will learn about the mechanism of the emergence of intolerance and hatred toward Jews, as well as the processes that ultimately led to the extermination of the Jewish people. On the example of the Rumin family from Popardowa, they will learn about the ways to survive and to help, as well as ways in which people fought for dignity and humanity in times of the greatest evil and decay of moral values.

The objectives of the lesson:
– General objective: Students acquire knowledge about the Holocaust, its origins, stages and consequences. They develop an attitude of tolerance toward other people and nations with negative evaluation of racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic behavior.

– Specific objectives:
After the lesson, the student should:
• know and understand the terms: Holocaust (Shoah), Auschwitz-Birkenau, ghetto, Righteous among the Nations;
• know that the Holocaust done by the Nazis was a planned endeavor, carried out methodically;
• develop an attitude of tolerance toward other people, religions, nations;
• be able to explain the forms of extermination of Jewish people;
• be able to explain how the Jewish people tried to survive and what the role of people who saved them was;
• point out the places on the map where the largest concentration and extermination camps were located;
• be able to present how life in the ghetto looked like on the example of the Nowy Sącz ghetto;
• properly analyze text, iconography and film sources and build linguistically correct statements on their basis.

Teaching materials and resources:
• Source texts:
a. Directives of the Starosta (regional governor) of Nowy Sącz – National Archive Branch in Nowy Sącz;
b. Film material: https://www.wojennysacz.pl/en/war-time-triptych-jadwiga/, https://www.wojennysacz.pl/en/war-time-triptych-berta/;
c. Excerpt from Hans Frank’s speech, delivered at the General Government meeting on 16.12.1941, [in:] Eksterminacja Żydów na ziemiach polskich w okresie okupacji hitlerowskiej. [Eng. Extermination of Jewish people in Polish lands during the Nazi occupation] Document set; edited by T. Berenstein, A. Eisenbach, A. Rutkowski, Warsaw 1957, pp. 25–29 (Annex 1);
d. Historical Atlas.

Teaching methods:
• teaching conversation;
• discussion;
• work directed by teacher with exercises, source text, iconographic material, film material, map.

Lesson course:
1. Introduction
• Organisational activities;
• Familiarizing students with the subject of the lesson;
• Comment on the issues discussed in the lesson.

2. Recapitulation – students answer the teacher’s questions:
• What events took place on 30 January 1933 and 1 September 1939? What happened after these events?
• What was the policy of the occupants toward the Polish nation?

3. The main part of the lesson:
• The teacher presents the film material from the “War-time Nowy Sącz” website to the students, and then asks them questions:
a. What events does the plot of the film refer to?
b. What feelings does watching the film invoke? How does the imagery of the film influence the perception of the plot?
• The teacher explains the terms: Holocaust, ghetto;
• The teacher discusses the attitude of the Nazis toward the Jewish population and the gradual development of restrictions imposed on them;
• Students familiarize themselves with the source text handed out by the teacher – an excerpt from Hans Frank’s speech, delivered on 16.12.1941 at the General Government meeting – and then they answer the teacher’s questions:
a. How did the Nazis understand the “final solution to the Jewish question” in the light of Hans Frank’s speech?
b. What actions against the Jews were announced by Hans Frank?
• The teacher presents the dates when individual ghettos were created: 1939 – Piotrków Trybunalski, autumn 1940 – Warsaw ghetto, 1940 – Nowy Sącz ghetto; students find the mentioned places on the map;
• The teacher describes the life in the ghetto and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, students view the iconographic material;
• The young people learn the history of the Rumin family from Popardowa, and then discuss the ways used by Polish people to save the Jews;
• The teacher tells students about the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp complex built by the Nazis, students view the iconographic material prepared by the teacher.

4. Summary:
Students write down the values that guided those who were saving the Jewish during World War II on the board.

5. Homework:
Students use available sources to prepare information about the life and activities of Janusz Korczak and Emanuel Ringelblum

Annex 1
Excerpt from Hans Frank’s speech delivered at the General Government meeting on 16.12.1941

One way or another – I will tell you that quite openly – we must finish off the Jews. […] before I now continue speaking first agree with me on a formula: we will have pity, on principle, only for the German people, and for nobody else in the world […] I will therefore, on principle, approach Jewish affairs in the expectation that the Jews will disappear. They must go. […] We must destroy the Jews wherever we find them, and wherever it is at all possible, in order to maintain the whole structure of the Reich. In any case we must find a way that will lead us to our goal […]. The views that were acceptable up to now cannot be applied to such gigantic, unique events. […]. The Jews are also exceptionally harmful feeders for us. In the Government-General we have approximately 2.5 million [Jews], and now perhaps 3.5 million together with persons who have Jewish kin, and so on. We cannot shoot these 3.5 million Jews, * we cannot poison them, but we will be able to take measures that will lead somehow to successful destruction; and this in connection with the large-scale procedures which are to be discussed in the Reich.

Maria Molenda

Script for a HISTORY lesson
(for grades 1st to 4th of secondary school)

Class duration: 45 minutes

I. Subject of the lesson: Slaves from the Sącz Region – FORCED LABOR IN THE OCCUPATION POLICY OF THE THIRD REICH

II. The objectives of the lesson: introducing the students to the subject of forced labor as an element of the Third Reich terror policy in occupied Polish lands, especially in the Sącz region. After completing the lesson, the student knows the organizational mechanisms of forced labor / can list the forced labor camps in the Sącz region / has the knowledge about what performing such labor meant for the Polsh people and what for the Jewish people.

III. Methods: lecture / working with the map on the www.wojennysacz.pl  website / working with source texts

IV. Lesson course:

1. Greetings and organizational activities.

2. Subject introduction: Presentation of the title of the class and reading a quote from the work by historian Michael Burleigh “The Third Reich: A New History” (quoted from page 481):
   “The Nazi empire was created by violence, lived by violence and was destroyed by violence.”
   The teacher asks the students to recall what were the goals of the Third Reich policy toward the conquered Poland.

3. The teacher asks selected students to use the map on the „War-time Nowy Sącz” website and the “Labour Camps in Sącz Region” educational path to learn the number of localities where such camps existed.

4. The teacher asks students if they know what labor camps were? Who worked in them and why? What were the working conditions in such a camp? During the conversation on the subject, the students should learn the term “labor camp”, as well as learn more about the reality of such camps, on the example of Rożnów and Rytro.

In the period of the German occupation the labor camps were places where people were detained and forced to work for the Third Reich. The prisoners would work in quarries, mines, and the armaments industry and in other places. The German word for labor camp is Arbeitslager, hence the name “lagier” used commonly in the occupied Poland.

Labor camps in the Sącz region, marked on the map, included, for example, the labor camp in Rożnów, created in connection with the dam construction, one of the largest German construction projects in the General Government. It was probably located near the construction site, and operated from 1939 to the end of 1942. In total, over 1000 people worked there in that period, mainly Jewish people from the Nowy Sącz ghetto. The conditions in the camp were terrible, and sick and weak prisoners were executed. The camp was re-activated in 1944 and it was intended to hold Polish prisoners who worked on fortification construction.

The teacher reads to the students a fragment of the memories of the Markus Lustig, a Jew from Nowy Sącz, who worked in the Rożnów camp:

It was at the turn of May and June, [1942] when I received a notice to report at the work office with a suitcase, and some clothes in it. We were put – a group of thirty boys – on a truck and sent to the labor camp in Rożnów. People have already been in the camp for a long time. The camp manager, a Jew, was called Liber Berliner. The camp – a few barracks with beds made of boards and straw – was located next to the dam on the Dunajec River. […] We did various works at the dam, mainly digging four cubic meters of dirt per day. Then I worked unloading cement bags from trucks. Given the conditions, it was possible to survive in the camp. There was enough food and every month we received an envelope with money, at a rate of three zlotys per week of work.

After the Germans deported and murdered the Jewish people from the Nowy Sącz ghetto, Markus Lustig was sent to the labor camp in Rytro, where the sawmill operated:

I worked with a Polish boy on machines cutting wood leftovers. […] We would work twelve hours a day. At first they gave us food twice a day. In the morning w got coffee and a piece of bread, and at noon we got soup and whatever was floating in it. […] On Sunday we did not work in the sawmill, but at the railway station vis-a-vis. We loaded barrack parts on railway cars, which were supposed to go to the German army sent to the east.

The teacher continues recounting Lustig’s memories of his stay in the camp:
Once he was so tired he fell asleep. When the guard found the sleeping boy, he beat his buttocks very hard. For a few days Markus was not able to sit down. For his bad behavior he was chosen to work outside of the camp, where he was exposed to severe weather conditions.

5. The teacher discusses with the students the significance of forced labor for the Third Reich, providing basic information on the subject:

The Nazis were able to continue the war only by using forced labor in their agriculture and industry. The demand for labor force was increasing as the war lasted longer than expected and expenditures on the armaments production grew.

The plans to use the members of the enslaved nations in the Nazi state economy were created even before the German aggression against Poland. Almost 100.000 Austrian citizens were forced to work in the Reich after the country’s in the so-called Anschluss in March 1938. After the seizure of the Czech Republic, Moravia and Cieszyn Silesia, in March 1939 the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was established with the  collaborating government, and soon 70.000 workers ended up in Germany. After the victory over France in 1940, about 1.200.000 French prisoners of war were forced to work in agriculture or at construction sites.
In total, during World War II, more than 12 million foreigners were forced to work in the Third Reich. Forced labor was one of the forms of extermination of the populations of the lands conquered by the Nazi Germany.

6. The teacher discusses the forced labor of Polish people with students and provides basic information on the subject.

The Germans used the people from the Sącz region to work both in the Third Reich and in the General Government.

The obligation to work was imposed in the General Government on persons of 14 to 60 years of age. However, the age limits were not respected by the occupant, and both older people and children would be forced to work.

The local office, the so-called Arbeitsamt would organize workers for the Third Reich. This office would also decide where in the Reich there will be sent to.

RSHA or the Reich Security Main Office developed strict rules, by which the racially unwelcome laborers were to be isolated from the general German population. Foreigners working in the Reich were to be divided according to racial criteria, which affected their treatment and work assigned to them.

The first forced laborers were prisoners of war. As soon as October 1939, 46.000 Polish POWs were working for the Third Reich. In order to go around the requirements for the treatment of prisoners of war introduced by the Geneva Convention, the Germans used a trick, proposing the soldiers to be “released” from captivity, which led to staying in the Reich as a civilian “free worker”.

The workers were obtained by force by the Germans: in September 1939 the first Polish civilians were taken away for forced labor. The occupants would organize round-ups. The Germans created the population register very quickly and the German work offices would send summons for work; refusals were met with severe punishment, including concentration camps or repressions against ones family. On the General Government territories, the Germans ran a campaign encouraging voluntary applications for labor. But the actual conditions of the promised work differed significantly from the image painted by the propaganda.

The teacher reads a description made on the basis of the account of Józefa Lewicka (the whole testimony can be heard at the www.wojennysacz.pl website):

Józefa Lewicka née Radziszewska was born in 1934 in Limanowa. During the war, she worked on building fortifications outside Stary Sącz. She remembered that she worked on building trenches. Although she was a child and was not even 10 years old, she had to take up work because her parents were not able to do it (Mrs. Józefa’s mother was seriously ill). Mrs Józefa mentions that the village head had the list of the names of people appointed to work, and the Germans would check whether the parents really could not work themselves. Mrs. Józefa, together with her sister Aniela, 3 years older than her, took their parents’ place. Working on the trenches took whole day, the girls would bring turf from the field and mask the trenches, which were being dug mainly by men. In the evening, the sisters would be very hungry, so they were force to engage in petty theft in the neighboring houses to get something to eat, usually fruits, such as pears, plums or anything else. While working on the trenches the only thing they could get was some marmalade from Tymbark and a piece of bread. Once a month, they received a food stamp for half a kilogram of groats and a loaf of black bread, apart from that they did not receive any pay. The work was carried out under the constant supervision of soldiers who were violent toward the workers. Aniela was brave and would rebel for which she was beaten. Once she lost her little shovel, which she used at work. After the day was over, they were supposed to turn the tools over; when Aniela reported that she does not have hers, the German wanted to shoot her for it. Aniela was saved by a man who was translating for the Germans, who offered his life in exchange for hers. In the end, the soldier did not shoot anyone. Forced labor lasted almost 3 years and was done in the cold. Józefa did not have suitable clothes, and she would wear clogs on her feet, wrapped in rags. No one was bothered when she and her sister fell sick. Józefa’s house was extremely poor, she and her siblings were always hungry. After her mother’s death it was even worse. The family could not count on the help of the sisters of the deceased, because they were taken to work in Germany. At the end of the war, the Germans withdrew from the area where Józefa used to work, taking the forced workers hostages for a some time.

7. The teacher summarizes the class with the students, and asks the students about their thoughts. The etacher asks whether they can name any modern countries that create labor camps.

8. End of lesson.