Lesson Plan: Tuesday, 2/21 90 minutes

This lesson plan will be the same for both the Monday/Wednesday section and the
Tuesday/Thursday section.

ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS
Holocaust
o How and why did the Holocaust happen?
o How can some people resist injustice and others obey authority?
o How can an individual be upstander?
History and today
o How can the past affect the present?
Primary/Secondary Sources
o What is the purpose of using both primary and secondary sources?
o Why do we need to critically evaluate what we read?
Graphic novel
o How can graphic novels depict historical events?
o How are themes utilized in graphic novels to tell a story?

ENDURING UNDERSTANDINGS
Content/Enduring Understandings:
o Students will learn how and why the Holocaust happened.
Students will understand the Holocaust was not an accident in historyit
occurred because individuals, organizations, and governments made choices
that not only legalized discrimination but also allowed and promoted
prejudice, hatred, and ultimately mass murder to occur.
Students will learn what it means to be an upstander vs. a bystander.
Students will understand silence and indifference to the suffering of
others, or to the infringement of civil rights in any society, can
however, unintentionallyperpetuate the problem.
Students will learn how to become upstanders in their day-to-day lives.
o History and today
Students will come to understand that the past affects the present on
individual, familial, community, national, and global scales.
o Graphic novels
Graphic novels allow authors another level of expression compared to
traditional books.
Graphic novels blend text with art to create a new form of literature.
The artwork in a graphic novel is a form of text that conveys additional
information to the reader.
The art in a graphic novel allows a deeper level of expression; this concept is
a valuable tool for the reader to utilize.
Skills/Goals/Objectives:
o Students will develop skills in analysis of primary and secondary sources.
o Students will draw explicit connections between graphic novels and history to
understand deep knowledge of the Holocaust and how it affects today.
o Students will learn how to create their own thematic graphic novels.

STANDARDS
N/A

MATERIALS
 I will need my lesson plan and PowerPoint.
o I will also need copies of The Butterfly handout and The Garden.
Students will need a piece of loose-leaf and a pencil to do the warm up, take notes, and their
graphic novel plots.

PROCEDURES

OPENER- 5 minutes
Students will be lined up in 2 quiet lines.
I will explain that there is a Warm Up on the board.

BODY OF THE LESSON- 80 minutes

Warm up 15 minutes
o Students will answer the warm up independently.
o I will call on a few students to share out their answers.
PowerPoint and class discussion 40 minutes
o Theresienstadt Concentration Camp German name, -stadt means city
Originally founded as a fortress in the 1700s
Walled town
Also, referred to as the Terezn Ghetto Czech people
Served as a model ghetto and was shown to foreigners as an example
of the good work Nazi Germany was doing Nazi propaganda
June 1944- International Red Cross visit
o Elaborate hoax- ghetto was beautified- gardens, houses
painted, barracks renovated, staged cultural events
fooled the international people
Referred to as a spa town for elderly Jews that were sent there
In reality, it was a pit stop between Jews homes and Auschwitz and
other death camps
Numbers:
140,000 Jews transferred to Theresienstadt
90,000 deported to death
33,000 died in the ghetto itself
15,000 children under age 15 passed through this concentration
camp between 1942-1944 90% then died
o Pictures ask questions to students
Living quarters- 1941-1945
Women prisoners lie on thin mattresses on the floor of barracks in the
womens camp- 1941-1945
Red triangle worn by Czech political prisoner Karl Bruml
The letter T stands for Tscheche which is Czech in German
Prisoners wait for food rations- 1941-1945
Forced laborers at work in a tailors workshop- 1941-1945
o Friedl Dicker-Brandeis hero
Drawings were made during secret art classes led by Friedl
Functioned as a sort of therapy for the children to channel their
emotions about the harsh reality of their lives
Before Friedl was deported to Auschwitz, she filled 2 suitcases with
about 4,500 childrens drawings and put them in a secret place
 After the war ended, they were recovered and handed over to
the Jewish Museum in Prague by the wife of a teacher in the
concentration camp
o Pinkas Synagogue
2nd oldest preserved synagogue in Prague, Czech Republic
Memorial to the 78,000 Czech Jewish victims of the Holocaust
Names are organized by the communities the people came from
and complemented by their birth and death date
Features the exhibition of the childrens art and poems
o I never Saw Another Butterfly
Childrens Drawings and Poems from Theresienstadt Concentration Camp
1942-1944
This book collected documents, the poems and art, that have been
chosen from the archives of the State Jewish Museum in Prague, Czech
Republic
Poems
42 manuscripts
24 typed copies
Art
2 kinds of art chosen:
o Some are illustrations of the childrens poems
o Others are chosen because they add artistic value to the
poem
39 children represented in the art
o Class discussion
Review The Butterfly
o Share out homework
o How does this poem and art illuminate the experiences of
children in concentration camps?
Think pair share
o What is the poem referring to?
o What experiences do you think generated this poem?
SHARE BIOGRAPHY INFORMATION
Read The Garden together out loud
Think pair share/small group
o What is the poem referring to?
o What experiences do you think generated this poem?
o How does this poem and art illuminate the experiences of
children in concentration camps?
SHARE BIOGRAPHY INFORMATION
Compare and contrast:
What themes are apparent?
What symbols do the authors use to represent their time in
concentration camp?
o The Butterfly
Poem
Pavel Friedmann
o Born 1921
o Brought to Theresienstadt in 1942
 o Died in 1944- died at 23
Preserved in a typewritten copy on thin copy paper
Art
Iris- 1 of 16 drawings
o Erika Taussig
Born in 1934
Brought to Theresienstadt in 1941
Died in 1944- 10 years old
o Detail from a watercolor and pencil sketch done on both
sides of a piece of drawing paper
Butterflies
o Eva Bu (Bulov)
o Born in 1930
o Brought to Theresienstadt in 1942
o Died in 1944- 14 years old
o Detail from the middle part of a watercolor painted on
the reverse side of a piece of glossy yellow paper
o The Garden
Poem
Frantiek Bass
o Born in 1930
o Brought to Theresienstadt in 1942
o Died in 1944- aged 14
Preserved in manuscript, probably a copy, together with 7 other
opems
Art
Iris- 1 of 3 drawings
o Sonnemark Miriam
Born in 1932
Brought to Theresienstadt in 1942
Died in 1944- aged 12
o Detail from a central part of a drawing made with pencil
and pastels on grey cardboard
House with Garden- 1 of 14 drawings
o Marianna Langov
Born in 1932
Brought to Theresienstadt in 1942
Died in 1944- aged 12
Detail from the center of watercolor with the same name,
painted on the reverse side of a piece of shiny red paper
o The Poems and Art- read below if time
See the daily misery of these uprooted children, but also a degree of
courage and optimism that is their triumph
They saw and heard everything that the grown-ups did: the
endless lines, the funeral carts, and the human beings harnessed
to pull them, the executions, and the shouts of the SS-men
But, they also saw the green meadows and blueish hills beyond
the gates, the animals, the birds, and the butterflies
And they had their imaginations
 All this they secretly drew and painted, all this they described in their
poems
Voices which have been preserved, the voices of reminder, of
truth, of hope
For those who signed their work, it has been possible to find out a few
facts:
The year and place of their birth
The number of their transport to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz
The year of their death
o For most of them it was 1944, the next to last year of
WWII
Maus- 25 minutes
o Students will work on their own graphic novels

CLOSURE- 5 minutes
Homework: none
I will ask students to pack up. Once they are seated and quiet, I will dismiss them.

ACCOMODATIONS
I have made accommodations for students who learn best through lecture, independent
work, group work, and/or whole class discussion.

ASSESSMENT/EVALUATION
To gauge students learning that the Holocaust was not an accident in history, we will
have the lecture and group and class discussions about Maus.
To gauge student understanding about what it means to be a bystander, we will have
group and class discussions about Maus.
To gauge student understanding of the idea that history and today are interconnected
on individual, familial, community, national, and global scales, we will have group and
class discussions about Maus, which highlights this idea through the use of the dual
narrative and flashbacks.
To gauge student understanding of the Maus and the graphic novels form as a graphic
novel, I have planned group and class discussions about the artwork and how the art
and text (captions/dialogue between characters) interact.
To gauge student ability to make connections between graphic novels and history, I
have planned group and class discussions.

PERSONAL REFLECTIONS / NOTES