Shiva Kumar (2)

This is a first person narrative of 27 different accounts from witnesses of the Holocaust. Witnesses include camp survivors, American military personnel, a member of the Hitler Youth, a Jesuit priest, and resistance fighters. The book is divided into nine different sections and the different accounts are interspersed throughout each section. Sections include Europe in the 1930’s, the outbreak of war, ghettos, escape, hiding and resistance, deportation and arrival (to the camps), the camps, death march, liberation, and aftermath. The book was compiled 55 years after the end of the War, by Fortunoff Video Archive at Yale University. According to a review online:
Hollywood treatments of Nazi concentration camps do not probe the depths of the human experience the way the testimonies in Witness do. Emotions are raw and on the surface as people describe what they went through or subjected others to. There is the testimony of a survivor still haunted by the knowledge that he sent his little brother to his death by steering him to the wrong line during the selection process. Martin S. described how he trained himself to be brutal in order to survive in Buchenwald. "I didn't care about anyone else." One woman describes how hunger drove her to steal bread from a fellow prisoner. Herbert J., the American POW, describes the brutality of Nazi guards and the cannibalism of Soviet inmates.

Lesson ideas:
1) Students draw a picture depicting the image the writer portrays.
2) Watch the YouTube video of the voices in the book and compare and contrast the power of reading the words versus watching the video and seeing the person speak the words.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leqkGOqyWMI… (més)