7A Holocaust and Human Behavior

We have been reading the book "Maus" in class. "Maus" is an award winning book written by Art Spiegelman whose father is a Holocaust survivor. The book is written in cartoon form (the Nazis are cats, the Jews are mice). Maus tells the story of Spiegelman's father's account of how he and his wife survived Hitler's Europe. Students are able to see the progression of the Holocaust from Kristallnacht (the night of broken glass) to the ghettoization of the Jews, to the concentration camps. There have been many questions and students now have a greater understanding of the progression of events that led to the Holocaust. There are a lot of questions about why the Jews stayed put; why they just didn't leave. Some of the answers are, "they didn't think it could get worse", or "they didn't want to leave their whole families" or "it was so difficult for them to believe that this was happening that they denied it themselves until it was too late." The questions students ask are thought provoking and open-ended. They will continue to learn the answers throughout the year.