Enacting the Holocaust

By June 25, 2011

We all know of the famous experiment of the subjects that were brought in and told to continue shocking other subjects (whom they did not see) until they screamed and eventually went silent. The experiment was meant to shed light on how a things like the Holocaust happened, that people are willing to do atrocious things under orders. This of course brings up very unpleasant worries of what we would have done not only in the experiment but also in the Holocaust itself.

The Holocaust is very upsetting to me and something I simply do not want to know any more about. So I was quite taken aback when my kids came home from the first day of summer acting workshop and reported that they were going to be enacting the Holocaust. We signed them up for workshops last year at UVU (make up and stage combat) and this year the offering for their age group was listed as enacting World War II (earlier in the summer the program did the Revolutionary War and the Civil War). My wife was going to be out of town that week for a conference so I was happy that the kids would have something to keep them occupied (my kids who signed up for the class are 10 and 12, the age range for the class was 4th to 9th grade).

So when they were told that by World War II they really meant the Holocaust, I was appalled. My daughter had been assigned to be a Nazi civilian and my son a concentration camp guard (you know, the guys that Western society has been hunting for the last 70 years because of their atrocities). So the plan was to get them into another class but my sister sat them down and went over the brochure with them that explained that this would be improvisation and that “maybe you can change history” was the line that was used. I still thought this was a terrible idea, that either the kids would refuse to play the roles and thus there would be no performance or they would play the roles with zest and it would be really disturbing. My kids decided to give it another day but also didn’t want to switch classes because the other offerings were at 9 (as opposed to 1) and didn’t want to get up that early. So the kids worked on researching for their roles and various improvisation techniques for the week.

The day of the performance came. Their younger sister had signed up for a class that performed a scene from a Midsummers Night’s Dream and she got to be a fairy. Very cute and very age appropriate. The Holocaust enactment was quite the contrast. All the kids were in costume, some with Nazi arm bands and some with Stars of David and they all gave short speeches that they wrote. My son had gone to the teacher earlier in the week and asked if he could be a good camp guard and so he gave a speech (as though he were before the Nuremberg tribunal) on how he should not be executed for his crimes because he had been as kind to the Jews in the camp as he possibly could have (sneaking them food and trying to make life easier). This contrasted greatly with another kid in the class who played his role–concentration camp director–with zeal. (That is what was particularly upsetting, the kids wanted to act and some really wanted to play the bad guy, but for 10-year olds, bad guys are characters like Darth Vader, not Nazi prison wardens!) This kid also gave a defense, but his was different: he said he should not be executed because Jews were “spit.” Yikes!

After the speeches (all sorts of roles) they were then to enact the various scenes of the Holocaust. This was to be improvisation and they had practiced various silly things during the week, like waiting at a bus stop and asking a girl out on a date. The final performance was quite different. They went through four scenarios. For the first one the teachers read the date and laws for various restrictions put on Jews: losing telephone, radio, and car privileges. The kids were then supposed to improv. Next was a scene that was supposed to take place in France where the Nazi kids were supposed to round up the Jews. The final scene was the biggest disaster: the liberation of the concentration camp. Again, improv. The American soldier showed up at the camp and the kids playing the Jews all begged him for food. He mimed giving them food at which point the Jews ate it and all fell over dead (they had been told that the concentration camp victims who ate too much food stomachs exploded and that’s what they acted out). The teacher cut that one off pretty quickly.

One of the most interesting, though equally disturbing was the improv of the concentration camp, the third scenario. The Jews were to get off the train and be met by the Nazi guards including my son and the zealous Nazi camp director. The kids played their roles and the Nazi’s quickly began dividing the Jews into workers and those who were to “take a shower!” in the words of the zealous camp director (he shouted the phrase over and over and made the baseball “you’re out” sign as he did so.)

Interestingly, my son also played his role zealously, one that he picked out himself: the good camp guard. When the camp director shouted for Jews to “take a shower,” first my son joked “Why? They look pretty clean.” When the camp director was distracted sorting our other Jews, my son told the Jews sent to gas chamber to escape. Then he came up from behind the camp director while he was deliberating with another Nazi about which of two Jewish girls they would let live. “They’re only half human!” the camp director bellowed, to which my son responded “yeah, and together they make one whole person so they should both live.” This sort of befuddled the camp director, but he got his bearings back and shouted “to the showers” at one of the girls. Then the camp director and the other Nazi followed her and my son to what was supposed to be the gas chamber (there were no sets, just a part of the stage that played the role) and shouted “pull the lever!” over and over. My son said, “what lever” and then finally refused as they kept shouting. At my son’s refusal, the camp director pantomimed cutting off my son’s fingers (my son explained afterwards that they were told a story of a camp guard who refused to pull the lever and so they cut off his fingers, thus the kid was just acting out the story). The teacher called the scene to an end shortly after.

As appalling as this whole production was (what were these teachers thinking!) it was interesting to watch my son’s choices from asking the teacher to play the good role to acting it out. I don’t know how “real” these scenarios were for the kids (my daughter said the horror of it didn’t really register for the younger kids–the kid who played the camp director looked about 12–while the older kids (14-15) really looked traumatized) but I like to think that perhaps this means that my son would have preformed well both in the experiment and in the actual atrocity. I can only imagine what the parents of the kid who played the camp director were thinking.

Article filed under Reflective Posts


Comments

  1. I wonder how well the teachers thought through their goals for the week. If improv skills were the only goal, then “A Trip to the Zoo” or “My Family Reunion” would have provided ample opportunities. They seemingly wanted the kids to learn something about history since they told them stories that the kids incorporated into this presentation — but were all their stories as gruesome and sensational as amputating fingers and exploding stomachs?

    I just can’t imagine why they would tackle such a subject if they weren’t going to be responsible enough to also teach about heroism or endurance or courage or empathy or mass evil or something that would justify their choice. It sounds like your little Nazi camp director fancied himself the hero with the most spectacular part and without consequences — is that what the teachers wanted any participant to internalize? And if not, couldn’t they foresee that and shouldn’t they have been responsible for avoiding it? Gaaghh!

    If your son internalized as much from adapting his role to something with a few redeeming qualities, it bodes well for his future character.

    Comment by Ardis E. Parshall — June 25, 2011 @ 4:13 pm

  2. Ardis brought up an interesting point–what was the purpose of the lesson? If it was improv, then why in the world do history? History has already occurred and improvising it doesn’t make any sense. It seems like maybe the teachers were trying to accomplish two things at once, but while they were at it, why didn’t they try to instill some values in the kids too?

    I feel like there will be consequences for the kids who played bad parts and enjoyed them. Will they feel like it’s okay to belittle different cultures because it was allowed at this camp? Or is the mean camp director kid already like that and now he’s just received approval for that attitude?

    Comment by Michelle Glauser — June 25, 2011 @ 6:33 pm

  3. Good questions. The theme was “enacting history.” Like I said, they did the Revolutionary War and Civil War a few weeks earlier. They said the goal was threefold: persuasive argument (the speeches–disturbing), improvisation, and “enacting history.” There seemed to be two adults running the program: a man whom seemed to be in charge of the history part, and a woman in charge of the acting part.

    The man got up and gave some explanation after the speeches and seemed very uncomfortable and unsure. He said they had done the “lighter” subjects of the Revolution and Civil War earlier and for the Holocaust he was unsure what to teach the children. He said he did this with his college students and was no holds barred with them, but he had been usure with these kids. He had been pretty graphic apparently. He tried to mention some notions of heroism but it all came across as muddled: he said only 4000 Jews survived in Polland (out of like 100,000), while 2000 survived in Berlin. He was trying to get across the fact that some Berliners must of sheltered the Jews, but the point didn’t come across at all.

    They had one kid play the French resistance so that during the senario when the Nazi’s showed up in Paris, she played hiding the Jews in her house. The camp director kid played the role of arresting all the Jews. It sort of turned into a game of tag but by the end he hauled all the Jews out of the freedom fighter’s house.

    The historian guy eventually just left, he didn’t stick around to the end. My wife did some asking around and apparently the woman running the class is Jewish and wants to get across the whole “don’t let history repeat itself” thing. At the end she said something about how when the kids take history classes in jr. high and high school, this will all seem more real.

    Very good point about the trama to the camp director (my son said “that kid was crazy, he drank two big things of Mountain Dew a day!”) It sort of reminded me of stories I’ve heard about child soldiers in Africa, how the youngest ones do the most atrocious things. It sort of looked like watching a dramatization of the child soldier.

    Correction: my son tells me that the kid who yelled “pull the lever” and chopped his fingers off was the camp doctor, not the camp director. Yes, they assigned a camp doctor, you know, the guy who performed the inhuman experiments on the Jews. His gave a speech justifying his experiments. I was so shocked that it didn’t register. He apparently got into the role also.

    This whole thing was it’s own ugly experiment.

    Comment by Steve Fleming — June 25, 2011 @ 7:02 pm

  4. I just asked my son: “did they tell you anything about what the camp doctor did?”
    His response, “No. Just that they would put them in freezing water to see how long they survived and ink in their eyes and chop them up into little pieces.”
    “Oh, is that all!” I said.
    “Oh,” says my son, “I thought they did much worse things than that.”
    What is the matter with these people!

    Comment by Steve Fleming — June 25, 2011 @ 7:09 pm

  5. I think you’re obligated as the parent of children exposed to this to make some kind of report/complaint to the sponsoring organization. This really is outrageous.

    Schools that expose children this young to the horrors of the Holocaust usually start with something like an edited version of the Diary of Anne Frank — at least then the young kids can empathize with the victims in their hiding place, and with the heroic citizens who tried to protect them. Having children assume the roles and adopt the brutal mindsets of the torturers/exterminators is shockingly poor judgment — perhaps even child abuse.

    Comment by Ardis E. Parshall — June 25, 2011 @ 7:36 pm

  6. Yes, Ardis, we’ll get on that. The guy who oversaw all the classes made it a point to hand out feed back forms after my younger daughter’s performance of Mid-summer Night’s Dream. For the Holocaust one, he poked his head in a few times but then took off. He was nowhere to be seen at the end so there were no evaluation forms to hand out. It was pretty obvious that this was a terrible idea.

    In truth, I’m pretty upset with myself. When my kids came home the first day and said they were doing the Holocaust, I knew it was a terrible idea. But when they said they wanted to give it a chance, and then didn’t complain the rest of the week, I just let it be. I was busy and happy to have the occupied. This was really dropping the ball on my part.

    Kids get over it pretty quickly. My daughter had such a fun time acting that she ran home and wrote up a plan to do another play: Alice in Wonderland.

    Comment by Steve Fleming — June 25, 2011 @ 8:45 pm

  7. Ardis we have already spoken with one of the founders of the Noorda camp and plan to head down there on Monday.

    We assume good intent on the part of the people who planned it but we want to make it clear that the topic was highly inappropriate for this age group. The Noorda people should really consider carefully whether the individuals who considered this “age appropriate” should be empowered to make decisions about content in the future.

    Comment by Lee Fleming — June 25, 2011 @ 9:05 pm

  8. Ick.

    Beyond the topic being inappropriate for kids, kids’ acting camp doesn’t seem like an appropriate format for dealing with the Holocaust.

    Comment by Jonathan Green — June 25, 2011 @ 9:56 pm

  9. kids? acting camp doesn?t seem like an appropriate format for dealing with the Holocaust.

    I agree, though I would say the same thing about war in general–who in their right mind would consider the Revolutionary and Civil Wars “lighter” material?

    Comment by Peter LLC — June 26, 2011 @ 7:02 am

  10. My wife posted the add for the class on her blog.

    EnACTing History – World War II
    Students will enhance their acting skills, speaking abilities, and historical understanding as they enact dramatic moments that led the American people in and out of war. The course will include training in improvisational acting, persuasive speech, and historical research as students experience great events first hand in their roles as historical characters. Each week will culminate with a one-hour improvisational performance for family in friends in which a courageous group of citizens must make momentous decisions. Depending on students’ persuasive abilities, the course of history may be altered! Special funding from the College of Humanities and Social Science make it possible for us to offer this course for only $75 a week.

    My wife explains, “I encouraged them to take something more like Stage Combat or Storytelling but they insisted they were interested in learning history. Obviously they get that from their papa.”

    So this was a total bait and switch.

    Comment by Steve Fleming — June 26, 2011 @ 9:16 am

  11. Ah. I can better understand both why kids would want to participate and why parents would be willing. Acceptable idea, perhaps, but they should have thought it through to the nitty gritty.

    I think war history is a perfectly acceptable broad field for even children’s groups, Peter, but you have to choose what you want to expose them to and what roles you want them to see themselves as filling. For all the horror and evil and destruction of war, there can also be moments of selflessness and humanity and courage and man at his best that could be very good for children to imagine themselves as doing, and every bit as historical as selecting victims for the gas chamber. If I were ever to do something about the Vietnam War, for instance, I would choose something that showed how so many POWs kept their humanity and successfully outwitted their captors when it came to communication and mutual support. Absolutely ennobling history there … although it looks like the directors of this acting class would probably reenact My Lai or torture sessions or burning villages instead.

    Sorry to talk so much on this thread — it all fascinates me, though, and fits with other expressions of my interest in designing learning experiences.

    Comment by Ardis E. Parshall — June 26, 2011 @ 9:50 am

  12. Thanks for all your comments Ardis.

    Not to belabor the point, but I wanted flesh out a point that Michelle made about the “consequences for the kids who played bad parts and enjoyed them.”

    The teacher generally ended the scenarios at the worst part with applause. She would clap to let the students know that the scenario was over at which point all the parents clapped. So in the second scenario when the Nazis were searching for Jews in Paris, one of the girls got to play the heroic role of hiding the Jews. But the teacher let the scenario go until the Nazis hauled all the Jews out of her house at which point we all clapped. So what message did the Nazi kids get: they won (got all the Jews) and the parents all clapped for them.

    The camp scene ended with the Nazi doctor cutting off my son’s finger. Parents all clapped, what message did the kid get?

    Then the one possibly hopeful scene of the liberation of the camp ended with all the Jews dying, applause.

    And I didn’t even bring up the poor kid who was assigned to play the Capo (the Jew who had to beat all the other Jews.) This poor kid (14 or 15) was visibly shaken during his speech, when he had to defend his actions of abusing all the other Jews. He then was assigned the camp scenario but just sort of stood there with his club deer-in-the-headlights. But when the camp director saw that my son had freed all the Jews he shouted for the Capo to beat them and he dutifully went over to them and pantomimed swinging his club. Applause.

    Comment by Steve Fleming — June 26, 2011 @ 10:14 am

  13. I can understand being appalled, because the whole scene does sound very comical and the subject matter clearly isn’t. But I have to say that I kind of like the idea of the improve workshop.

    As an Israeli and a grandson of Holocaust survivors (and victims), I had to study about the subject from a very young age, and at least once a year in school.

    From what I recall, studying the regular curriculum, which included Anne frank’s diary and some other “kid-friendly” texts (if there are any), was never something that I and most kids could relate to. For most kids, any history class is boring, and they forget quickly. Only when teachers introduced more creative ideas ? including enacting the Holocaust, though not improv ? did the subject really provoked thought, especially from kids whose families didn’t originate from Europe (and so had no personal connection with the subject.)

    So maybe the workshop wasn’t such a bad idea. Just a thought.

    Comment by Nathaniel — June 26, 2011 @ 1:03 pm

  14. Thanks for the perspective, Nathaniel. That helps me understand. I think we may have a clash of worldviews here. Like I said the men involved (not Jewish) seemed very uncomfortable and eventually left, while the woman (Jewish), stuck around and seemed quite content. I found her inexplicable. However, if for Jews, the Holocaust is a major part of the curriculum from a young age, then it makes sense to teach it well (acting, improvisation). But that’s not the experience of American kids (as far as I’m aware). This is how I remember my education. The Holocaust wasn’t discussed much in elementary school. It was sort of built up to. In elementary school they would talk about civil rights and Martin Luther King Jr. Then in Junior High, in English class, they went over the Holocaust in the context of the need to tolerance and kindness. My classes spared a lot of details. We of course had learned the basics from other sources, but again, it was not a major part of the curriculum. So to have these young kids totally immersed in all the details was very foreign to me.

    Comment by Steve Fleming — June 26, 2011 @ 5:49 pm

  15. I am very amazed that he experiment (or whatever it was) took place. There are two very famous sociological experiments that caused quite a bit of uproar and those involveed college students and adults.

    The first was the Zimbardo experiment where Philip Zimbardo and his associates at Stanford sert up a mock prison with some subjects made guards and others prisoners. It had to be stopped after 6 days because of the harm and abuse it generated.

    The second was the Milgram Experiment (sometimes called the Eichmann Experiment). To summarize it quickly. One volunteer was made “teacher” and another supposed volunteer was made the “learner.”
    The idea was that if a learner missed a question, he would get an electric shock given by the teacher. The more he missed, the higher the voltage. If the teacher started to question what was happening, the doctor or researcher would tell him to continue (even saying you would not be held responsible). The learner, an actor would of course up his reactions accordingly: complaing, yelling, talk about a heart condition, and so on. It was expected that few would go to the final shock of 450 volts, but in the first experiment 26 of 40 went that far. Well, it has been replicated many times and the results were always very close (yes, the women seem just as willing to give the 450 volts as the men).

    The idea is that you can see under authority we are capable of almost anything. However, Milgram has been attacked for the possible psychological harm to the “teacher.”

    Almost every social science teacher knows of these experiments and the dangers. I am amazed that this happened with people so young.

    Teaching 12th graders in Government and Sociology I would carefully set up showing the film of the Milgrim Experiment and for many classes show the movie “The Wave” instead ,which accomplished the same thing

    Comment by Stan Beale — June 26, 2011 @ 9:49 pm

  16. Wow. Very interesting. When I was around that age, I read A LOT of books on the topic (all I could find in the library for my age-level), but acting it out just seems more disturbing than reading and learning!! Um, I’m sure it will be something they’ll NEVER forget!!!

    Comment by Emily — June 26, 2011 @ 11:05 pm

  17. I guess you have a good point, Steve. Maybe when the improv workshop comes after years of education, history classes and depressing museum visits, then having an improv session could be slightly more appropriate.

    Comment by Nathaniel — June 27, 2011 @ 3:05 am

  18. I can think of other ways of involving this age group of kids in acting related to WWII and the Holocaust that would have not seemed so appalling, such as a readers theater, with excerpts from Elie Weisel, Anne Frank, and others, perhaps. But the adults in charge seemed to be missing the point themselves, if they couldn’t think of ending a scene and inviting applause only when the bad guys won out. Improv for this topic seems to me to be highly questionable. I applaud your son for his choices in this.

    Comment by kevinf — June 27, 2011 @ 11:56 am

  19. Here’s a few more details. I asked my daughter (10) if she had known anything about the Holocaust prior to this camp.

    “Nothing,” she said. “I had heard of Hitler and the Nazis, but I didn’t know what they did.”

    I then asked her if any of the kids were bothered by what they learned. “Casey (my son) and the two older kids were really bothered by the roles they were assigned but they were the only ones. The rest of the kids were happy with their assignments. The kid who was assigned to play the camp doctor was the most excited when he found out that he got to pick who lived and who died.”

    Okay, that seems like a major red flag!

    Again, the historian who was in charge of teaching the content said that this was a project he had done with his college students. He said he was unsure what to tell the kids but he apparently had been quite detailed. He looked quite unnerved about the results and left before it was over.

    So this whole thing was a series of errors. Although the intent was to learn history and acting and not to do a psychological experiment, it turned into one. We all acquiesced to trusted adults while the awful thing unfolded. It was kind of interesting though, and Casey would not have been able to have played the hero if the other kids had not played their roles so assiduously. Again, I can only imagine what the parents of those kids thought.

    Comment by Steve Fleming — June 27, 2011 @ 12:14 pm

  20. I wish you knew the parents of the camp doctor well enough to talk to them about this — I’d pay to hear that part of the story.

    It will be interesting for you to watch your son as he encounters the Holocaust in future school settings, or perhaps schoolyard bullying or other age-realistic injustices, to know whether this acting experience has any effect on how he acts in those situations. In any case, his personal strength in bucking the trend as well as his discomfort with the role speaks highly for him

    Comment by Ardis E. Parshall — June 27, 2011 @ 12:30 pm

  21. I’m interested to know that as well, Ardis. We know people involved with the summer program and we’ll be working with them to make sure everyone is informed. I’ll be interested to find out more.

    My son is a very good kid and it was doubly poignant that this performance occurred the day before he turned 12. I like to think he showed he’s ready for priesthood ordination.

    Comment by Steve Fleming — June 27, 2011 @ 4:06 pm

  22. After reading your comment about the lovely camp doctor, I have to say I now understand that maybe the imrpov part was a bit too much. Although I have to admit I’d pay to watch another improve session if they ever try it again.

    Comment by Nathaniel — June 27, 2011 @ 6:00 pm

  23. I agree this was a bad play for these kids to try to do. The idea started out good, but the possible bad outcome should have been forseen.
    Ardis has some good ideas. But do we really want to do plays about war or the Holocaust were no one gets hurt?

    Comment by Bob — June 29, 2011 @ 9:56 am


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