Gallery

Pre-War Sighet Visual Essay

Enrich your reading of Night with photos depicting daily life in Elie Wiesel's hometown.

Subject

History

Language

English — US

Updated

August 2, 2016

The Holocaust

Save

Enrich your reading of Night with photos depicting daily life in Elie Wiesel's hometown.

Students sitting at a traditional Jewish religious school, or kheyder, in 1920s Sighet.

Credit:

YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

A group photo in front of Sighet’s synagogue, ca. 1930–1939.

Credit:

Romanian Jews standing in front of a Synagogue before World War 2.

Leaders of the Jewish community in Sighet, including Mr. Hershkovich, Mr. Klein, Mr. Yacobovich, and Mr. Jahan, ca. 1928–1930.

Credit:

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Morris Spitzer

Portrait of Yosef Meir Weiss, the Spinka rebbe from Sighet, 1906.

Credit:

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Morris Spitzer

The members of Sighet Soccer Club pose for a group photo.

Credit:

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Morris Spitzer

Students in a weaving workshop at a yeshiva, or rabbinical academy, in Sighet before the war.

Credit:

From the Archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York

An image of the main market square in the Transylvanian town of Sighet, Romania, taken before World War II.

Credit:

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Mitchell Eisen

A Jewish family, possibly in Sighet, taken before the beginning of World War II, ca. 1930–1940.

Credit:

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Solange Dratler Lebowitz

Unit

Explore the motives, pressures, and fears that shaped Americans’ responses to Nazism and the humanitarian refugee crisis it provoked during the 1930s and 1940s.

A crowd of American men and women hold signs protesting Nazi Germany's actions.

Lesson

Students examine the steps the Nazis took to replace democracy with dictatorship and draw conclusions about the values and institutions that make democracy possible.

Germans look on as the Reichstag building burns on February 27, 1933.

Lesson

Students prepare for their study of the Holocaust by reflecting on the ways in which memory is an integral part of Jewish identity.

Lesson

Students are introduced to the enormity of the crimes committed during the Holocaust and look closely at stories of a few individuals who were targeted by Nazi brutality.

A crowd of women and children, some with Stars of David patches on their clothing.

Lesson

Students deepen their examination of human behaviour during the Holocaust by analysing and discussing the range of choices available to individuals, groups, and nations.

Hans Scholl, Sophie Scholl, and Christoph Probst in June 1942.

Lesson

Students both respond to and design Holocaust memorials as they consider the impact that memorials and monuments have on the way we think about history.

Lesson

Students grapple with the meaning of justice and the purpose of trials as they learn how the Allies responded to the atrocities of Nazi Germany.

Criminal proceedings before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg from 20.11.1945 to 1.10.1946 against leading persons prosecuted for war crimes, crimes against the peace and against the humanity.

Lesson

Students learn about the violent pogroms of Kristallnacht by watching a short documentary and then reflecting on eyewitness testimonies.

Image showing the destruction resulting from Kristallnacht.

Lesson

Students continue to explore the question “Who am I?” by examining the concept of dual or multiple identities and reflecting on their own identities as Jews.

Lesson

Students examine the Nazi ideology of “race and space” and the role it played in Germany’s aggression toward other nations, groups, and individuals.

Hitler Youth and League of German Girls in Tianjin, China

Lesson

Students examine how choices made by individuals and groups contributed to the rise of the Nazi Party in the 1920s and 1930s.

The Parade of the Political Administrators in Nuremberg, Germany.

Lesson

Students explore the long history of discrimination against Jews and come to understand how anti-Judaism was transformed into antisemitism in the nineteenth century.

Woodcut of a group of men in a pit being set on fire.

More Like This Teaching Resources Learning & Events

Most teachers are willing to tackle the difficult topics, but we need the tools.

— Gabriela Calderon-Espinal, Bay Shore, NY

Search

Search

Pre-War Sighet Visual Essay

Subject

Language

Updated