Refugees and Rescuers: The Courage to Act

If you choose to teach this two-day lesson by itself, make sure that you’ve read the context section for Lesson 1 beforehand. Lesson 1 provides critical historical background information on the German Jewish refugee crisis and Americans’ responses to that crisis. Based on students’ prior historical knowledge, you may want to provide that information before they begin this lesson, or simply use it to answer questions that may arise.

In this lesson, students will independently read packets of primary sources detailing the experiences of Jewish refugees who tried to escape to the United States, as well as accounts of the American individuals or organizations that aided them. For students struggling with pacing, vocabulary, and comprehension, you might want to alter this activity. Rather than reading independently, students could work in heterogeneous pairings, with struggling readers coupled with more confident readers. In addition, you might choose to apply the Jigsaw strategy with the readings, giving each student an overview (Document 1 in each packet) and one or more readings from the packet. If you choose to go this route, you will need to plan in advance how you will assign readings, as each set contains six to nine documents.

The personal stories in this lesson provide an unflinching look at the experiences of Jewish refugees who sought to escape the Nazis by immigrating to the United States. While an in-depth examination of one refugee’s life deepens students’ engagement with this history, it also heightens the emotional intensity of the lesson. This is especially true for students who investigate the lives of Dr. Flora Hochsinger and Franz Goldberger, two Jewish refugees who were unsuccessful in their quest to flee to the United States and did not survive the Holocaust. That said, you should carefully consider each of these suggestions before engaging with this material with your students:

• Teachers know their students best. Preview each resource in this lesson before you share it with your students. Let students know in advance when they are about to encounter material that some may find upsetting.
• Briefly review the class contract with students before beginning the lesson. This will help to reinforce the norms you have established and reinforce the idea of the classroom as a safe space for students to voice concerns, questions, or emotions that may arise.

In this Socratic Seminar activity, students help one another understand the ideas, issues, and values of the unit through a group discussion format; it is collaborative in nature rather than a debate in which participants must take sides. Refer to the Socratic Seminar teaching strategy for guidance on implementing the Socratic Seminar in your classroom. During the seminar, you can root the discussion in the questions below or use them as a jumping-off point. Ask students to prepare answers to these discussion questions in advance of the seminar:

• In this unit, you explored how competing definitions of American identity, priorities, and values shaped American responses to the refugee crisis of the 1930s and 1940s. What does America mean to you? What parts of the unit reinforced your vision of America? What parts diverged from your vision? Where do you see these competing ideas about the meaning of America reflected in today’s public debates?
• This unit demonstrates that immigrating to the United States was not a simple or inexpensive process; it required securing many documents, including proof of identity, police certificates, medical clearances, tax documents, a ship ticket, and exit permits. What effect did that have on Americans’ motivation and willingness to help? How might it have shielded a wide range of people—from government officials to average citizens—from a sense of moral accountability?
• Based on his study of rescuers during the Holocaust, Professor Ervin Staub writes, “Goodness, like evil, often begins in small steps. Heroes evolve; they aren’t born.” What “small steps” did you notice in the actions of American rescuers? What resources, conditions, and qualities assist someone in taking moral action, sometimes at great personal risk?
• One of the key lessons of this unit is that multiple factors, including antisemitism, xenophobia, isolationism, and the Great Depression, limited American responses to the refugee crisis. Why is it necessary to confront this chapter in American history? How can it inform our understanding of contemporary debates about responsibilities to refugees?

For students who have not participated in a Socratic Seminar or find it difficult to phrase responses, you may want to allow them to use the Socratic Seminar Stems handout. This handout has response and questions stems which will allow them to respond to comments and questions from classmates in an authentic, appropriate manner and may increase participation.

The RAFT (Role, Audient, Format, Topic) writing assignment gives students the opportunity to choose the role and format that most appeals to them, while also providing teachers with uniform evaluation criteria: the use of primary and secondary historical evidence. The RAFT structure enables students to think about the major themes and lessons from the unit as a whole while also empowering them to apply their knowledge to a practical, contemporary context. When implementing the RAFT assessment in your class, be sure that you give students adequate time to read and understand their assignment and that you also explain the Rubric for RAFT Assessment and evaluation criteria.

Share with students the following instructions for each role:

Artist-in-residence: You’ve been commissioned to create a work of art for the entrance of a museum’s new exhibition on Americans and the Jewish refugee crisis of 1938–1941. The topic is completely unfamiliar to most museumgoers. To clarify your task, the museum has shared with you the following quote by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks:

History is information. Memory, by contrast, is part of identity. . . . Memory is the past as present, as it lives on in me. Survivors, witnesses, the descendants of those who lived this history, and all those who learn about it today face the question of how to remember the past and how that memory might shape our understanding of ourselves and our present world. ¹

Your artwork can take many forms (e.g., drawing, painting, graffiti stencil, Photoshop image), but it should inspire museumgoers to think about this history as more than mere “information.” The piece should prompt viewers to think about what it might look like to make this history (unknown to most Americans) part of their own identities as individuals and communities. As such, it should creatively represent what you believe are the key themes and contemporary lessons of this history, while also sparking museumgoers’ interest in the topic. The piece will be accompanied by a 300- to 500-word artist’s statement that describes the overall message and the artistic choices you made. Because many people will not know this history, the statement should provide some insight into how your artistic choices connect to important themes from the history of the refugee crisis of 1938–1941. You should also include at least one primary source or reference to a primary source, either in the artist’s statement or in the piece itself.

Vlogger: You are a vlogger with a large following of young people. You’ve recently studied the history of American action during the refugee crisis of 1938–1941, and you’ve been inspired to create a video explaining the topic to your followers. In a five- to seven-minute video, you’ll highlight some of the actions of American rescuers during this period and describe the lessons your followers can learn about taking action in their own lives. You should also be sure to spend time describing what motivated these individuals and organizations, as well as their most effective strategies. At the end of the video, you should spend some time discussing what young people can learn from these stories. For example, you might want to relate the many issues on Americans’ minds during this period to the challenges presented by social media and the 24-hour news cycle, and explain how young people can cut through the noise to inspire each other to act. Your video should reference what you learned by investigating primary sources from the period, and it should also provide some historical background information for people who are completely unfamiliar with the topic.

Media critic: You are an expert on American involvement in the Jewish refugee crisis of 1938–1941. You’ve seen many echoes of this history in the news lately, and you would like to write a letter to the editor of the New York Times introducing readers to this history while also connecting its lessons to contemporary events. You’ll select two to three major stories from the newspaper and write an 800- to 1,000-word letter to the editor explaining why the history of the refugee crisis sheds light on these news stories and why this history still matters today. When selecting your articles, you can choose stories that show direct similarities to the refugee crisis (e.g., coverage of a contemporary refugee crisis or persecution of a marginalized group), or you can think more abstractly (e.g., stories about divisions in American society or the persistence of “us” vs. “them” rhetoric). Your letter to the editor should also provide historical background on the refugee crisis of 1938–1941 and include primary source evidence to support your argument.

College activist: You are a student on a large university campus and belong to a group that is interested in humanitarian causes. Recently, you learned about universities in the late 1930s that were offering scholarships to refugee students in order to help them leave Europe. In many cases, the scholarships, such as Tom Doeppner’s at McPherson College, were completely funded by students. Your group has been trying to think of ways to help those in need, and you think that funding a scholarship for a refugee might be appealing to your peers. In your speech to the group, you will be asking them to contribute to and fundraise for a student-funded scholarship for a contemporary refugee. You should draw on historical precedent to make your argument, citing past debates over immigration, challenges faced by refugees seeking to immigrate, and the benefits of bringing refugees into the community. Be sure to include primary source evidence to support your argument.

• 1Jonathan Sacks, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’s Haggadah: Hebrew and English Text with New Essays and Commentary (New York: Continuum, 2006), 29.

Herta Griffel escaped Nazi-annexed Austria at seven years old, boarding a US-bound ship with nine other unaccompanied Jewish refugee children in 1940. As an extension to this lesson, you could ask students to investigate Griffel’s story through the documents in the handout Herta Griffel / German Jewish Children’s Aid Packet. You may wish to use the following questions to guide students’ analysis:

• Which document, photo, or artifact had the most impact on you? How does exploring this personal story help you better understand the actions taken by Jewish refugees in response to the threat posed by the Nazis? What does Herta Griffel’s journey to the United States teach you about the decisions individuals and families had to make in response to the threat posed by the Nazis?
• What do these documents reveal about the complexity of the US immigration process?
• (Optional question for students who’ve completed Lesson 2:) How does Griffel’s personal story deepen or shift your understanding of the Wagner-Rogers Bill debate that you studied in Lesson 2?

Displaying a timeline of World War II and the events of the Holocaust on the wall will provide for a fuller experience, as students can see how the narrative of the refugee they are studying fits into the complex layers of events. As a possible addition to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s “Timeline Activity” lesson, students could create a layer of the timeline that represents various turning points in the story of the refugee they are studying, then place the new cards on the timeline.

This video shows, in a video timeline format, the passage of ships carrying Jewish refugees from Europe to the United States between 1938 and 1941, as well as the atypical voyages of the MS St. Louis in 1939 and the SS Quanza in 1940. As an opening or closing activity, it provides context for either this lesson or Day 1 of Lesson 2.