April is Holocaust remembrance month, and as part of our study of the history of the 20th century, we have been watching some films and reading some personal stories describing the horrible things that happened during the Nazi era in Germany. Working together with Ms. Holter’s class, we learned how to write “found poems” where you take ideas and concepts and words from written pieces and turn them into poems expressing the meaning in a very different, and more deep way. We began with turning the Gazette’s editorial on bullying into a found poem first, because we recognized the similarities between allowing bullying and not standing up for people persecuted by the Nazis. Bullying is still bullying no  matter who does it or on what scale it happens. We thank the Gazette and Facing History and Ourselves Institute for providing us with the material we used to make our poems.

                             — Elaine Cawley Weintraub’s sophomore U.S. History class

A Community Problem

Cynicism

Single, disturbing violent incident

One student suspended

Too fearful to return

Express the anxieties they feel

Influence the youth around us.

How to behave with empathy and civility

While the adults around them are constantly raging

Teasing, snide, undermining abuse nasty and knowing.

Bad feeling but little laughter

Children

Kind and civil

Even when they are not like you

Anger is contagious.

Teach our children to divide and fight.

Motivating the bully.

Pure meanness

Issues of skin color, birthplace and wealth

Anxiety of our lives goes up

Lose the compassion and sense of people

(Based on Vineyard Gazette editorial April 23, 2010)

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Hitler Must Know What He Is Doing

By Tyler Araujo > and Denver Maciel>

Willingness to share,

The cold air made her feel more alive

To share her clothing and her food,

Ruth was a dedicated Nazi,

She was always willing,

Some of us

How could she possibly have friends?

Of course, They don’t mean you

Hitler wants to remove from influ ence,

Germans were no longer to associate with “Non-Aryans”

Apologized to those of us,

Hitler must know

What he is doing,

I’ll follow orders.

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Race Laws

By Andrew Randall, Warren Gowell >and Rafael Maciel>

The Nuremberg Race Laws

No voting no rights

No marrying German or related blood

Caught in the grip of Nazi terror

Anti-Jewish attacks

Jews unwelcome

Persecution

Aryanizing Jewish business

Jewish workers dismissed

Required to carry identity cards

Israel for males, Sara for females

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The People Respond

By Courtney Mussell, >Shelby Ferry > and Olivia Cimeno>

Marta Appel

Found Nuremberg Laws affected even old friendships.

Getting together.

Stopped attending.

Embarrass her non-Jewish friends.

I met one of my old teachers with tears in her eyes.

Convince me.

Take away my doubts.

Hard decision, not slept.

Trouble.

My attendance.

Afraid for myself.

Watch them.

Slightest expression of embarrassment.

Could not deceive me, afraid to talk to me?

Not necessary.

Read their eyes.

Listen.

Changes in their voices.

Empty table, clearest language.

Lady phoned that morning not to reserve.

I could not blame them.

Risk losing a position.

Prove to me,

We still had friends in Germany.

Going Away

By Kevin Walsh > and John Marcal>

Turning on their neighbors

Disturbing incident

Drive to Austria

Spend the night

Filled with an excited

Happy crowd

Toymakers festival

Pleasant fellow

The tips of his mustache quivered

I walked out and joined

That was the end

Gave me that

A hospital for the insane

Enemies of the State

By Cal Fore, Kunal Data >

and Jeremy Maciel>

Targets of Nazi hatred

Persecuted

Enemies of the state

Terror

Racial inferiors

Roma and Sinti

Jews

Prejudice

Victims

Under Nazis

Special camps

Jehovah’s Witnesses

Victimized

Because of their beliefs

Concentration camps

Unemployment

But nevertheless they continued

To meet

To preach

Homosexuals

Victimized by Nazis

Because of “behavior”

“Abnormal”

“Unmanly”

Raids

Teenagers

Children

Arrests

Imprisoned

Defining the Outsider

By Natalie Poole > and Jessie Chandler>

The Nazis,

Forty-two anti-Jewish measures,

Designed to protect.

Contamination,

Stripped Jews of citizenship,

Isolated them.

The purity,

The German people,

Are hereby forbidden.

Marriages are void.

Female citizens,

Seen as domestic help.

One question,

Who is a Jew?

Jewish parents, Jewish grandparents,

The children,

Isolation,

Forbidding any mixing of races.

A Jew,

Is no longer a matter of self-definition.

Isolation

By Ana Nascimento, Livia Sampaio> and Wendy Wen>>

After the night of Long Knives, the Nazis increased their

Attacks on gay men

Many Germans applauded

Behavior that “diminishes the health of the state:”

During Weimar Republic

Hitler took over that policy changed

A man recalled

A wave of arrests of homosexuals began

With whom I had a relationship since I was 23.

The Gestapo took him away

Pointless to inquire where he might be.

His home was searched, books were taken away, note and address

Books were confiscated.

Questions were asked among the neighbors.

Fascists could not prove anything against him either.

The effects of his arrest were terrifying

Hair shorn off.

Totally confused, no longer what he was before.

I had to break off all relations with my friend

Because we did not want to put ourselves in danger.

We lived like animals in a wild game park.

Always sensing the hunters.

•

Missed Calling

By Chris Parsons > and Drew Moreis>

Nazis passed

Anti-Jewish laws

Jewish Blood

Two stripped Jews

Purity

Unanimously passed

Marriages between Jews and non-Jews

Hereby forbidden

Extramarital intercourse forbidden

Law raised questions

Nazis answered those questions

Jewish miscalling

Nazis passed

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Model For Mass Murder

By Meghan McHugh >

and Korinne Altieri>

Wartime

The best time for the elimination

Germans

Did not measure up to their concept

Useless to society

Unworthy of life

Targeted for murder

The Nazis

Handicapped or mentally ill

Should be Killed

Gas Chambers

Infants and small children

Injected

Starvation

Secret throughout the war

Model for mass murder

Jews, gypsies and others.

•

Refusal to Compromise

By Madison Hughes> and Alex Mark>

High School student

Begun to study

I couldn’t take any exam

Get involved

It was obvious to me

Wouldn’t last

I’ll continue

I worked for very little

Jewish attorney

I kept myself away

Show our unwillingness

They distributed questionnaires

Ancestors

We can’t go along with this

Throw the questionnaires away