A Different Perspective

Over the last few months my husband and I have watched a several gut-wrenching, sad movies about a horrible time in history. If I were to summon all of the negative adjectives that I could think of, it just wouldn't be enough to account for this time- the Holocaust.

As a teacher, I am privileged with teaching The Diary of Anne Frank. This book is a wonderful tool to teach students about this time period. Other books such as The Devil's Arithmetic and Night are also great pieces of literature, though Night and Anne's Diary are the true stories. When teaching, it is great to see students connect and see how in Anne's case, she was a struggling teenager like them, but unique in her struggle to grow up because of her place in the world and in history. So much can be said, so perhaps I will share more as I teach through the drama version and students have revelations.

Back to the movies though: Valkyrie, Schindler's List, and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas are all movies I recommend, though at various levels. Valkyrie , which is based on a true story, shows the uprisings within the military of citizens loyal to Germany, not Hitler's totalitarian regime. While not showing the Jewish horrors, it does show some of what Hitler's fear-driven rule was like. Next, Schindler's List, however graphic, perhaps best portrays the atrocities and horrors that the Jews lived and died through. Finally, this weekend we watched The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. It offers a totally different perspective- that of a child. Though fictional, one can imagine the two boys from two worlds meeting, and becoming friends in childhood innocence.

I won't ruin the movie for you if you haven't seen it, and I highly recommend it. Perhaps later I will write more; for now I am processing. With it's PG13 rating, I'll have to send a note home to parents if I want to show a clip from it in class- which I think could be very beneficial. I wouldn't use class time to watch the others, though I might recommend them for parents to watch with their students to give students a background. In junior high, it's hard to escape your own world of glorious freedom and imaging a world so trapped in fear and hate. I do realize that these are movies, and with that comes the director's license to portray things as they will, but these movies seem right-on target to me.

Does anyone disagree with me? Or have another Holocaust movie to recommend?