Collaboration Destination: Mr. Kulowiec's & Mr. McCusker's History Classes
I feel that not one person can be responsible for the Holocaust. Everyone together made it happen. Hitler for organizing it, Nazis for enforcing it, and the common people in Germany for not stopping it. Blaming the Holocaust on just one person or group of people is like blaming just one person or group of people for global warming, it just does not make sense. The people in Germany did not try to stop the killings so it seems like they did not really care what was happening. If the people really did care they would...
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I feel that the people who are most responsible for the holocaust are the German who brought and monitored the Jewish people. Because none of it would of happened if these people had not obeyed there orders. Also anybody who showed public support for the Nazis and gave them power is also at fault because with that many people supporting you no one will resist. Sent from my iPhone
Unfortunatly I was unable to participate in the skype call, but the day before my classmates and I were able to discuss our points and views on the responsibilties of the Holocaust. One that we had the biggest controversy with was number 4. In my oppinion the doctor should be very responsible because he knew what he was doing and was able to say no. Although it may have cost him his job, he was taking away a very important aspect in a persons life. Whether the person is mentally incompetent or competent they should...
i thought doing the skype calls with other teenagers was a good opportunity to see what other people think on the topic of the holocaust. It showed that even the ones that sat around and watched countless people be beaten,laughed at,dishonored, abhorred, and treated worse than animals are to be blamed for the murder of countless people.They became part of an un human act full of destruction and lies of a leader that sought to be once again a powerful nation. Some knew, heard, and even witnessed what the Nazi were...
The Holocaust assignment was very enlightening and really made us think about people and their situations and if they really had a a lot of responsibility to what happened in 1933 and 1945. The hardest person to assess was "A worker in a plant making Zyklon B gas". I originally thought this person was very responsible because if his sales in Zyklon B was increasing he would have did some research to find out why sales were increasing. After meeting with my group, we decided to rank them not responsible because at...
Even though I was not there for the Skype call, the whole project seemed very futuristic and new. I have never done one but I am very excited about them in the future. As far for who I think is to blame for the Holocaust, I think that anyone who was involved in it in any type of way are to blame. The manufacturers I think are only guilty if they fully understood what the gas was used for. Same goes for the workers in those factories, if they knew fully what it was used for, then yes they are to blame, otherwise no...
I don't think that one person or group can souly be blammed for the Holocaust. One of the numbers that I thought was difficult to decide was number 11. This number asked how responsible the people were who joined the Nazis in the 1930's. I thought this one was difficult because you don't know the individual people's stories. You couldn't know their exact motives. Its hard to know if they knew what they were getting themselves into and if they knew what they would be doing or if they could leave if they wanted to...
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Well I think that doing the Skype calls and debating with other teenagers to get different views on the holocaust was great. Seeing how each person views who was and wasn’t responsible for the holocaust is interesting. But in my opinion everyone on that list played some role in the tragedy of the holocaust. From Hitler himself, to the parents who let their children willingly participate in Hitler’s meetings. The easiest and ultimately most responsible people are the ones who sat back and kept killing when they knew...
In addition to my following post, I was nice to hear all the different opinons of the kids in the skype chat. It made you think and consider the options of other people's ideas. I like the skype chat and think it will work great in the following semesters. It suprised me that people said that they should give a share amount of responsibility to America, we were already in a Depression, which made it difficult for Americans just to surivive on there own, and if we allowed the Jews to come in freely, then America would...
Personally, I didn't see the point of this. Yes, the skpe chatting was a very new and interesting thing but I feel like the subject of debate could have been better. It wasnt much of a debate at all because you can't blame just one person. Clearly the world is at fault for the Holocaust. Everyone, no individual person. It was Hitler's ideas, but who did he model himself after? Charlamagne was one of them, he was a man whom we still talk about today and admire his greatness. We can't blame any one person...
This assignment was specifically difficult because it was so hard to judge whether some people actually had more of a difference or less of a difference in what happened in the holocaust. Even if someone did make more of a difference than someone else, was it really their fault? Did they even know they could make a difference, or were they manipulated by everyone around them to the point where they barely knew what was happening? In the end i don't believe one man was responsible for all of the things that happened...
I thought that this assignment about assessing different people's responsibility was a good assignment. It was also very interesting to get other perspective from different people. The people that I either gave a 1 or a 2, because I thought they were not very responsible, were the ones who did not follow Hitler or do anything about the holocaust. The people that I found more responsible, getting a 3 or a 4 on the responsibility rating, were the people who physically ran the concentration camps and the people who...
i think the easiest to access were the people who joined the ss knowing what they do.i also believe that the one person for all of the holocaust was hitler he gave the command and inforced that jews were to be exicuted.if i were a relative of someone in the holocaust i would never forgive them for what they did just the inhuman actions that the nazis did towards the jews was to much and starting genocide was to much to start with in the first place.i dont blame the soldiers that HAD to kill the jews because on the...
I thought that of the five questions I had the most difficult to come up with a response to was number thirteen. This dealt with the citizen who allowed the laws to keep the jews excluded from social and economic life. The citizens who allowed this to happen had very little choice in what happened to the jews in their community, and if they rebelled against the laws then they would have been killed or put into concentration camps. For these reasons I said the people who allowed the laws were only slightly responsible...
In #18 it talks about the person who drove the trains filled with nazis to the camp. They had no control over jews being killed and could not rebel because they would most likely be killed and replaced very easily. However that does not mean they had no part in the Jews being brought over and killed because they were volunteer nazis meaning that they could have had nothing to do with it. So these members were not one of the most important but they were not completely innocent either
I thought the debate was a great way for us to get another classes view of the Holocaust. It made me look at the points in a different way. I personally think that not only one person was responsible for the Holocaust. i believe that may people were involved in the Holocaust which caused the overall outcome of the whole situation. I was in the group that was responsible for questions 6 through 10. our group was debating on whether to give number 7 a 4 or a 3. We decided that a 3 would be reasonable because the pope...
I found the doctor who participated in the sterilization of jews to be one of the most difficult ones to assess the responsibility. It showed that people that weren't even in the Nazi party could be responsible and that even though the doctor probably didn't want to do something this unethical he or she had to because what was the alternative, to not do it and probably get stripped of their doctors license which would leave them jobless. The now sterilized jews if I was one of them I would forgive the doctor because...
Personally i believe that one of the people with greater responsibility than other was the pope. The Nazi party was vigirously scared of the pope and if he had said something about the Nazis it could have changed the entire course of WWII and the Holocaust. I am not blaming the pope for the holocaust in anyway but he should have done something about it, and he wouldn't have to put to much effort into it, all he would have to do is say that the Nazis were bad and people would have rallied together against them.
We don’t often see things in the eyes of other and fill ourselves in their place. In this project trying to put ourselves in these peoples place and determine their responsibility for the holocaust was a difficult thing. My group, which I regretfully didn’t get the chance to voice my idea on, had # 17, the man who turned the lever to allow gas into the chambers. This is a hard to approach when you know they were merely following orders that they could be punished for not obeying and on the other hand it may have...
I think this was a really cool and new experience to do things. This debate brought out so many more ideas, and rssponces. It was cool to see people's opinions from a different state. Group 4 was talking about how the man who pulled the lever for the gas had a 2 on the level of responsibility. In my opinion, I think he was a 4 because every time he pulled that lever thousands of people died. He had every right to walk away, it was the right thing to do. Group 3 brought up the fact that if you're part of an organization...
One question that I struggled to think about was #3, a German industrialist who financially supported Hitler's rise to power and continued to support him verbally. I said he was responsible but not very responsible. I said this because yes his funding of Hitler brought Hitler to power but if he didn't fund Hitler then maybe Hitler woudn't have risen to power. But i also thought maybe he didn't realize the extent of what is going on. Also if he denied Hitler of his funding, Hitler could"ve killed him, his family and replace...
I think know one is fully responsible because they all had had a little piece in the holocaust. I think Hitler mainly influenced the Germans to round up and find the non- Aryan people. Also i think he is mainly responsible for the holocaust. The holocaust had a huge impact on the people that were involved and in history. The victims should not forgive the people involved because they still done it and they cant change anything about it. Also the people could of tried to stop or save the Jews.
Personally I found this project uniquely challenging. This project was allowing us, kids, decide who was rightfully responsible for crimes that the Germans might not of known they were even committing. To me it hard to decide what to rank them as, a 1, 2, 3, or 4, because as I thought more deeply into what these people were going through I started to think about how some of them didn't have much of a choice. For instance, number 24, the non- Jews who took over a store just abandoned by Jews. These people didn't harm...
I thought debated with another class in another state was really interesting. The other class mentioned new ideas and thoughts that I would never think about. It was cool to see someone elses perspective about the Holocaust and who they thaught was responsible for the Holocaust. My group was assigned numbers 26-30. As a group we thought that numer 27, a teacher who taught Nazi propoganda was the hardest to assess. One of the reasons we thought it was so hard to answer was because we didn't know if they were by...
Our group discussed numbers 6-10. I found number eight on the assessing and defining responsibility worksheet about the holocaust the hardest to understand. Number eight states “An industrialist who made enormous profits by producing Zyklon B gas,” this particular quote on the paper had me confused because the producer may not know where the gas is going and he may also have already been producing the gas for something other than killing the Jewish and anyone else who was sent to the concentration camps. Even though...
overall i thought that it was a good and fun thing to do becasue you werent just debating with the kids in your class you were debating with kids in the middle of the country. i had numbers 26-30 and me and emily choose to debate 30 which said The protestant clergyman who gave the Nazis lists if members of his congregation who were "non-Aryan". i gave it a three for pretty responsable because he gave the Nazis the list of people, in which the nazis went and found those poeple and brought them to the camps. while...
I was assigned discussion topics numbers 1-5. The topic I found most difficult to arrive at an answer for was number 4. The topic states "Ajudge who carried out Hitler's decrees for sterilization of the 'mentally incompetent' and internment of 'traitors'". I found it difficult to decide on this one because the judge was most likely a judge before Hitler came to power and with the depression going on in Germany at the time it was nearly impossible to find another job. If he didn't carry out this decree the judge...
After looking over the list of possible who may have been responsible for the holocaust, I have come up with two numbers. Number 7, the pope who made no public statement against Nazi policy. The pope over anyone else would be most apt to stop the holocaust. But the easiest of all to judge was number 14, A person who enthusiastically attended Hitler rallies. Why would you follow along with the things he was telling you? When all along the jews did nothing wrong. What if one of there family members had blonde hair...
I found this project interesting and helpful to my understanding of what the germans did in the holocaust. The topic that i found most interesting was the one where an industrailist makes huge profits by producing Zyklon B gas. For this topic on the sheet i gave this a rating of one which would mean that person or people are not responsible for what happened during the Holocaust. For the overall rating of other classmates was a three. I was shocked by that result because I feel like the industrialist knew what was...
Looking back on this skype chat debate with our massachusettes friends. I thought it was a lot of fun it definately helped to hear some opinions out of our class and school. I wish the screen could have been a little bigger and we could have had better connection. so we would not have to worry about losing them halfway through a sentence. I thought the question about the pope not saying anything was very controversial because someone with the popes power and influence could have said something to stop this from ever...
My group talked about questions 21-25. I particularly liked question 21 which asks about the little guy who went on with life as if the holocaust didn’t exist. I thought it was challenging to answer and it took a lot of thinking by my group to come up with the decision that they were responsible. When I first heard we were having a discussion about this I thought it was stupid because I didn’t see the point in it. Once it got started though I found it very intriguing and beneficial. It was interesting to listen to...
I don't think that one person is responsible for the Holocaust, but overall Hitler and other countries are the most to blame. Everyone involved in the Nazi party followed Hitler and gave him what he wanted, which lead to his powerful army. I think the U.S. and countries around Germany should've stepped up and tried to stop Hitler early on, before his army got to powerful. If people tried to stop him before he convinced everyone that the Jews should be punished for Germany's mistakes, then he wouldn't have a lot of...
For this project, my group did questions 26-30. The person on the list that was the hardest was number 30 and we said this because if the clergymen never gave out the lists of Jews then hundreds of people's lives would've been saved, but the clergymen didn't necesasarilly kill the Jews but assisted in a way. The easiest question to talk about was number 28, and I said this because at most times kids wern't that violent, and even though they joined Hitler Youth, that doesn't mean that they knew what was going on with...
To start off, I believe that people, such as Heinrich Himmler or Joseph Goebbels, are the easiest to assess a level of responsibility to because they were men who were high up in the structure of the Nazi political party. Himmler was head of Hitler's beloved SS and dealt with the concentration and extermination camps along with coordinating the deaths of six million Jews, 500,000 Gypsy people, and countless prisoners of war. Goebbels was the main force behind the propaganda in Nazi Germany, which gave Hitler...
I found it quite interesting how so many people had different opinions for those that were responsible or not during the holocaust. At first when Mr. McCusker proposed us with this assignment, I thought that everyone is going to have a similar thought on every number on the sheet. Wow. Turns out I was wrong because many new reasons popped up and formed a more interesting debate. It's like a fire of ideas started growing with more and ideas and opinions from the class. In my opinion, I think that those who are force...
I was not here for the debate, but i feel like everyone that respected Hitler or helped him out is responsible for all the horrible events that followed. For example, the workers that made Zyklon B gas, doctors who helped get rid of the jews, the pope that never made a public statement against the Nazi policy, and the police who rounded up the escaping jews. I think everyone was scared of Hitler and no matter what their beliefs were they followed Hitler just to save their own life. I thought they should have stuck...
This Skype discussion activity really helped me see that not one person can be blamed more than another person for what happened in the holocaust. There are certain leaders that I believe you can blame more than others but no matter what for other people it can be argued that was more or less their fault. This activity helped me see how many people were responsible and not just a few and how the levels of responsibility can vary depending on your personal opinions.
I sent this on Friday, but I'm not sure if it went through. From: SHANNON BOWMANSent: Friday, May 27, 2011 2:58 PMTo: holocaustresponsibility@posterous.comSubject: McCusker~2nd Period~Shannon Bowman I think that the person who was the most difficult to acess the level of responsibility was the Pope who made no public statement agaisnt the Nazi policy. One side could say that because the Pope was actaully helping the Jews in secret and encouraging people to help them, it was better that the Pope did not...
I thought that it was a good activity to compare all different people's levels of responsibility. Although many people were very responsible and many weren't very responsible at all, none of them were completely responsible. Hitler was the only one that is fully responsible for the holocaust. I did numbers 11 - 15 and the one that I found most interesting and difficult was number 13. I feel like a person that obeys the law shouldn't be held responsible, because they didn't necessarily have any say in the law, and...
The people that I believe to be the most difficult to blame is the pope that didn't go against this terrible time, people who excluded jews, a person who joined hitlers rallies, or a teacher teaching Nazi propaganda. The reason why I believe these people don't have any blame is because they all share one thing in common, they had no choice than to do what they were told and keep their mouhs shut about their personal opinion weather they thought the goings on was right or wrong because everyone knew Hitler would have...
The skype call with Mr. McCusker's class was a great way to see what other people's opinions about the topic was. Out of the five i had to discuss, the easiest one to rate was number one. This was probably because Himmler and Goebbels were in charge or the degradation and extermination of all Jewish people.The hardest in my opinion to rate is the puller of the lever of the gas chamber. It was hard for me to rate because it could either be ans SS guard, or it could be a Jewish prisoner that is forced to do it...
Mccusker-2nd period- Justin I think that the industrialist who made large profits by producing the gas was the worst of them all, it takes a person with no feeling to kill millions of people for money. He ruined many peoples lives and made them miserable so he can have more money to buy things of luxury. Money only has the power that we as people give it, but people actually have feelings hopes and dreams and that guy killed all those dreams and stopped them reaching their full potential to make a quick buck. In...
Although our group wasn't able to directly debate due to the time restrictions, I really like the idea of the Skype debate. If we were able to get a larger class to debate with, more time, and a better internet connection, I believe both classes could have gotten even more from the debate than we already have. The hardest people to evaluate was not the leaders, but the common people, such as the worker in the factory who made the zyklon B, possibly knowing what it was going to be used for.These were hard because...
One of the ones that my group disagreed a lot over was number 27, the teacher who taught Nazi propaganda. Personally, I believe that the teacher deserves a lower responsibility level for the holocaust than the students who absorbed the information as the whole truth and nothing but the truth. All of Germany’s curricula was changed when Hitler came to power and started asserting the superiority of his chosen people, the ones he mislabeled as “Aryan.” The teacher had absolutely no control over the curriculum, and therefore...
As me and my group started this handout i had a few disagreements with my group. first off they gave number 6, a 3, while i thought it should be a two. I really think that this one should be a two because they made something and knew what it was for and their product that they made was used to kill many Jews. So they were responsible. They were not very responsible because they they were forced to make the Zyklon B gas. If they stopped making it they would be threatened or even maybe killed. Another disagreement...
I thought the debate with the class from Massachusets. The one idea that I wanted to bring up when we were talking about the teachers is that if the teachers were removed, I believe that the Nazi ideas would carry on. Therefore I feel that the teacher who taught Nazi ideas would recieve a 1. It's like the Civil Rights Movement in the south. After Gandhi is dead his ideas carried on. That means the same would happen with Hitler. That is one final idea I wanted to get across. Otherwise I feel the debate was a quality...
Upon hearing of this project, I was honestly a little hesitant. The thought of debating over opinions of the amount of responsability of people apart of the Holocaust seemed like a waste of time. But hearing the other classes points really changed my mind in the end. Mr. Kuloweic really seemed to stress the ideas and intentions of the people being observed. This different perspective definitely shed light on the fact that there were real people like this, not just made up characters on a piece of paper. I somewhat...
I wasn't in class when the skype debate went on, so I'm going to discuss the topic on who was responsible for the mass murders and killings during the Holocaust. I don't think that any one person could truly be responsible for the Holocaust because it wasn't just one person who committed all of the horrific crimes. There wasn't just one person running the concentration camps or recruiting jewish and non-aryan races out of Germany and into Poland. It wasn't just one person who ultimately killed all of those people...
Of the 5 people that I was assigned to judge on their level's of responsibility I would say that "a person who voluntarily joined the Nazi party would be the most responsible. This person would knowingly commit to do the inhuman actions that occurred during Hitler's empowerment , and if not they would have the best chance to recognize what was happing and stop it. This person alone would not carry that much power however, all of the people that did the same would have a huge amount of power for...
In our group we had to answer questions 26-30. After looking over the rest of the questions throughout the worksheet I have come to the conclusion that these questions were the hardest to come to a final judgement. Being the fact that there are many factors that could come into play. About the discussion, I believe that the debate was extremely beneficial to the class being that we can get to see how the ideas from people in different locations compare and contrast to our ideas and beliefs. In all these statements...
Out of the five questions my group was assigned, I found number 22 hard to come to a conclusion with. By joining the S.S., you could risk everything from your family to your own life, and that is why I think answering number 22 was hard. It states, "The solder who carried out orders to roust Jews from their homes for evacuation and resettlement." I beleive that if the soldier voluntarily joined the S.S. to gather Jews, then they are given a higher rating for responsibility. If someone who was forced to join and had...
This debate made me think about how everyone has the responsibility to do something once they have the knowledge of the event. If you are aware of a horrific event going on, and you choose to do nothing about it, then you are just as responsible for the offense happening as the person who is doing the executing. Whether you are driving the train, or pulling the gas lever, or just sitting in your comfortable home pretending that everything is ok, you are responsible for having the knowledge to do something about the...
One question my group struggled to come to a final decision on was question #26. It asks you to decide how responsible a policeman who helped round up escaping jews was. Half of my group chose a three while the other half including myself chose a four. I believe now that it should be a three. While he was just doing his job, the responsibility still falls on him. This is because his actions were the reason why so many people were murdered. Had he chose humanity over Hitler, and maybe "lost" a few here and there...
For number 27, I came up with a 1, minimally responsible in the end because I felt that children are taught by their parents and learn from them how to live. For that, if a parent is telling a child to go to the Hitler Youth, the child assumes that that is what they are supposed to believe. On Friday, someone said something about a child having more sympathy, but I also think that at first, in the Hitler youth, they gradually taught the children, not just sprung the idea of genocide. But if the child didn't agree...
I found the opinion of #8, the industrialist that made profits off of manufacturing the gas, differed greatly between the two classes. Both viewpoints had logical reasoning to back them up, so i found it a believable opinion. However, I did not agree with Mr. Kuloweic's class opinion on the children forced into the ranks of the Hitler Youth. The Children did not understand what they were getting themselves into, and there was little they could do to oppose their parents. I cannot assess responsibility on a young...
Our Skype discussion on May 27th, 2011, was a critical debate over who among the people were responsible for the mass murder or linked to the mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust. Some of the ideas were shared by the World History classes, lead by Mr. McCusker of Fremd High School in Illinois, and Mr. Kulowiec of South Plymouth High School in Massachussetts. McCusker's class shared the idea of people who pulled the lever to activate the noxious gases in the chambers and how they were responsible over the deaths...
After this debate, one of the questions I was still struggling with a decision for was number 15: "A person who always respectfully gave the 'Heil Hitler' salute." In one case, I can see them as responsible because they encouraged Hitler and made him see he had supporters. On the other hand, though, Im sure a lot of people gave it just out of fear that if they didn't salute, the nazis would kill them and possibly their family. So Im not saying it was ok for the people who didn't support Hitler to pretend like they...
I was intersted in the idea that a person was just as responsible for what they did as what they didn't do. At first, I was having a hard time feeling that a driver of a train was "responsible" for the Holocaust; then I realized that if all of the "little" people had not tolerated what was going on, and did not perform their jobs, then the Holocaust wouldn't have happened. What I learned was that everyone who played even the smallest role in the Holocaust, or even kept quiet about what they knew was happening...
