Weisel's Night

Holocaust units are all the rage. And for good reason. Elie Weisel's Night is another in a long train of literary pieces that grants us a firsthand account of what it was to belong to be Jewish during the height of the Third Reich's power. What I think would be a worthwhile take on this book is to toss it into a mix with other heavy World War Two books and create a unit centered around lit circles, alongside the quintessential Diary of Anne Frank, Man's Search for Meaning, Number the Stars, Rena's Promise, and countless others. The possibilities here are endless.

We find ourselves in a strange time where the Holocaust no longer sits in living memory. The last survivors, the last people to experience the atrocities of the Second World War, are all dying, and with them dies the Holocaust as a part of living memory. It may fade into historical obscurity unless we keep the discussion alive and going and actively try to learn from our mistakes, and ensure that no one forgets.

Holocaust units aren't easy. For anyone. They're shocking and heartwrenching and real. For students to truly comprehend and appreciate the gravity of what happened and the pertinence of the voices that speak to us from the late 1930s and early 1940s, they need to be of mature enough mind to handle that kind of weight and take it seriously. Personally I wouldn't teach this to any students younger than 8th grade. And probably honors, at that.

Something my mentor teacher is doing right now with her Holocaust unit is that she had the students create butterflies that represent individual people, with written hopes, dreams, interests, etc. And as they read journal entries and people die in the concentration camps, butterflies are taken down forever. It's a powerful metaphor and really drives the point home for these students. Something similar to that could be reappropriated for use with Night.