What would you do? Muskegon County students learn about Holocaust and themselves

Megan Hart | MLive.comMontague High School students complete an activity that requires them to decide how responsible certain ordinary people in Nazi Germany were for the events of the Holocaust. The people in the outermost ring were assigned no responsibility, and those in the middle were considered very responsible.

Three would have collaborated with the Nazis. Two would have resisted. And about 30 more just didn’t know.

About three dozen West Michigan high school students gathered at Muskegon Community College on Monday to explore the causes of the Shoah (the Hebrew word for Holocaust) and the moral responsibility of ordinary people who didn’t resist the Nazis.

At the end of the day’s workshop, they were asked to anonymously answer several questions by placing sticky notes on large pieces of paper on the wall. One asked how they could know what they would have done if they had lived under the Nazis.

Muskegon Heights High School junior Tre’von Kitchen said he doesn’t know what he would have done if he had been alive during the Shoah – or if it would have changed anything if he had found the courage to resist.

“It takes a lot of people to build it up, just one to mess it up,” he said.

Fruitport High School world history teacher Sarah Woycehoski, who led some of the discussions, said history books often put too much emphasis on Adolf Hitler’s hatred for the Jews and ignore other factors that contributed to millions of civilian deaths.

Woycehoski compared the question of who was responsible for the Holocaust to the less-serious issue of the New Orleans Saints allegedly paying players to hit the opposing team harder than they usually would.

“Is it the head coach’s fault? Is it the defensive coordinator’s fault? Is it the owners’ fault? Is it the NFL’s fault? Is it the fan’s fault because we love the violence of football? Is it the players’ themselves fault?” she asked.

The students were asked to place descriptions of ordinary citizens in Nazi Germany on a bullseye, with those on the outside edges not responsible and those in the center very responsible for the Holocaust.

Montague High School junior Richie Webster argued people who refused to hide Jews weren’t responsible for what happened to them.

“I would say they’re not responsible because they’re just trying to defend themselves,” he said.

Montague junior Krista Ferrier disagreed.

“You’re like, it’s OK to save my life if other people die,” she said.

The Shelby High School group wrote Hitler’s name on another piece of paper and taped in directly in the center of the bullseye. They also put an industrialist who made profits by selling poison gas near the center.

“He didn’t have to make it,” senior Kennedy Stuborg said.

Shelby High School senior Maddy Brozek said those who took a loyalty oath to Hitler weren’t responsible for his policies.

“Didn’t you just grow up saying the Pledge of Allegiance?” she said. “I still don’t know what it means.”

Only one group, from Muskegon Heights High School, said no one was without any responsibility for what happened.

“We figured that everyone that was mentioned had to share some responsibility,” junior Damiah Tucker said. “They turned their heads and that’s still responsibility.”

Maurice Rafowicz

The students also learned about the history of anti-Semitism in Europe, watched part of a British documentary interviewing non-Jewish Germans who lived under the Nazi regime and got the chance to ask questions of Shoah survivor Maurice Rafowicz, who was only 4 when his parents and two siblings were taken from their Paris home to Auschwitz. Rafowicz escaped because he was in a hospital with diphtheria.

“You are the future of America and you have to tell your children what happened at this time,” Rafowicz said. “It’s very hard for me to tell you, but I must tell you.”

It may be disconcerting to think of ordinary human beings ignoring or participating in crimes against humanity, Woycehoski said, but the hope is to show students how individual choices influenced larger events, and to empower them to speak out when necessary.

“It seems much easier to actively hate than actively love,” she said.

Muskegon Heights High School English teacher Jennifer Fisher said she thought the presentation was especially helpful for her students, because they were more likely to have to make a moral choice about whether to ignore violence in their neighborhoods than the other students present.

“When you start thinking about these things I think it will change your behavior,” she said.