Personal Narratives in Historical Context
I
Lead-in. Discuss the
questions in pairs (3 minutes). Share your ideas with the class
1. If
you wanted to learn more about a specific period of time or event in human
history what sources (e.g. books, maps, etc.) or media (e.g. newspapers, TV)
would you use?
2. If
you wanted to know not only facts, but feelings of the people who lived at that
time, what sources or media could help you?
II
Historical context. Look
at the photos below and answer the questions:
a)
What time
period do the photos show?
b)
What can you
see in the photos? What are the people doing? How do the people in the photos
feel?
c)
How do the photos make you feel?
III
Vocabulary focus.
1.
|
Jew
|
A.
|
|
2.
|
Nazi
|
B.
|
a bomb
|
3.
|
Brownshirt
|
C.
|
a path through a countryside,
mountain, or forest area
|
4.
|
burst
in
|
D.
|
a situation
when people don’t have the basic things for comfortable life
|
5.
|
massacre
|
E.
|
dried yellow stems of wheat
|
6.
|
trail
|
F.
|
to accept an
unpleasant situation
|
7.
|
horrified
|
G.
|
a short sudden attack
|
8.
|
barn
|
H.
|
|
9.
|
straw
|
I.
|
extremely
bright making it difficult to see
|
10.
|
raid
|
J.
|
a large building on a farm for
animals or hay (dried grass)
|
11.
|
shell
|
K.
|
|
12.
|
suspicion
|
L.
|
to die
|
13.
|
blinding
|
M.
|
a member of a Nazi militia
|
14.
|
pass away
|
N.
|
a
feeling that something bad is likely to happen
|
15.
|
put up
with
|
O.
|
a member of the National Socialist
Party, led by Adolf Hitler
|
16.
|
deprivation
|
P.
|
to enter a room or building suddenly and without warning
|
IV
Watch the video
part 1: Childhood and choose the correct answers to complete the sentences.
1.
Shelly
was born in the city of _________.
A Kyiv B
Miatyn C Rovno
2.
Shelly’s
father was a ________ and her mother had a grocery store.
A businessman B teacher C doctor
3.
Shelly’s
grandfather ________ her: she could do
whatever she wanted: kick the dishes and dance on the table.
A was very strict with B
punished C spoiled
4.
Raya
lived in a village called ________ which was five or six kilometres from Rovno.
A
Sosenki B Miatyn C Korets
5.
Raya
had ________ friends.
A
no B a lot of C very
few
V
Watch the video
part 2: War comes to Rivne and put the sentences in the correct order.
A.
So they threw
us out of the room, and they squeezed me in between a wall and a kitchen table.
B.
The Germans
came into our town and immediately they started passing laws against – what
Jews could and couldn’t do.
C.
The next thing
I remember is that these men burst in, they locked the door and they wouldn’t
let us leave that room and they proceeded to beat my uncle.
D.
My cousin
Raya and I would play outside in the yard and we were told that if we saw the
Nazis, they were called Brownshirts, coming down the street, to come in and
tell the adults.
E.
All the men
ran back to the hiding place, the women cleaned up but my uncle, Raya’s father,
remained.
F.
The next
thing that happened is that my mother got us to the village of Miatyn.
G.
The only
person that survived was my father, he was taken to Russia in the army.
H.
This was
after they had the massacre in Rovno and they killed 17500 Jews in three days
and my entire family was killed in that massacre: my grandfather, my uncles, my
aunts and my cousins.
I.
And one of
the laws was that all the men had to report for relocation work duty.
J.
All the men
would spend the day there hiding and then they’d come out for the midday meal.
K.
One day we
were playing out there and we saw a jeep with four men, in the Brownshirt
uniforms, stopping at our neighbors, we ran in and told the adults.
L.
My
grandfather had a suspicion that this was not really where they were taking the
men, so he created a hiding place for all the men.
VI
Watch part of the video and mark the following statements as True or False.
1.
Raya
wanted to go back to the city.
2.
Raya’s
father gave his passport to his wife and went back to the city.
3.
Raya
never saw her father again.
4.
Raya
and her mother went through the woods to the village.
5.
When
Raya’s mother went to the city the next day she found all her family there.
6.
All
the people who lived in the village of Sosenki were killed.
7.
All
members of Raya’s family were killed, only she, Shelly and their mothers
survived.
VII
Watch of the video and
fill in the gaps with the words from the list. There are some words you don’t
need to use.
rants; scariest; blanket; woods; months;
mice; space; unbelievably; collection; stories; straw; memories; lie; took
turns; light; look out; hiding; play; grain; mornings; backdoor; hid; blinding;
bunker; passed; walk around; rats; barn; fields; children; clothes; stand up; damp;
goodbye; lice; alive
Natalia and Nikanor Polishuk
made a 1) _____ place for us in
their barn where they kept the 2) _____
and hay. I remember standing there and watching them put it on the space where
they kept that and they filled that up until they left a small 3) _____ for the four of us to sit down,
to 4) _____ down but we couldn’t
really 5) _____ ___. We were at the
back of the 6) _____ where they have
some eaves that you can 7) ____ ___. That was the only 8) _____ that we had and the only air
that we had. And as a little girl I would tell my mother: “Please, please,
please let me go out and play with the chicken and uh the kitty cats. They can 9) ____
____ there but I can’t.”
The people that 10) _____ us, I was a little older than Shelly so I have more 11) _____, Natalia and her husband,
this family, they had five 12) _____.
They had one girl and four sons. The only thing I know about Natalia and
Nikanor is that they 13) ____ ____ bringing
us the food and, our biggest problem were the rats and the 14) _____ and the lice. So, we had a 15) _____. Once a month she took our 16) _____ and we wrapped in the blankets. And they were rough
blankets. And she would put them in the oven to kill the 17) _____. The
thing that I remember about the hiding in the barn was that Raya and I would 18) _____ with the straw. We would make
animals out of the straw, we would make dolls, those were the only toys we had
and our mothers would tell us 19) _____.
That is how we 20) _____ the time
away.
Altogether I think we
were in the barn maybe twenty 21) _____.
The 22) _____ night of my life was,
when Nikanor came up and told our mothers that they were coming for us. They
knew we were there and
that we should come down. “Well”, - our mothers said: “Could we have a little
time to say 23) _____ to each other?”
And to this day, I don't know what possessed us, but Raya and I, I guess I was
5 and she was 6 at the time, started crying and begging our mothers not to go
quietly. That we should run into the 24)
_____, we knew that there was a 25) _____
to the barn and somehow our mothers agreed to do it and that is what we did.
From the woods, at
daytime, we were hiding in the 26) _____.
It was very hot. We had no food, no water, the sun was 27) _____ hot and this is where we sat for three days. All we could
eat was the raw 28) _____ from the
rye. And then Nikanor, he was calling on us. So, he actually didn't know where
we are. But he was calling on us and we heard him and we came back to the
house, to the 29) _____ actually. They
built an underground bunker to hide their grain and mainly to hide their daughter
that was a young girl and at that time they would take the young girls to
Germany the bunker was a dark 30) _____
place all they had there was straw that we were lying on 31) _____ and mice were in thousands running around. We didn’t have
almost any food, just a little bit to keep us 32) _____.
VIII
Watch the video
and put the sentences in the correct order.
A.
The war was not over; the Germans were bombing Rovno very frequently.
B.
Nikanor took us out of the home underground and put us on his wagon and
covered us with straw and drove us to Rovno.
C.
We couldn’t see anything because we had been in the darkness for so
long.
D.
The night after we left, a bomb fell on our house and destroyed it
totally.
E.
It was a sunny day, there was snow on the ground, and it was blinding.
F.
Nikanor took our mothers to Rovno and we stayed I the village until our
mothers would know if it was safe to take us back to Rovno.
G.
The bombing was so terrible that our mothers decided to take us out of
Rovno and moved us to a smaller town.
IX Watch the video and match the
dates to the events.
1945; 1974; 1949; 2013; late 1960s; 1957 or 58; May
1945
A.
The
war was over = ____________
B.
Shelly
came to the USA = __________
C.
Shelly
her mother went to Poland, Raya and her mother stayed in a little town called
Korets = ____________
D.
Raya
and her family moved to St. Petersburg = ____________
E.
Shelly’s
mother was in Tel Aviv, a man told her where Raya and her mother lived = ____________
F.
Shelly
went to St. Petersburg to meet Raya’s mother, Raya, her husband Anatoly and her
son Genia = ____________
G.
Raya and Shelly went to back to Miatyn and came to the barn where
we were hidden = ____________
X Watch
of the video and fill
in the gaps with the words from the list. There are some words you don’t need
to use.
anything; expressive; caring; connected; person; exactly;
punishment; bravery; situation; confiscated; deprivation; grandchildren; passed
away
The people that hid us 1)________ _____ a long time ago, but the hiding place was still there and it
was the same way 2)________as we
left it in 1945. The only 3)________that
lived there was a daughter-in-law of the people that hid us, at the time that
we were hiding she did not know 4)________about
us. But her son, her 5)________and
she they were very, very happy to see us.
I have often wondered how the Polischuk
family had such strength and 6)________to
do what they did. To hide us, four people, when they knew that the 7)________would be death for them and
their children and all their property would be 8)________. I am not sure how I would react in the same 9)________. I don’t think that many of
us know how we would react. But I do know that they were extremely brave and 10)________to do what they did, to put up
with the fear, the 11)________and
everything that was going on around them.
XI OVER TO YOU. Prepare a
short (2 minutes) talk to answer the questions below:
A)
What part of the story impressed you the most? Explain your choice by giving
the details of the scene that you chose.
B)
What is your opinion about personal stories in preserving the memory about the
important events in history?
C)
How did the story you watched add to your knowledge about World War II?
