Teaching the Holocaust with Family Treasures Lost and Found 

Download the pdf here

Want to host a seminar with Director Marcia Rock and Producer Karen A. Frenkel? Email education@gooddocs.net for inquiries.

An innovative documentary series about investigating the plight of one Jewish family helps teachers and students challenge assumptions and provoke conversations about the Holocaust.

Incorporating documentaries into the curriculum can make teaching the Holocaust real and relevant because students today appreciate visualizations of issues and concepts. The challenge for teachers is to choose a non-fiction film that engages students while focusing on the critical themes of antisemitism, racism, identity, fascism, courage, resistance, cruelty and genocide. In both the 75-minute feature and the Five-Part Series of Family Treasures Lost and Found, one family’s story incorporates all these elements as journalist Karen A. Frenkel, a daughter of Holocaust survivors, fills gaps in her parents’ and one grandparent’s stories of survival. The films interweave her research with her relatives’ stories underscored by historical context, photos, archival footage, survivor testimony and the importance of memory. These elements and current perspectives on the Holocaust and the rise of authoritarian regimes are also relevant for discussions with students. The documentaries also describe violent antisemitism as well as highlight acts of altruism and resilience. However, we are sensitive to the pornography of violence and discuss with teachers how to manage that in the classroom.

Now that very few survivors are left, their children and grandchildren are recounting their stories and making them relevant. In Family Treasures, unique family photos and portraits show that Jews caught in the maelstrom led full lives before the Nazi onslaught. By revealing the plights of individuals, we hope students will feel empathy for them and the displaced today.

Teacher Training:
Director Marcia Rock and Producer Karen A. Frenkel offer a training seminar that walks teachers through their Discussion Guide, that supports both versions of the film. We model how to best implement concepts in the Guide and we also explain how to incorporate the activities into the classroom.  We look forward to brainstorming with teachers to meet their specific needs.

The Series is divided into five segments that model family history research:

●     Part 1. Oral History

●     Part 2. Google Anything

●     Part 3. Sleuthing Archives

●     Part 4. Value of Visiting

●     Part 5. Family Tree

Most segments are 15 minutes or less, except Value of Visiting, which is 30, and can be viewed together in class over two days, viewing Parts 1, 2, and 3 in one class and viewing 4 and 5 in the next class, or spread over five days.

Part 1. Oral History

This section introduces survivor testimony as well as the concept of identity and how the Nazis began stripping Jews of their identities, from professional restrictions to forbidding them to sit on park benches.

This section introduces Karen’s mother, who was 14 when her family fled Kraków, a similar age to many of the high school students today who will watch Family Treasures. The film offers a window into “normal” life in the pre-war urban Jewish culture of Poland and then contrasts it with the intense violence that accompanied the Nazi invasion.

One goal of this section is to have students value oral histories. An interesting activity is to have students interview an immigrant to understand the importance of gathering these memories.

Part 2. Google Anything

This section focuses on using the internet for archival research and on key ways to find information. Unlike the anthropology that students study today, we describe early anthropology that used and distorted scientific data to endorse racial superiority. An example in the film is measuring heads to rationalize racism. We also discuss the quota system U.S. colleges and universities used to limit the number of Jews admitted to Ivy League and other universities until the 1960s.

Part 3. Sleuthing Archives

We review some key research techniques that led Karen to realize her father was in the port of Havana at the same time as the famous ship, St. Louis. Ports in every country, including the United States, turned away the ocean liner, which was filled with Jewish passengers fleeing Nazi Germany. Karen’s father was on the French ship Flandre, whose Jewish passengers were also forbidden to disembark everywhere. On the dock of the next port (in Mexico), someone fell ill. Dr. Frenkel saved the person’s life and was allowed to work for free in a hospital while awaiting a U.S. visa.

To underscore this episode’s relevance, our teacher training seminar will review the history of immigration policy in the U.S. then and now.

Part 4. Value of Visiting

We think it is important for students to learn how to observe people and places in-person.  Karen visited the cities where her parents lived. Students can describe a place they have read about and have then visited, and discuss how the two experiences differ.

This section also illustrates the Nazi strategy of slowly closing the vice around Jews in cities by forcing them into crowded ghettos and then deporting them. Karen’s mother escaped the Tarnów ghetto, for example, and was sheltered by locals who could have been shot for doing so. An important discussion could focus on why a person would risk their own life to help a stranger. 

“…To be indifferent to that suffering is what makes the human being inhuman.

Indifference, after all, is more dangerous than anger and hatred.”

–Elie Wiesel, Holocaust Survivor

Value of Visiting is a difficult segment because it shows violence and examines great personal loss. Karen’s teenage mother survived, but her parents were murdered, a trauma she never really recovered from. The segment also reveals that Karen’s father’s mother committed suicide rather than be arrested by the Gestapo and deported to a concentration camp. We will discuss with teachers some difficult but challenging questions to pose to students about various forms of resistance.

Part 5. Family History

In the Five-part Series only, the last segment includes Karen building a family tree for each side of her family, pulling all the stories together. Part 5 also dives deeper into family history archival research and what documents reveal about the people behind the names. Karen also discovers relatives in California and meets one via zoom. It is always interesting for students to see a circle closed.

We look forward to discussing with teachers the best way to handle some profound questions raised in the film after students have seen it in its entirety, such as: How does seeing this history through one family’s story help to understand the Holocaust? And more broadly, is there a change in students' understanding of identity, immigration, antisemitism, intolerance and empathy.

Conclusion

The training session usually takes 90 minutes so that we can show clips from the film to illustrate the points we make.

It will interest a combination of educators in various subjects, from social studies and history to humanities and the Holocaust, in particular. Ideally, we could train a fairly large group from a district, union, or other group to make our fee reasonable. Our training session would also be ideal for teacher conferences and conventions.