The Children of Izieu

 In this unit, the students learn the sad story of 44 children, and their six adult caretakers, who lived in an orphanage of the French-Jewish organization OSE in Izieu, in the Ain department, France, near Lyon and the Swiss border. On 6 April 1944, members of the Lyon Gestapo, led by Klaus Barbie, raided the children's home. All the children and five of the six adults were sent to their deaths in Eastern Europe.

I start by playing one of the most beautiful songs that I know in German, Reinhard Mey's "Die Kinder von Izieu". 

At this stage of the lesson, the students have only a sheet with the song's lyrics, in German, with my English translation. I have also a Hebrew translation, which I use in classes whose students are less proficient in English. They are often surprised - some of them even shocked - when they understand (after asking what the language is: Yiddish? Dutch? German!) that I am playing them a song in German on or around International Holocaust Remembrance Day (27 January) or Yom HaShoah (April-May).

I then ask them what they learn and infer from the text of the song. After they share their insights and conclusions, I tell them the whole story of the children's home in Izieu, an answer any questions they come up with. They learn how we got to know so much about this heartbreaking story (the process against Klaus Barbie) and I tell them about the amazing work of Beate and Serge Klarsfeld. 

They learn about the meticulous historical and legal work of Serge Klarsfeld, and how such work helps us remember and also fight against Holocaust denial. Finally, each pair of students receives two or three names from the list of 44 + 6 names of the victims of the razzia in Izieu. The students are asked to find any information they can find on the children and the six adults, using online sources and my copy (in French, but with pictures and an index; I help them translate, some of them use Google Translate) of Klarsfeld's masterpieces, Le Calendrier de la Persecution des Juifs de France and Le memorial des enfants juifs deportes de France.

Students find important details about most of the children: where they were born, who their parents and siblings were and what happened to them, pictures of the children, and more. One of the biggest surprises for most Israeli children is to learn that some of these children were born in Algeria. For some Israelis, the Shoah 'belongs' to the Ashkenazi Jews, they are not aware that the Nazi persecution targeted the Jewish people as a whole, and that Jews from Sephardi communities (in Greece, Macedonia and elsewhere) but also from North Africa were among the six million victims of the Holocaust. 

Finally, we talk about the irony of me using a moving, outstanding song by a German singer-songwriter who was born in Berlin in 1942, who was about two when these children (aged 4-17) were murdered, whose father served in the German army, and who is a great humanitarian whose oeuvre promotes peace and tolerance and warns against extremism and blind faith in ideologies and leaders.