Some of my favorite literature units centered on historical novels. History came alive for my students when given the opportunity to read these books. Fourth and fifth graders are curious about the past and are often surprised that a particular novel is based on an actual event in history. Lowry’s novel, Number theStars, is written in simplistic language, language that my students could easily read and understand.

       I used Number the Stars as a vehicle to introduce the Holocaust. For those  not familiar with the novel, it is about a 10-year old girl named Annemarie Johansen and her family’s contribution to the resistance movement in Denmark during World War II. Annemarie’s best friend is Jewish and when the Nazis began their round up of Denmark’s Jews for relocation to the death camps, Annemarie and her family courageously help the Rosens to escape to neutral Sweden.

       We read three to four chapters per week, and as the reading progressed, I’d introduce factual material that complimented the novel. The Terezin Concentration Camp — located in what is now the Czech Republic — was a transit camp where thousands of Jews, including thousands of Jewish children all under the age of 15, passed through on their way to Auschwitz. Here the children painted and wrote poetry, here they were involve in art and classes and athletic activities. A film of the children engaged in these fun activities was put out for the world to see but this was simply a propaganda ploy put forth by the Nazis to counter the “rumors” the outside world was hearing of the existence of the extermination camps.  

       My class read some of the poetry written by the children in the Terezin camp. We discussed Pavel Friedman’sThe Butterfly, a beautiful, poignant poem written during his internment there. (Pavel Friedmann died in Auschwitz, September 29, 1944.) After much discussion, the students were given the assignment of selecting a butterfly to research and using that butterfly in a poem. When composing their poems, the students were to think in terms of a child in Terezin looking out a barred window, watching a butterfly flitting freely about. What would that child be seeing? What did that child long for? And so on… They also had to draw the butterfly in the landscape the child in the window was looking out at.

RESTRAINED                                                                                  

Its first name was despair,                                                                      

Its second was hopelessness.                                                                       

A lonely plea,                                                                                               

Will you rescue me?                                                                                        

Twilight is turning into night.                                                                   

There isn’t much time.                                                                                     

One translucent white pine                                                                        

Gazed out longingly,                                                                                         

A barbed fence his confinement.                                                              

A haunting figure,

Will you rescue me?

Photo:  my visual aids used in this language arts exercise.