teacher's guide
STUDY QUESTIONS

Awakening Resistance
TIMECODE 01:09:06-01:17:07

"Teenagers were often among the first to recognize the Nazi menace, and act."

During the early years of World War II, Barbara, Faye and Shula became aware of the Nazi program to make Europe "free of Jews." Barbara secured false papers to pass as a non-Jew. Faye and her family were confined to a ghetto. Shula became a member of a Zionist youth organization and learned of the mass murder of Jews in Poland.

Q: How do you explain the different responses of adolescents and adults to the Nazi occupation?

Discuss why Shula’s mother would not consider taking a false name and why Barbara’s father was very careful to burn any books the Nazis might find objectionable. What circumstances might make it possible for adolescents to take more risks than their parents?

Why did Barbara change her identity to become a non-Jewish person?

Faye developed the Nazis' photograph of the murder of the people in her ghetto. Discuss how making an extra copy and keeping that photograph was an act of resistance.

Faye’s photograph of a trench with corpses in Belarus captures the inhumanity of the Nazi regime. Why is such a photograph important for historians in the twenty-first century? Why do you think that Faye is willing to share her photographs with the public?

What thoughts most haunt Faye as she thinks about her family thrown in one of the trenches?

What were the principal goals of the Zionist youth group that Shula joined in her early teens? How did Zionist ideals contribute to the group's resistance?

Discuss why you think Shula’s mother thought it was impossible for her to live with a "false identity."