Repair the World: Holocaust & Human Rights Education

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Teaching Holocaust Literature Gardening Across the Curriculum Holocaust Survivor Spotlight: Dr. Zsuzsanna Ozsvath The War on Facts, Freedom of Speech, and its connection to Holocaust Education Unlearning to Learn: Imperialism

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Repair the World: the World War I edition

Table of Contents Letter from the Editor pg. 3 Chanukah 2021 pg. 5 Bunuelos Recipe pg . 7 Teaching Holocaust Literature. pg. 10 Gardening Across the Curriculum pg. 16 Survivor Spotlight: Dr. Zsuzsanna Ozsvath pg. 19 The War on Facts, Freedom of Speech, and its connection to Holocaust Education: Ramona Bessinger pg. 23 Featured Story: World War I pg. 33 Un-Learning to Learn: Imperialism pg. 40 Creating community in the classroom pg.48

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s e t a R p u Gro ly Bird r a E & w o N Rates le!

On Sa

Attendees receive a Zachor Shoah Tote bag full of resources including numerous Holocaust books & posters

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Letter from the Editor Winter is a time for reflection and building community As I prepare for winter I am aware that nature takes this time of year, this aspect in the natural cycle of the seasons, to slumber- to go within itself and take the time to remove itself from the hustle and bustle of life. Although we are not part of the animal or plant kingdoms that hibernate, we would do well to take a lesson from the bears and the trees.

After a year of serious illness and political strife, and now several months of its aftermath, instead of rushing to buy holiday gifts that will likely sit off shore waiting to be unloaded for weeks, instead of spending money we likely don't have in order to live up to a commercialized version of love and gratitude, instead of seeking happiness in outside sources we would all benefit from a commercial hiatus this year. Take the time to plan meaningful moments not mass produced gifts. Take the time to spend quality time with yourself - reflect on who you are, what you believe (politically, spiritually, economically, socially, etc) and what are you unwilling to sacrifice or be silent on. Take the time this winter season to find yourself, find God, find your moral compass, and prepare to reemerge in the Spring stronger than before.

The world needs more lions and less sheep. It always has.

There are many things wrong with our world. We have become a society that is further and further away from its core. As human beings we are naturally social beings that grow physically and spiritually from working in and with nature. But with each generation, especially since the end of World War I, we seem to seek and embrace less of our natural selves and more of what many refer to as a dystopian reality of human society.

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How many of you have spent any time in a garden? Or building something, even a small thing like a bird house? How many of you have grown your own food, or at the very least picked it yourself at a local farm? How many of you have spent time simply observing nature in absolute quiet? And how many of you volunteer in meaningful ways to help your local community regularly?

I suspect that the answer to these questions is far less than if I asked How many of you stream videos for at least an hour a day or post to social media regularly.

Children learn from example far more so than through direct instruction. As Holocaust educators it is essential that we not only teach the facts of the "ugly" parts of history, but that we teach through example how to have a clear strong moral compass that guides us to live a life in harmony with others, with the earth, and with God.

Carolina Simon EDITOR

Repair the World: the World War I edition

WISHING YOU A

Very Happy Chanukah! pg. 5

Chanukah - the festival of lights -

When I say Chanukah, what comes to mind? Most likely Adam Sandler's song "8 crazy nights", Latkes, dreidels, and gold coins. But Chanukah isn't about this any more than Christmas is about Santa Claus and eggnog. These are ways in which we have come to celebrate the holiday through symbolic customs. But there is a deeper meaning to the history of Chanukah.

In the 1st century BCE, The Syrian Greeks had conquered Israel, including Jerusalem. Over time, many Jews began adopting the Hellenistic cultural norms.

Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Syrian Greek ruler sought to impose his Hellenistic culture completely, after all that is the only way to truly conquer a people - to erase their past. By 167 B.C.E, Antiochus intensified his campaign by defiling the Temple in Jerusalem and banning Jewish practice, one of the few remaining devoted aspects of life to Judaism. The Maccabees — led by the five sons of the priest Mattathias, especially Judah — waged a three-year campaign to fight back against this invasion and re-ignite Judaism in the Jewish people. The victorious campaign, which in some ways resembled the US Revolution with its outnumbered, outgunned band of freedom fighters against a mighty empire, culminated in the cleaning and re-dedication of the Temple.

Over the years, Rabbinic laws, Midrash, and even Zionism have influenced how the holiday is commemorated and celebrated. In the post-Holocaust world, Jews, especially Zionist Jews, the understanding that Hanukah is about: oppression, identity, religious freedom and expression, and the need to fight for national independence.

In our own modern world, we too are facing oppression, identity, religious freedom and expression, and the need to fight for national independence and individual rights.

May the fighting spirit of the Maccabees inspire you this Chanukah as you light the Menorah candles. pg. 6

Hmmmm.....Bunuelos!

Its Chanukah - time for some fried food.

While Ashkenazi have their Latkes (and they are good!), we Sephardim have Bunuelos. The best part is Latkes are savory and Bunuelos are sweet so you can have both in the same meal!

Most Sephardim are part of the Marrano or Converso community - Spanish Jews that have lived in hiding as Jews for centuries. As such many of the Jewish traditions get a little wonky. For example, High Holidays evolved into card tournaments within families - giving them an excuse to gather and eat specific foods withot raising suspicion during the Inquisition. The same is true of Chanukah. Gelt (gold coins) are part of Christmas decorations, and Bunuelos are eaten anytime of year when your spirits need to be raised or its raining, but especially during Christmas week. My grandmother made the best bunuelos, because she added chopped apples and sprinkled power sugar on top.

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Buenuelos de la Abuela Pepa

Ingredients 2 eggs 1/2 cup of sugar 1 1/2 cup self rising flour 1 tsp vanilla extract 1/2 cup milk Oil for frying Optional Apple Filling: 1-2 large peeled apples chopped very small

Directions

Mix the eggs, sugar, flour and vanilla extract Add to the batter milk. *and apple filling if desired. Mix well Using 2 large spoons, spoon out one spoonful of the batter into hot oil. Do not fill pot with batter. when sides are golden brown turn over. when both sides are golden brown drain and dry on paper towel.

Repeat until all batter is cooked. Let cool slightly. Dust with powdered sugar.

Enjoy!

Best served warm with a hot cup of coffee or tea

Teaching Holocaust Literature

how to use fiction and non-fiction paired texts to teach about the Holocaust in a responsible, accurate, and standards based manner while also incorporating lessons on creativity, individuality, and empathy.

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Repair the World: the World War I edition English/Language Arts teachers across America are very likely the most stressed-out teachers. Theirs is a daunting task. They have to teach their grade level standards to include reading fluency and reading comprehension, speaking, writing, listening and research. But their job also requires them to cover the standards not met from the previous grades as well. More often than not students are not reading at grade level which affects every other ELA standard. A good teacher will worry about this and strive to correct it within her academic purview. Unlike math standards that build on each other, ELA is a series of standards that repeat themselves with intensified nuance each time. And, as if ELA teachers didn't have enough on their plates, teachers' unions, district curriculum planners, and others often expect ELA teachers to also teach students to develop good Character traits, participate in writing contests, and develop empathy as well as read a variety of stories from a variety of cultural groups.

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This generally results in poorly executed projects, reading excerpts instead of novels, and standards being overlooked.

But it doesn't have to be this way.

Being an ELA teacher can be great fun and have amazing rewarding results!

It requires a theme.

Choose a theme for the year. I always chose something to do with Human Rights/Individual Rights/Democratic Values. This allowed me to teach the stories in the textbook as required by my district, which luckily included Fredrick Douglas and MLK and Elie Wiesel.

Focus on Standards as a Foundation

Common Core or State Standards are your foundation. It is what you seek to assess at the end of the particular lesson. This may sound like a pitch from an administrator, but its true.

Creating a good lesson plan must center on what you want to see achieved at the end. And if the standard is not a significant part of that, you are doing it wrong.

Repair the World: the World War I edition Choose a mode of assessment

Now that you know what you want the students to be able to do at the end of the lesson, what is the BEST way for them to SHOW you that. This is almost never via test.

Tests require students to remember skills short term, you want long-term memory to kick in.

You want critical and creative thinking skills to be used. The best mode then is a project. Projects do not have to be elaborate. They can be simple creative activities such as a "Black-out poem".

Choose your paired texts carefully and intentionally

Most school districts suggest readings that align, in their opinion, with the standards. The textbook does this too. But you have the ability and the authority as the teacher to deviate from the suggestion. Often the suggested texts will not match each other in any way much less match your theme. Therefore, choose texts that do this smoothly.

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For example, read a speech by Fredrick Douglass & MLK jr. & Lincoln's Gettysburg Address/Emancipation Proclamation paired with Marigolds by Eugenia Collier or To Kill a Mockingbird.

Be sure to teach your standards but to also instill a love for the written word by first and foremost enjoying the story.

Teach every unit this way.

Teaching Holocaust Literature after a year of teaching ELA

If you spend your school year teaching as described here, you can very easily and smoothly begin a Holocaust literature unit in April or May. Students will have spent the year developing their standardsbased ELA skills using texts that warrant it while also developing their creative and critical thinking skills with texts and topics that while challenging are not overwhelming. They will need these skills to read about a people, time, and places that are very foreign to them. After all you may have students who have never met a Jewish person.

Repair the World: the World War I edition Holocaust Literature is unique because the Holocaust itself is beyond basic human comprehension. So we must ease into it. The fiction written about it is meant to humanize the victims once again. The primary sources were written with the intention of forcing the world not to forget that Jews once existed.

Therefore, teaching Holocaust Literature with the intention of finding the main idea or Author's purpose or any other standard is not only insensitive to the victims of the Holocaust, but denies students the ability to connect with them as people.

Read together

Reading aloud while students follow along is an underrated experience for everyone involved.

Many Holocaust novels have Yiddish, German, and Polish words as part of the conversations.

Students will not know them, and will skip over them if reading on their own. pg. 13

But these words matter and it matters that they were not translated.

Read-alouds are particularly helpful for non-English speakers and Special Needs populations.

Best Practices

Create your lesson plan with the end in mind - what do you want the students to gain and learn from this unit? How will they show this to youwhat is the project? Choose an age and grade level appropriate text pairing. My favorites are: Grade 6- Number the Stars/ Yad Vashem's article on Denmark's rescue of the Jews Grade 7- Diary of Anne Frank/ Yad Vashem's article on The Netherlands Grade 8- The Devil's Arithmetic/Elie Wiesel's USHMM inauguration speech Grade 9- The Horse Adjutant/Salvaged Pages Grade 10- Night/Elie Wiesel's Nobel Prize speech Grade 11/12 - Sarah's Key/General Patton's speech upon entering Dachau

Repair the World: the World War I edition Before you begin reading, give students the directions and rubric for their project. Give students a basic historical foundation for the Holocaust. Seek to enhance standards skills sets using paired texts. Read a chapter a day aloud to students from novel.

Finally, give students time to work on their project mostly in school.

My favorite small project is a Blackout poem. For a free lesson plan on how to create a black-out poem for Holocaust Literature click here:

Reading aloud usually takes 20 to 30 minutes depending on the novel. Students should write down their thoughts and questions as you read. After the chapter is finished open the class to discuss their thoughts and answer their questions. Be ready to share images and sound/video for questions related to culture such as what is a Klezmar band.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.co m/Product/Interdisciplinary-LessonFound-Poetry-5845596

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Gardening Across the Curriculum

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Repair the World: the World War I edition

Holocaust Memorial Butterfly Gardens

teaching empathy and the traits of a community champion through poetry, art and gardening get your copy today-on sale now: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Ms-Simon-Says

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Repair the World: the the World War I edition

Survivor Spotlight: Dr. Zsusanna Ozsvath

This is Dr. Zsuzsanna Ozsvath, or as I and my fellow UTD graduates call endearingly call her - Zsuzsi. The picture was taken March 2020 at the 50th anniversary of the Holocaust and the Churches Scholars Conference, where I spoke on the future of Holocaust education. Zsuzsi was in attendance as the retiring head of the Holocaust department at UT Dallas.

Zsuzsanna Osvath was born to middle class parents in Budapest Hungary. pg. 19

Probably the most poignant lecture she ever gave was the day she discussed with us (her students) the history of Hungary and how Jews in 1940 had been a part of that history.

They never thought of themselves as Jews solely. They were Hungarian. This is what shocked them most. They felt that while Eurpe may have fallen to the Nazis, they were safe. They were Hungarian.

Their neighbors would defend them as such.

Repair the World: the World War I edition They were wrong. In just 2 months, before any Nazi required it, The Hungarian Fascists rounded up the Jews of Hungary and either "deported" them to Auschwitz or shot them into the Danube. Nearly all of of Hungary's 500,000 Jews were murdered in less than 60 days. Few were as lucky as Zsuzsi.

At the end of the term, Dr. Zsuzsanna Osvath invites the 10 or so graduate students to her home for tea. There, sitting at her dining room table, teacher and students talk about all sorts of topics. Then everyone helps clear the table and Zsuzsanna brings out her Holocaust memorabilia her personal yellow star. You can still see the where the tight stitching kept the star on her little coat. She was barely 8 years old.

But her family was lucky. She had an 18 year old babysitter, Erzsi, who moved in with them at the start of the war. When the fmily was to move to the ghetto and soon be deported to their deaths, the very young and courageous Erzsi spent each day seeking safe houses for each of Zsuzsi's immediate family members (her father, mother, brother, and herself) and moving them individually to each safe house each night. She alone knew where they each were hidden.

At the end of the war, Erzsi reunited them. Because of Erzsi's efforts, Zsuzsi experienced the Holocaust very differently from other survivors, so much so that she had great difficulty claiming she was a Holocaust survivor. It wasn't until she told us her story at her dining room table, and with our enthusiastic insistance, did she decide to write her memoir: When the Danube Ran Red. When I read it, in spite of knowing the story, I was moved to tears for the childhood lost.

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Repair the World: the World War I edition Little Zsuzsi and her family left Hungary after the war and moved to Berlin. There she attended school and eventually university.

She had been playing piano since the age of 6 and became a concert pianist with a Bachelor's degree in music. She eventually moved to the United States, married, and became a professor at UT Dallas, where she founded the Holocaust Studies program.

When I attended in early 2000s, it was one of 5 universities in the United States to offer a graduate degree in Holocaust studies.

To read Dr. Zsuzsanna Ozsvath's Yad Vashem Testimony please click here: https://www.yadvashem.org/right eous/stories/fajo/zsuzsannaozsvath-testimony.html

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Repair the World: the Eugenics Edition

The War on Facts, Freedom of Speech, and its connection to Holocaust Education: Ramona Bessinger

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Repair the World: the World War I edition

The War on Facts, Freedom of Speech, and its connection to Holocaust Education: Ramona Bessinger

In last season's issue, we focused entirely on the history of Critical Race Theory (CRT), what it seeks to achieve, and how it presents itself in our schools. If you live in Florida or Texas you may have been puzzled as to why we would focus so much of our energy on one topic...a topic that is banned in your state. We did so because of people like Ramona Bessinger. We did so, because her experiences could become your experiences unless you know what to look for and how to respond.

Ramona Bessinger is a veteran teacher of Rhode Island Public schools. She has been teaching English/Language Arts for 21 years, mostly to disadvantaged minority 8th grade students. pg. 24

Repair the World: the World War I edition When the CRT battle began last school year, I heard Ramona speak briefly on my TV news. I knew I had to reach out and speak with her. I knew that what she was talking about had to be more complex and dangerous than what her brief interview allowed. I reached out to her and we spoke on the phone for over an hour. We have emailed each other and sent Tweets etc since. Her plight should be a strong warning to all teachers regardless of your subject matter.

As Ramona explains it, the school and the school district required the existing books (mostly novels) be removed from the ELA classrooms and put into storage.

The books were then replaced with what Ramona calls pamphlets. But based on the pictures she has provided they remind me of the "books" my READ 180 students were expected to read as part of that program.

Ramona Bessinger is fighting against a machine. A machine without a face- a machine with many faces. A machine waging war against facts. She teaches in Providence Rhode Island, a state that requires the teaching of the Holocaust. Or at least they did.

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As an ELA teacher, the first reaction to these pamphlet style booklets has very little to do with their content and everything to do with the lack of rigor. The works of Maya Angelou, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Fredrick Douglass, Mark Twain, Elie Wiesel, and Ray Bradbury to name a few are replaced by what basically amounts to comic books.

Why? This was the question Ramona asked of her superiors. They did not have an answer other than those previous books were not aligned with the new state Diversity-Equity-Inclusion (DEI) guidelines.

When Ramona saw that they were packing up her favorite book to teach - The Diary of Anne Frank - she again inquired. What about her Holocaust unit? It was a required topic. She was quickly informed that not only was the Holocaust not a relevant and relatable topic to non-Jewish children, but that the state no longer required its teaching. Just like that, Rhode Island under the cloak of darkness passed new legislation, new guidelines, and new academic calendars that no longer included Jews. Holocaust literature was scrapped but so were Jewish holidays, replaced instead by Muslim holidays. The question Ramona asked (and I shared during our phone conversation) - why can't both be acknowledged? After discussing it, the basic conclusion was that apparently, the district/state believed that was racist as it had come to see Judaism linked to Zionism and they saw Zionism as detrimental to the mental health of the students of color.

Ramona's experiences did not end with the removal of canonical literature from her classroom. She explained to me that her once friendly school environment became hostile. By the end of the school year students no longer referred to her as Ms. Bessinger, pg. 26

Repair the World: the World War I edition

but as "America" instead. As in America is a white middle class educated woman with "privilege". If Ramona's non-white students see America this way, how can they see themselves as part of it? The pamphlet style booklets had done their job. All those stories depicting the villain as white and the victims all minority had sunk in to the impressionable minds of these kids. These books did not teach them how to think virtuously or inspire them to contribute to their country. They simply taught them to see white authority figures, like their teacher, as a threat and a problem.

Ramona is fighting a machine waging war on free speech. Shortly after she spoke out publicly about CRT in her school, she was removed from her ELA duties and made the CNN-10 teacher. CNN10 is a 10 minute news reel of current events from around the world made by CNN for students under the age of 18. It is hosted by Carl Azuz. Students enjoy his puns and the quick quiz. I can't begin to see how an entire class period could be dedicated to teaching this. But Ramona rose to the challenge and taught CNN-10 in a way that did not violate her personal or professional ethics. And she continued to speak with reporters about what was taking place. Her administration began harassing her, finding fault in every little thing until finally suspending her, but not before her classroom was allowed to be defaced by students possibly faculty as well.

Ramona Bessinger is not alone. There are hundreds of people across America in a variety of professions facing similar situations. Even volunteer docents at the Museum of Art in Chicago. pg. 27

Repair the World: the World War I edition

The people in charge, the powers that be, have an agenda - a mission if you will. Since the summer of 2020 with the George Floyd murder and the reemergence of BLM, Politicians, District Attorneys, School Boards, and Publishers have decided, apparently in unison, that Equity is better than Equality. They have decided that in order to uplift Black people, we must trample and destroy white people.

And why do I,and this publication, repeatedly connect CRT to the Holocaust? Because like Hitler and the Nazis, the current "wokesters" seek a "re-imagined" country free of the "systemic" problems which give rise to "Jewish Privilege". Yes the ultimate enemy of BLM and the like is Israel and the Jews.

In 1919 Adolf Hitler wrote a letter to Herr Adolf Gemlich in which he states "...In his [the Jew] effects and consequences he is like a racial tuberculosis of the nations. The deduction from all this is the following: an antisemitism based on purely emotional grounds will find its ultimate expression in the form of the pogrom. An antisemitism based on reason, however, must lead to systematic legal combating and elimination of the privileges of the Jews, ... . The ultimate objective [of such legislation] must, however, be the irrevocable removal of the Jews in general. ...

Hitler gave 123 speeches between 1919 and 1945. Every single one of them centered on the notion that Jews were diseased, privileged, and devils that wanted nothing else but money and power therefore oppressing the German people. His first speech had 11 people in attendance. A month later over a hundred and four months later 2000! pg. 28

Repair the World: the World War I edition

Students always ask How could the Holocaust happen? The answer has always felt complicated and nuanced. As I live through our current times, I can see that its not so complicated after all. A man gave a speech. A speech he believed in wholeheartedly. (Hitler was not stupid or crazy, just evil). His speech centered on the same conviction and messaging as his rivalries to the East (the Communists). That message was "we are the oppressed and they (the Jews) are the oppressors"(1) .

This is How the Holocaust happened. People that once shared a community, a neighborhood, a country began to see themselves as part of the oppressed vs oppressor groups. Who were the oppressed?

The Nazis, the Communists, the anti-democracy groups made that distinction. They made it based on their perceived idea that democracy and capitalism are two sides of the same coin - a coin owned by the oppressor group.

Today, in America the oppressor is generally categorized as a generic "white" person of Western cultural heritage. But already, there are signs and flyers on college campuses and subway cars or books such as Escape from the Holocaust - a create your own adventure story, that are transitioning from the generic "white person" to "the Jew" as the quintessential holder of "white privilege".

During the early years of Hitler's regime, there were brave souls like Sophie Scholl, who desperately tried to awaken their countrymen to the realities of the Nazis. Not nearly enough people listened. Today, Ramona Bessinger like many others speaking out against CRT and its many forms of sociopolitical strife in schools and government are also trying to do as Sophie Scholl did. I pray we listen. *1 the communists saw the "rich" as the oppressor, but the rich was really the middle class

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Repair the World: the World War I edition

Featured Story: World War I

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Repair the World: the World War I edition World war, what is it? It’s a scary sounding term. Does the entire world go to war with each other? That certainly is what the term implies, but luckily no, the entire world does not go to war during a world war. A war is considered a world war when multiple countries are involved; spanning different continents and major world powers are involved.

World War I was the First World War and many people feared it would be the end of the world or of civilization.

Afterwards people hoped it would be the end of all wars.

World War I had created and caused so much chaos, upheaval, and destruction that in its wake, countries were left in ruins, fearful of others and with an entire generation either dead or seriously wounded. By war’s end 40 million casualties were recorded. Of the 40 million, 20 million were deaths, 9.7 million of which were military deaths and 10 million were civilian casualties with another 21 million wounded, and this does not include the number of people psychologically affected by war.

As a result of not having been the only world war, WWI is often overlooked or downplayed, but the significance it had on the world stage cannot be stressed enough.Many scholars believe that the unresolved issues that led to World War I and the Versailles Treaty - the catastrophic manner in which it was brought to a close (many argue it was more of a 20 year cease fire than an actual peace treaty) directly led to the rise of fascism, Nazism, and World War II. In this chapter you will learn about World War from these perspectives so as to truly understand why the world went to war twice.

Causes of World War I: Nationalism The last we learned the world was engaging in imperialism with some sectors increasing their domination of smaller or weaker countries and others losing their control. Before the United States put democracy on the world stage all governments were either kingdoms or empires with many falling under both categories.

But as more of the countries of Europe, Latin America, Asia and

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Repair the World: the World War I edition Africa adopted democracy as their form of government, even including the idea of democratic monarchies (having both elections for prime minister and parliament and a king or queen) the concept of nationalism also grew in popularity. Nationalism is the identifying of oneself as part of a group based on national origin or belonging by citizenship. It differs from being a subject in a monarchy or empire because it’s a sense of identity that is not connected to a crown but a flag, a culture. As countries expand and conquer others they push their identity on them, but under nationalism the people’s identity is not fluid, not as it was under monarchies and empires.

This can create hostility towards the imperialist nation and intensify feelings of identity and belonging among the native people. This is often a very difficult concept for people in the USA to understand because we have always been a nation, or at least we have been a nation as along as our nation has existed. Other nations such as France or Germany for example, have existed while also being part of

foreign empires or kingdoms with their borders changing depending on who was their king at the time. And this is basically why World War I happens.

Austria-Hungary, an empire consisting of Austria (which at one point was part of Prussia aka Germany) and Hungary (at one point conquered by Attila the Hun and the western most point of Europe to be tied to eastern/Asian culture) had conquered and consisted of several other Slavic countries consisting of the Balkans (Serbia, Croatia, Albania, Macedonia, Romania, and Slovenia).

The emperor, Arch Duke Ferdinand, had hoped to continue with the existing policy of paying the conquered countries in exchange for their peaceful submission to his authority, but as his empire grew his wealth and ability to continue such payments diminished.As the payments became less, the national fervor among the people of these individual areas grew. In Serbia, an area that had been relatively autonomous within the empire saw the rise of the first terrorist organization. pg. 35

Repair the World: the World War I edition The Black Hand consisted of double agent police officers within the empire and young emboldened men eager to maintain and strengthen their independence from the now financially crumbling empire.Although they were responsible for several bombings and attacks in the region, Arch Duke Ferdinand and his wife traveled to Serbia in 1914 anyway.

Ferdinand and Sophie married as a result of a deep love for each other, but she was not high ranking enough of a royal of familiar noble families from such places as Austria, Germany, or France and was instead of an obscure Czech lineage.

According to history.com, “His marriage notwithstanding, Ferdinand remained Franz Josef’s heir and inspector general of the army. In that capacity, he agreed to attend a series of June 1914 military exercises in Bosnia-Herzegovina”. At the time, Austria-Hungary had annexed these regions against the wishes of neighboring Serbia, who had also wanted to annex them. Ferdinand, like most people in the early 20th century maintained stereotypical views of different ethnic groups.

Ferdinand believed the Serbs to be “pigs,” “thieves,” “murderers” and “scoundrels.” Yet he had opposed annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina for fear that it would make an already turbulent political situation even worse (He was right). The entire region was controlled by the Ottoman Empire (under Muslim rule) since the 14th century; BosniaHerzegovina’s population was roughly 40 percent Serb, 30 percent Muslim and 20 percent Croat, with various other ethnicities making up the remainder. The 400 year rule of the region by the Ottomans came to an end in the early 19th century and much of that century consisted of small wars for independence, autonomy, and nationhood. By 1914, the wars had generally died down; most nations had been established with definable borders, cultural norms, languages, flags, and governments. Few empires as they had once been remained. AustriaHungary was one of the few and they were about to feel the wrath of nationalist youth without restrictions or desires for peace.

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Repair the World: the World War I edition A secret revolutionary society called the Young Bosnians consisting mostly of peasant (poor) students began to plot the assassination of the Archduke upon learning of his upcoming visit to the area.

In May, 3 members of the group traveled to the Serbian capital of Belgrade, where they received six handheld bombs, four semiautomatic pistols and cyanide suicide capsules from members of the Black Hand, a terrorist group with close ties to the Serbian army. After practicing with their pistols in a Belgrade park, the three men journeyed back to Bosnia-Herzegovina. On June 28th 1914 the Arch Duke and his wife were assassinated while driving in their open car through the streets of Sarajevo. Within a month the countries of Europe had taken sides and war was declared. Sadly, the tensions that existed in the former Ottoman Empire region of Europe and the coalitions formed by countries that shared languages or cultural history was not explored, not examined, not even years after World War II so that as maps were yet again recreated after WWII

ignoring these realities, the region remained a potential hot spot eventually leading to the 1992 war, genocide, and dissolution of Yugoslavia into Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia, and Montenegro.

Many of the tensions between Russia and Crimea resulting in the conflicts of 2016 can be traced to this preWWI era as well. Similarly, many of the tensions that exist in Africa today have roots in colonial times and the re-imagining of borders not along cultural or tribal lines but as decided by the victors - either the Imperialists of the pre-WWI era or the UN of the post-Holocaust era.

It is our greatest flaw as human beings that we ignore root causes of our greatest tragedies. The root cause of WWI was Imperialism. the root cause of WWII was the unfinished "business" of WWI. The root cause of the Holocaust was the "balkanization" ideology of opressed vs oppressor. The root cause of most genocides is this "Us vs Them" ideology. But here we are in 2021 and we still have not dealt with this.

Instead we keep stoking these embers to reignite that fire. pg. 37

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Repair the World: the World War I edition

Un-learning to Learn:

Imperialism

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The first era of Imperialism brought on by Europe’s discovery of America and the colonies they built there came to an end with The American Revolution (1775– 83) and the collapse of the Spanish Empire in Latin America around 1820. In Great Britain, these revolutions helped show the deficiencies of mercantilism, the doctrine of economic competition for finite wealth which had supported earlier imperial expansion. In 1846, the British Corn Laws were repealed and with the repeal in place, the manufacturers were then able to trade more freely.

Thus, Britain began to adopt the concept of free trade.

During this period, between the 1815 Congress of Vienna after the defeat of Napoleonic France and the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, Britain reaped the benefits of being the world's sole modern, industrial power. While the rest of Europe’s major countries were busy acquiring colonies, Britain was busy becoming the “world’s workshop” and as such was able to produce finished goods efficiently and cheaply and therefore undersell similar products in other countries.

In essence, Britain was to the 19th century what China was to the 20th century.

England only continued to benefit economically as the end of the FrancoPrussian war led to significant political changes in both France and Germany. The establishment of nation-states in Germany and Italy resolved territorial issues that had kept potential rivals embroiled in internal affairs at the heart of Europe, again to Britain's advantage. The years from 1871 to 1914 would be marked by an extremely unstable peace. France’s determination to recover Alsace-Lorraine, annexed by Germany as a result of the Franco-Prussian War, and Germany’s mounting imperialist ambitions would keep the two nations constantly poised for conflict. This competition between France and Germany (formerly Prussia) was sharpened by the Long Depression of 1873–1896, a prolonged period of price deflation punctuated by severe business downturns, which put pressure on governments to promote home industry (or at least that which is made in your territory), leading to the widespread abandonment of free trade among Europe's powers (in Germany from 1879 and in France from 1881). pg. 41

Repair the World: the World War I edition It is this tenuous peace among the countries of Europe, countries that shift in size and location that creates a simmering animosity among neighboring countries. Countries that had until just 100 years prior been connected to each other through marriage or religious endeavors or both, now had faced internal revolutions and most had lost their royal connections all together. The bonds that once bound them together no longer existed and in its place was a new found sense of individuality based on their new borders, sometimes mixed with their old sense of territory, and competition for economic dominance that often also meant political dominance.

Berlin Conference The Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 was an attempt to destroy the competition between the powers by defining "effective occupation" as the criterion for international recognition of a territory claim, specifically in Africa.

That is to say that the conference wanted the countries present to agree that if a country claimed to rule over a specific area of Africa or Asia, but specifically Africa, that they did not require having to set up entire colonies with government offices and townships to be recognized as a colony by the other European countries. All that was required was dominance over the native people of the region. This required governments to supply routinely military personnel and weapons to their armed forces in the colonized region.

Uprisings against imperial rule were put down ruthlessly. One of the goals of the conference was to reach agreements over trade, navigation, and boundaries of Central Africa. However, of all of the 15 nations in attendance of the Berlin Conference, none of the countries represented were African. The main dominating powers of the conference were France, Germany, Great Britain and Portugal. They remapped Africa without considering the cultural and linguistic borders that were already established. This would be a pattern that these European countries would engage in again and again creating social-cultural ramifications that still cause hostility and turbulence today. pg. 42

Repair the World: the World War I edition At the end of the conference, Africa was divided into 50 different colonies. The attendants established who was in control of each of these newly divided colonies. They also planned, noncommittally, to end the slave trade in Africa. It is important to note that although the conference claimed to end the slave trade, and Britain, France and the USA no longer practiced slavery, the countries of Europe did not need to engage in slavery under these new terms.

According to the terms of the Berlin Conference, slavery would take on a new look. No longer would people be forcibly taken from their homes, bought from rival tribes who had kidnapped them, nor would they be shipped to the new world to be sold to work on plantations. Under the new terms the people of Africa would be subjected to work within Africa taking raw materials such as coal, timber, and diamonds and shipping raw material to a variety of destinations in Europe and America. The African people, as conquered hostile workers, would be extremely limited in mobility and education and would be compensated just enough to buy food and provide shelter for their families, but would live in many ways no better than slaves, but Europe would be clean of the stain of slavery and would no longer incur the costs associated with the sale of human beings as commodity.

The White Man’s Burden As with Christopher Columbus and his voyage in 1492, the European belief that they were superior stemmed from a religious and spiritual understanding of “being civilized” or “civilization”.During the 19th century Europeans faced a new, but familiar, world outlook, one that still resonates with many today.

What distinguished a people as “civilized” or “barbaric or less developed” depended on the level of industrialization the country had undergone. So that an industrialized nation such as England, France, Germany, Russia, and the USA were dominant and less industrialized or not industrialized at all nations such as those of Eastern Europe, many Central American, Asian, and all African nations were open for colonization. pg. 43

Repair the World: the World War I edition In England the new terms for imperialism meant that the British people believed they were the best suited for the job of governing over the “less civilized” corners of the world and that everyone from the colonized to the various industrialized nations of the world and certainly England would be better off for it. This became known in England as the white man’s burden after a poem by the same name by Rudyard Kipling. It was the belief that Europeans had been blessed by God and given greater intelligence, tools, and society and that they owed it to their less fortunate “brothers and sisters” to govern them in an effort to save them from themselves. Despite the apparent benevolence of the notion of the "White Man's Burden" to the Europeans of the 19th century, the sometimes unintended consequences of imperialism greatly outweighed the potential benefits. Over time, European governments became increasingly paternalistic at home and neglected the individual liberties of their citizens.

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Military spending expanded greatly, and imperialism created clients of ruling elites abroad that were brutal and corrupt. Furthermore, "nation building" oftentimes created cultural sentiments of racism and xenophobia.

Social Darwinism While Social Darwinism became popular throughout Western Europe and the United States, the paternalistic French and Portuguese preferred the concept of “civilizing mission” and it appealed to many European statesmen both in and outside France.

But it would be Social Darwinism with its implied connections to Darwin and his theory of evolution that would prevail in Europe and the United Sates. Social Darwinism was the belief that society was just as regulated by evolutionary theory as the various species on the planet were. Social Darwinists did not generally refer to themselves as such at the time.

Instead they were generally known as Eugenicists. The most notable among them was Francis Dalton. He founded the Eugenics movement and the ideas that shaped Social Darwinism.

Repair the World: the World War I edition Social Imperialism Wehler, a German historian, coined the term social imperialism in 1969. In Wehler's opinion, social imperialism was a political tactic that allowed the German government of the early 20th century to distract the public’s attention from domestic problems and preserve the existing social and political order. These social problems were a direct result of socio-political and economic strife caused by actual imperialism and the strain it causes on economies and governmental infrastructure. The dominant elites of Germany and other industrialized nations at the end of the 19th century used social imperialism as the glue to hold together a fractured society and to maintain popular support for the social status quo. According to Wehler, German colonial policy in the 1880s was the first example of social imperialism in action, and was followed up by the 1897 expanding the German Navy. From this perspective, organizations and groups like the Colonial Society and the Navy League are seen as instruments for the government to mobilize and encourage public support under the guise of patriotism. Therefore, Wehler believes that the German public’s demands for annexing most of Europe and Africa during World War I are the pinnacle of social imperialism.

Imperialism has taken on many forms since its inception in Antiquity. We often forget that it is not a modern concept and that the problems created by it continue to haunt us from the actions of Rome against Israel to the actions of Europeans against Africa and Latin America. Imperialism is a thread throughout human history that should be better understood in order to understand its ramifications too.

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