Rethinking Perpetrators, Bystanders and Rescuers: The case of Max Schmeling
Lesson (printable) PDF version »
Dr. Joy Marks Gray,
Kenston High School, Chagrin Falls, Ohio
TEACHER REFLECTION
I have to admit to not being a regular reader of Sports Illustrated. However, a few years ago my former principal, who was always highly supportive of my development of this Holocaust elective, gave me this article when it appeared. As I first read through the article I was struck by what a complex, paradoxical man Max Schmeling is. The course terminology—perpetrator, bystander, rescuer, victim—which, by that time, had become part of our daily vocabulary, leaped out of every page as I read. I thought that a sports figure caught up in the web of history might be intriguing to my students.
I have found that this lesson works perfectly midway into the course. The students have already become immersed in the shared vocabulary and have already examined many examples of people making hard choices. As the course progresses after this lesson, we look at the lessons of the Holocaust as ways of examining and assessing our present day world: hate groups found on the Web (I always go through tolerance.org, which has an area that displays hate group home pages without actually going onto these groups’ Web sites);
how one person or a community can make a choice to combat this hate (I show the video Not in Our Town); how genocides have not ended with the Holocaust (the students’ final project in the class deals with 20th-century genocides or ethnic cleansings such as Sudan, the slaughter of the Kurds, and Chechnya). A main goal of mine is to help students become aware of the power of individual choice and then to become empowered as individuals functioning in this world full of hard choices.
This lesson has remained a favorite of the students. While the lesson is not flashy or multimedia, somehow the impact of this interesting man, still alive at present, makes a great impression on students, and Max Schmeling becomes a reference point for them through the rest of the course.
