Suggestions for Music and Drama activities (Primary)

These ideas take the Secret Archive of Oneg Shabbat and the Hugo Gryn case studies as a starting point. But you could adapt other case studies appropriate to the age and ability of the class. You do not have to do all the activities, simply select and develop those which will engage your students. Remember that you are NOT asking children to recreate life in the Warsaw Ghetto but you are asking them to find imaginative ways to tell part of a story and to express human emotions before sharing these with others so that people in the case studies will not be ignored or forgotten.

Aim

To explore ways of remembering and retelling a story and sharing it with an audience as part of The Legacy of Hope.

Starter

Use the case studies to introduce the class to the stories or a story. Try to tell them using your own words, don’t read it straight from the text, pause to ask questions as you tell the story e.g. why didn’t Bella want to go home? Why do you think Dawid buried things in metal containers? Focus on three things at the end of the stories.

1)The people in the stories wanted us to know what happened to them. They want us to remember them.

2)The people were imprisoned and even murdered because the Nazis targeted people they saw as different.

3)That we can use our imagination and work out different ways to share the story with other people.

Stage One

Listening to the people

Remind everyone about the things that were buried. (Secret writing by Oneg Shabbat and special things by Hugo’s mother, Bella). They were buried to stop the Nazis finding them and to preserve them for the future. After the war, when it was safe, they were dug up again. The things that were buried help us to remember the people in the stories.

Ask how the students would like to be remembered? What would they like people in the future to know about them? What two things does each student value so much that they would try to hide them if there was a danger that they could be destroyed? Would they bury them or can they think of a safer place to hide things?

Sometimes on important anniversaries people bury a time capsule in the ground. They put the date on it and include items which pass on a message about the time in which they are living. If students were creating a time capsule to bury at school to tell people in the future about school life in January 2010, what three objects would they include and what three sentences would they write to describe life in the school?

Stage two

Valuing imagination

Tell the children that it wasn’t only adults who were imprisoned by the Nazis. The writers of Oneg Shabbat tell us about children who were imprisoned in the Ghetto, far from home. They explain how teachers and helpers tried to find nice things for the children to do so that they wouldn’t be too unhappy but it was very difficult. Some children had forgotten what it was like to be free and some could not remember what rivers, playgrounds, parks and trees looked like.

Read the students an extract from Wladyslaw Szlengel’s poem (found on the next page). It was hidden in the secret archive.

A Talk with A Child

But how to explain it to a child,
What does it mean the word: afar
While he does not know what is a mountain,
And does not know what we call a river…
And he has not like mother…and has not like me
The images under the eyelids,
Then how to explain it to a child,
What does it mean the word: afar?

Ask students to say what “afar” or “far away” means to them. How far away is far away? (The next classroom or village or town, the other side of the world?)

Now ask students to work in pairs on the following tasks.

Drama
Tell them to work together to explain or describe the words “mountain”, “river”, “tree”, “butterfly” and “bird” to other people BUT without speaking or making a sound.

OR

Music

Using percussion instruments invent sounds to describe the words, “mountain”, “river”, “tree”, “butterfly” and “bird”.
Congratulate the students on their efforts and ask them which words were the hardest to express without speaking? Explain that Szlengel’s poem shows that in the Ghetto many small children could not remember seeing these simple things which many of us take for granted. Their parents and teachers could remember them but the children could not.

Ask students to shut their eyes and talk them through an imaginary walk to a pleasant, safe place e.g. describe a stroll along the sea shore or a long but pleasant climb to the top of a hill or mountain. Encourage them to imagine the sights and sounds, what things they can smell and the items they can pick up and touch, like a sea shell or a flower. After the “walk” allow for a few quiet moments before asking students to open their eyes. Now share ideas and talk about the things they imagined. If you have more time you can create a visual composite picture together, show students a large sheet of paper, on which you have previously drawn a basic outline of the beach or mountain, ask individuals to come to the front and to draw quickly on the paper, one of the things they imagined until the picture is complete.

As you admire the scene they have created, tell the students that they have completed the picture by using what the poet called “images under the eyelids”. We might use a single word to describe this. We could say we have used our imagination. Is it easy to imagine things you have never seen or things which you saw a long time ago? Ask them why they think some of the children in the Ghetto could not create “these eyelid images.”

Tell the students that they are going to use their imagination to help people remember the children of the Warsaw Ghetto, mothers like Bella Gryn and people living in the UK today, who have lost their homes in more recent times and become refugees.

Stage Three

Using our imagination to create a Legacy of Hope.

Divide the class in small groups. Give each group the pictures found on the next page. Tell them that these are pictures of real people who were imprisoned in the Ghetto at Warsaw.

• Primary_Music_Drama (PDF: 5184018 KB)

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