the boy in the striped pyjamas

[workshy]

my yr5 DD watched this in school the other day

school sent home a permission slip explaining that it was a 12 but was related to a topic they had been covering in school

I know about the film and chatted to DD about it and was confident she would be ok so I gave my permission -obviously lots of parents had absolutely no idea what the film was like and many DCs were upset by it

is it really a film they should be showing to 9&10 year olds?

You see, my reading of this thread is completely different and it is yellowtip who is making some extraordinary assumptions and now, reading the most recent posts, unpleasant accusations.

mrz has also been told to 'piss off'.

She has not responded in kind, despite the personal comments about her abilities as a teacher.

It makes very unpleasant reading.

Absolutely only my last post gets anywhere near harsh MissA, and it's after considerable provocation.

Each and every post of mine so far has been measured and cool and I don't know what these 'assumptions' are that I'm supposed to have made; I've asked a couple of mild questions of mrz which haven't been answered.

There isn't a single personal comment made about mrz's abilities as a teacher .

Yellowtip I can only tell you what my reading of this is.

I give up arguing the point now. I have said several times that I think that it isn't appropriate in a primary school (that is why it is 12 rated so clearly the film classification board agree with me on that one). If you think 9 year olds can deal with the senseless murder of six million innocent people then feel free to teach it. Or perhaps you miss that bit out?

Also I think the book is crap. I don't think fiction about the Holocaust is appropriate or tasteful. Making up stuff that didn't happen is insulting to the memory of those people who actually suffered in real life there. At least the diary of Anne Frank is real and not made up.

Although I disagree with your opinion of the book as crap, I do think you raise an important point and one which has made me think hard about studying this novel. Are all fictional representations of the Holocaust insulting and exploitative? After all, we are reading or watching them for entertainment as well as education. Money is being made a reputations are being enhanced by novels and films such as BISP.

I found this quotation from Stephen Spielberg about Schindler's List, which was, I know, based on real events.

?It is blood money. Let?s call it what it is. I didn't take a single dollar from the profits I received from ?Schindler's List? because I did consider it blood money. When I first decided to make ?Schindler's List" I said, if this movie makes any profit, it can't go to me or my family, it has to go out into the world and that's what we try to do here at the Shoah Foundation. We try to teach the facts of the past to prevent another Holocaust in the future.?

On a slightly lighter note, it brought to mind Kate Winslet's appearance on Ricky Gervais' show 'Extras' when she sent herself up. She claimed to be doing a film based on the Holocaust as a sure fire way of getting an Oscar. Not long after that she actually succeeded in securing the award for her part in The Reader!

That's good to hear about Stephen Spielberg and that all profit from Schindler's List went to such an appropriate cause. Always heart warming to hear of people with integrity and humanity.

Kat, no need to argue because you've so clearly won. It's not just the BBFC in agreement, it's the Imperial War Museum, Auschwitz - really any body or anyone who knows and appreciates the enormity of what happened in Europe at that time.

Like Fullbeam I'm not sure about the book as insulting. Like Fullbeam too, Kat's point has made me question the point. And @ Juggling, the integrity and humanity that emerges from the personal accounts which come out of these atrocities are as incredible to my mind, in our soft world, as the depravity which lay behind them.

What I would say is that for those who died, in the camps and outside the camps, it devalues their deaths for primary school teachers in this country with little connection and inadequate depth of knowledge to open up the subject of the Holocaust in whatever guise, whether literacy or History, if they can't explore the subject fully and without having to shield the truth.

The full truth of what happened is sickening to adults, let alone 10 yr olds; beyond ordinary adult comprehension and not in any way a fit subject to try to score a point.

mrz, perhaps you should look at the poem 'I never Saw Another Butterfly'. And advise your secondary school colleagues to start their lesson planning from there.

The boy who wrote the poem was 11 at the time, 13 when he died in Auschwitz.

Parvel Friedman who wrote the poem was born in 1921 making him 21 when he wrote the poem

I Never Saw Another Butterfly by Pavel Friedman
The last, the very last
So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow.
Perhaps if the sun's tears would sing
against a white stone...

Such, such a yellow
Is carried lightly 'way up high.
It went away I'm sure
because it wished
to kiss the world good-bye.

For seven weeks I've lived in here,
Penned up inside this ghetto. But I have found what I love here.
The dandelions call to me
And the white chestnut branches in the court.
Only I never saw another butterfly.

That butterfly was the last one.
Butterfies don't live in here, in the ghetto.

(Written June 4, 1942, by Pavel Friedmann who was born January 7, 1921, in Prague and deported to Terezin on April 26, 1942. He died in Auschwitz on September 29, 1944.)

I prefer to use

First They Came - Pastor Martin Niemoller

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

That birthdate makes more sense, with the language, I'm glad to find that out. Not that it makes his death better of course, just the poem a scintilla less sad. I read the poem together with the poetry of those who were still children at Terezin and had thought Pavel Friedmann also to be a child, just an incredibly advanced Jewish boy, too old for his years. There was a display of children's art on display at Auschwitz when I last went, not reproduced on the internet as far as I know, but too haunting to ever forget.

I can't understand why you would prefer that poem though mrz (not sure what you mean by 'use'); the background is less than uplifting.

There were those who spoke out, or let their actions speak for them, thankfully. Extraordinary examples of heroism and dignity - which is why the memory of these people should be treated with the greatest respect.

The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust produce resources to use with KS1 including this for the Butterfly poem

education.hmd.org.uk/assets/downloads/A_colouring_activity_for_younger_children.pdf

Is this the art you mean www.slideshare.net/aahelpdesk/holocaust-butterfly

This was a small act I know, but a Jewish couple hid my grandfather when Poland was invaded from the East; he in turn hid the couple when the Germans came to Lwow from the West. At that point he smuggled their two children out of the country and onto a boat, but we don't know if the two little children survived, because they were very small and would have been travelling on false papers, so they might well be in the UK or America and not know their real name.

All three adults definitely died, one way or another.

No, I think these are the drawings reproduced in the book entitled 'I never Saw another Butterfly' which I have a copy of, but there were others not reproduced here. I wouldn't want to describe them.

The HMDT isn't advocating the introduction of the facts of genocide at all, which is what reading TBITSP necessarily involves.

I'm not sure how you jumped from a link for I Never Saw Another Butterfly on the HMDT site to teaching genocide Yellowtip...

You suggested the poem to me (stating incorrectly that it was written by an 11 year old) ...it is actually very well known poem to which I provided the words and link if others want to follow your advice.

Your insistence on point scoring is unedifying mrz. I'm always happy to learn or to be corrected. I'm glad to learn that Pavel Friedmann was that much older than I thought and I'd made the mistake about his age having first read the poem years ago in the hard copy of the anthology of children's poetry from the same place and time. An easy enough error to make and certainly not important - except by way of knowing that at least he wasn't robbed as early of his childhood as I'd previously thought, which is a very qualified good.

I see now, following your link, that the poem is widely available on the internet.

And what was the other thing you're attempting to slate me for? Oh, the HMDT link. I simply clicked on your second link first and then went back to the other. The HMDT wording is clear. No way are they advocating teaching the facts of genocide to KS1, quite the reverse.

Why the second poem though? I'd be interested to know.

I am not the one who sees this discussion as a competition Yellowtip ... you have already declared KatandKit the winner so what is your problem?

You recommended a poem that might be used in schools Yellowtip I was indicating another that is often used.

FWIW I suggested the Butterfly poem for secondary pupils because of it's particular relevance in the context of the thread to the issue of childhood.

Have you used it yourself then mrz, in your primary lessons?

I just can't believe the lack of depth.

But in what context would you use the second poem mrz, and why? And at what age? The author's story is very, very different from Pavel's.

Someone earlier in the thread (it may even have been you) said we must not lose sight that the holocaust targeted many groups and that is one of the points of the second poem. In addition it challenges the idea of it doesn't apply to me and "I'm all right"

It wasn't me but as it happens my family was one of the other targeted groups, though that much is probably obvious.

Is that really the point of the poem?