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Grade 8 Humanities Students Conclude Holocaust Unit With Yiddish Resistance Song
  • Humanities
  • Middle School

As Morah Jennifer Saba's Grade 8 Humanities students finish their extensive study of the Holocaust and Elie Wiesel's memoir, Night, they have been discussing spiritual and physical resistance and the power of the human spirit. Elie Wiesel writes that often people ask, “Why didn’t the Jews resist?” He suggests reframing the question and explains, "The question is not why all the Jews did not fight, but how so many of them did. Tormented, beaten, starved, where did they find the strength—spiritual and physical—to resist?" Students were taught the Jewish partisan song "Zog Nit Keyn Mol!" sung by the resistance during the war. They discussed how music is a form of spiritual resistance, and students said that singing together gives them a sense of belonging and community. This song carries on the memory and legacy of the Jewish spirit.