L3+Yeomelakis+Jenna

COLLEGE OF EDUCATION, HEALTH AND REHABILITATION LESSON PLAN FORMAT
 * UNIVERSITY OF MAINE AT FARMINGTON

Teacher’s Name:** Ms. Jenna Yeomelakis **Date of Lesson:** #3
 * Grade Level:** Grade 9-Diploma **Topic:** Messages of Hate

__**Objectives**__

 * Student will understand that** the Holocaust's impact was world-wide.
 * Student will know** the following key terms: propaganda, racism, prejudice, anti-semitism, discrimination, "Message of Hate", "Final Solution", Japanese Internment Camps, inferiority, superiority, minority, "Racial Science", euthanasia, genocide, Jews, homosexuals, Romas, degenerates, Nuremberg Laws, and medical experiments.
 * Student will be able to** evaluate anti-semitism/racism and how it affected the treatment and/or deaths of millions of people during the Holocaust.

__**Maine Learning Results Alignment**__
Maine Learning Results: Social Studies. E. History E1. Historical Knowledge, Concepts, Themes, and Patterns Grade 9- Diploma "Holocaust" Students understand major eras, major enduring themes, and historic influences in the United States and world history, including the roots of democratic philosophy, ideals, and institutions in the world. b. Analyze and critique major historical eras, major enduring themes, turning points, events, consequences, and people in the history of the United States and world and the implications for the present and future.


 * Rationale:** My lesson meets the needs of the Maine Learning Results because covering this lesson will give students knowledge of a major era, major events, and important people of World War II and the Holocaust. It also shows the effects that World War II, Hitler's leadership, and the Holocaust had on the world. The lesson also provides the students an opportunity to uncover the power of persuasion that modern-day leaders around the world possess.

__**Assessment**__
Students will organize class discussion notes and research into a Describing Wheel to categorize, identify, and elaborate on each term. The students will also participate in a Round-Robin Brainstorming activity to collaborate their ideas with peers in order to organize, analyze, categorize, describe, and reflect on the larger scale of racism and anti-semitism. Students will create a written story about a targeted group of victims that will be presented to the class through a Comic Life PowerPoint. Students will add supplementary information from the resources and links provided in class by the teacher. During the learning process, students will be giving each other feedback on the Comic Life stories for other groups. I will also make myself available to read the stories done by the students and provide my own feedback so that students may revise their comics before they present their product.
 * Formative (Assessment for Learning)**

Comic Life PowerPoint. Students will evaluate anti-semitism/racism and how it affected the treatment and/or deaths of millions of people during the Holocaust. After students have viewed the propaganda posters around the room, read a dramatic account from Art Spiegelman's [|Maus], and received a lesson and class discussion on each of the terms, they will then be given links and outside resources to provide further expansion on racism and anti-semitism in the Holocaust. Students will compile all of the information into a story line that will be transformed into a Comic Life PowerPoint presentation. For: Remembering the Holocaust. Product: Comic Life PowerPoint presentation. The students will pass in a hard copy of their Comic Life story that will be graded, by the individual student and also by the teacher, based on a checklist that states the required material for the product.
 * Summative (Assessment of Learning)**

__**Integration**__

 * Technology:** I will use the program Comic Life for students to create their storylines with. Students will be using the internet to find the information about the targeted victims during World War II and the Holocaust.


 * Other Content Areas:** I will be integrating the aspect of writing with the Comic Life stories about targeted victims in World War II and the Holocaust. I will also integrate art into the Comic Life stories, enabling the students to create a visual display in any form that they wish (e.g. iPhotos, clip art, google images, etc).

__Groupings__
Students will be grouped into teams of four and grouping is determined by the spinning wheel. Each student will take a turn on the spinning wheel. Whatever the arrow lands on, the student will be responsible for that group of targeted victims. However, if a group comes to a consensus and wishes to research a different targeted group of victims, then they should immediately consult with me to make the changes. Students will use the list of websites and resources to research the targeted victims and what happened to the social group during the Holocaust. To organize all of their data, students will use Describing Wheels. Each group member is assigned to research their victims and fill out three "spokes" of certain events that they had to endure. Once the groups have individually researched their three spokes, they will collaborate with each other to complete the last four spokes of what happened to the victims during the Holocaust. In each group, there will be a designated facilitator to ensure that the peers are staying on task. There will also be a recorder that will write down what the group thought was the most important situations that these certain victims went through on poster paper, so that the group can refer back to the information (this will be done during the Round-Robin Brainstorming activity). In the group, there will be a presenter who will show the class the final product. Finally, the last student in the group will be responsible for making sure that the group has a time set up to work with their group out of school and to set up with me so that they can receive constructive feedback before the final presentations are made.

__**Differentiated Instruction**__

 * Strategies**
 * Logical:** Students will research, expand on, and organize aspects of anti-semitism and racism during the Holocaust in the Describing Wheel graphic organizer.
 * Verbal/Linguistic:** Students will have the opportunity to participate in group/class discussions and the Round-Robin Brainstorming activity. Students will also have the opportunity to take the information gathered and use it to write their Comic Life stories.
 * Visual:** Students will read Art Spiegelman's comic, view the propaganda posters displayed in the classroom, and view their peers' Comic Life stories.
 * Aural:** Students will listen in on class discussions and the Round-Robin Brainstorming activity.
 * Intrapersonal:** Students will work individually to complete the Describing Wheel graphic organizer so that they can organize, analyze, reflect, and uncover the material by themselves before they dive into the group work.
 * Interpersonal:** Students will be able to participate in group discussions and the Round-Robin Brainstorming activity in order to gain differing perspectives and insights to racism and anti-semitism during the Holocaust. Students will also have the opportunity to work in groups to create their final product.
 * Physical/Body Kinesthetic:** Students will be creating their written stories on the Comic Life/PowerPoint program and students will also have the beginning of class to get up and walk around the room to view the propaganda posters displayed in the classroom.

I will review students' IEPs, 504s or ELLIDEPs and make the appropriate modifications and accommodations. If students are absent, they are responsible to get the appropriate information from the class wiki. I will have the description of the assignment as well as a brief overview of how to use the technology (in this case, Comic Life) needed to create the project. All of the daily notes will be made available on the class wiki as well as any worksheets that were handed out that day. Absent students will have one extra day past the due date to hand in the assignment. If they fail to do so, they will not receive credit for the completed assignment.
 * Modifications/Accommodations**

Students will work collaboratively to learn about the targeted social groups of World War II and the Holocaust through internet research and then produce a story. Comic Life: Students will create a Comic Life story that covers the situations and events of the Holocaust that their certain targeted group of victims had to endure. Students will evaluate the hardships and struggles of the targeted social group, the oppressors who dominated them, and the victims' dramatic after-effects of the Holocaust that they had to live with. The advanced students will also have the opportunity to research where the social group is now and have the opportunity to create a Comic Life memorial to the particular group of victims. Any student who wishes to create a memorial to a modern-day targeted group of victims (Darfur Genocide, Lost Boys of Sudan, etc.) should consult with me to receive permission to participate in this particular extension. Any child who feels uncomfortable with the original assignment will also have the choice of creating a memorial dedicated to a group of victims (if this is the case, the student should consult with me before doing so).
 * Extensions**

__**Materials, Resources and Technology**__
Laptops (with wireless internet connection and Comic Life program) Projector Projector screen Checklists Handouts of Art Spiegelman's [|Maus] Describing Wheel Graphic Organizer Propaganda Posters Propaganda poster questions Worksheet

__Source for Lesson Plan and Research__
Information on Art Spiegelman's __Maus__ http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/holocaust/spiegelman.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maus http://books.google.com/books?id=ASajL1zsziAC&dq=maus&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=KibISfKxIqPnnQeXwvWXDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=12&ct=result#PPT54,M1

Information on Holocaust propaganda http://www.ushmm.org/outreach/propag.htm http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/ http://www.teacheroz.com/WWIIpropaganda.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda

Information on racism, discrimination, and prejudice http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism http://www.ushmm.org/outreach/racism.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination

Information on anti-semitism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Semitism http://www.ushmm.org/outreach/asemit.htm http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/antisemitism/ http://www.cdn-friends-icej.ca/antiholo/summanti.html http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERantisemitism.htm

Information on "Message of Hate" http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005143

Information on Racial Science http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism

Information on Genocide in Darfur http://www.savedarfur.org/pages/background http://www.eyesondarfur.org/ http://www.darfurisdying.com/

Information on Japanese Internment Camps http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment http://www.infoplease.com/spot/internment1.html http://www.pbs.org/childofcamp/

Additional Encompassing Information (credit for providing this video game goes to Mr. Ben Kent) http://www.killzone.com/kz/index.psml

Additional Encompassing Information Resource Book: __Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior__

__**Maine Standards for Initial Teacher Certification and Rationale**__
Rationale:** This lesson demonstrates Maine Standard for Initial Teacher Certification by providing different ways for students to learn and develop. The students will use the knowledge that was taught to them at the start of the lesson and expand on it. They will use their knowledge of the internet to search for more information relating to the targeted social groups during World War II and the Holocaust. Not only will students understand the targeted groups of the Holocaust and World War II, but they will also explore the modern targeted groups (Darfur, The Lost Boys, etc).They will also learn new knowledge of the software Comic Life. The class agenda will be posted on the wiki ahead of class so that students will always know what we will be doing and what will follow each activity. This will help students who need to have organization in the classroom. Students can go as in depth as they want in their analysis of the targeted group of victims. For the creative students, the Comic Life story can be expanded with a memorial to the victims. Student can also work in teams of four, partners, or individuals; whichever is most comfortable for the student.
 * //Standard 3 - Demonstrates a knowledge of the diverse ways in which students learn and develop by providing learning opportunities that support their intellectual, physical, emotional, social, and cultural development.//

Rationale:** This lesson demonstrates Maine Standard for Initial Teacher Certification by pre-assessing the students' prior knowledge of the racial and anti-semitic practices that were exercised during World War II and the Holocaust. Students will be asked to list as many targeted social groups that they know. The lesson can be modified to fit the knowledge of the students about targeted social groups and racial science during World War II and the Holocaust. The backward design model was used in designing this unit. Students' IEPs, 504s, and ELLIDEPs will be reviewed and the appropriate modifications and accommodations will be made. The facet of understanding that I use in this unit is Evaluate. In this lesson, students will evaluate the key terms, the targeted social groups during the Holocaust, and how it affected the world. This ties into the MLR because it reiterates the racism and discrimination that affected people involved in the Holocaust, as well as the people around the world. Please see attached content notes for more specific material.
 * //Standard 4 - Plans instruction based upon knowledge of subject matter, students, curriculum goals, and learning and development theory.//

Rationale:** This lesson demonstrates the Maine Standards for Initial Teacher Certification in a variety of ways. A pre-assessment will be done to determine the current knowledge the students have of targeted victims during World War II and the Holocaust, so that the lesson may be modified to meet the students' learning needs. The students will be placed into groups and will be given background information about each targeted social group. The students will then work together in groups of four to do some research on the internet about their particular targeted victims, the situations that they had to endure, and the after-affects once the war ended. The students will be required to create a Comic Life product as a formative assessment and will be provided with a brief overview on how to use the Comic Life software. Students will have a Round-Robin Brainstorming activity to check their work with other group members to see if they are missing any required information, to collaborate the important ideas, or if they have additional questions. The students will also have the opportunity to set up a time with me to receive constructive feedback on their Comic Life story.
 * //Standard 5 - Understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies and appropriate technology to meet students’ needs.//
 * Logical:** Students will research, expand on, and organize aspects of anti-semitism and racism during the Holocaust in the Describing Wheel graphic organizer.
 * Verbal/Linguistic:** Students will have the opportunity to participate in group/class discussions and the Round-Robin Brainstorming activity. Students will also have the opportunity to take the information gathered and use it to write their Comic Life stories.
 * Visual:** Students will read the teacher's letter, read Art Spiegelman's comic, view the propaganda posters displayed in the classroom, and view their peers' Comic Life stories.
 * Aural:** Students will listen in on class discussions and the Round-Robin Brainstorming activity.
 * Intrapersonal:** Students will work individually to complete the Describing Wheel graphic organizer so that they can organize, analyze, reflect, and uncover the material by themselves before they dive into the group work.
 * Interpersonal:** Students will be able to participate in group discussions and the Round-Robin Brainstorming activity in order to gain differing perspectives and insights to racism and anti-semitism during the Holocaust. Students will also have the opportunity to work in groups to create their final product.
 * Physical/Body Kinesthetic:** Students will be creating their written stories on the Comic Life/PowerPoint program and students will also have the beginning of class to get up and walk around the room to view the propaganda posters displayed in the classroom.

Rationale:** This lesson addresses the Maine Standards for Initial Teacher Certification by documenting the students' progress in the following ways: A pre-assessment of the students' prior knowledge and a class discussion when the topic begins, so that the lesson can be modified to accommodate the students' learning needs. The teacher will make herself available to all teams so that the students are able to receive constructive feedback on their stories before class presentations. Rough drafts of the students' stories will be edited by other groups. The final Comic Life product and a hard copy of the students' stories will be used as a formative assessment to show the students' mastery of the information provided to them in class and in their research.
 * //Standard 8 - Understands and uses a variety of formal and informal assessment strategies to evaluate and support the development of the learner.//

__Teaching and Learning Sequence__
The students will enter the classroom and sit down at their desks, which are arranged in the standard lecture arrangement (circles). At the end of the lecture, students will be placed into groups of four based upon the spinning wheel. Each student will receive a turn and spin the wheel. Whatever the spinner lands on, that is the group of victims that the student will have to research.
 * Students will walk around the room to look at propaganda posters (5 min).
 * The students will briefly talk about prior knowledge of the key terms and of the targeted social groups (10 min).
 * Give a lecture/discussion on the key terms and about the racial discrimination against social groups, and explain the Comic Life stories project (35 min).
 * Select groups and make any changes to groups or group research topic (5 min).
 * Send students to their groups to start research on the particular social group and have the students fill out the Describing Wheel (Round-Robin Brainstorming activity) (25 min).
 * Day 2: Allow the students to peer edit their stories, make revisions, and allow the groups to meet with me one-on-one (80 min).
 * Day 3: Students will pass in a hard copy of their Comic Life stories and present their final product to the class.

Hitler's message of hate and propaganda led to racial discrimination that dramatically affected the outcome of World War II and the Holocaust. Students will be able to understand that the Holocaust's impact was world-wide. The reason why we're doing this today is to address the many forms of racism and propaganda, and to trace the signs and implications of roots of racism still existing today. Students will be able to assess racial science, propaganda, and discrimination that was practiced in the Holocaust in an attempt to wash out cultures and races. Students will be able to understand major eras, enduring themes, and historical influences in the Holocaust, the United States, and world history, including the roots of democratic philosophy, ideals, and institutions in the world. To engage the students in the beginning of the lesson, they will be able to walk around the classroom and see posters depicting all types of propaganda from World War II and the Holocaust. By seeing visual campaigns of hate, the students will be able to realize how anti-semitism and racism was able to infiltrate and integrate the lives of millions of people.
 * Where, Why, What, Hook**, **Tailors: Visual, Bodily Kinesthetic**

Class will begin with a brief review of what the students already know. I will start to instruct the class on the key terms and the numerous targeted social groups of World War II and the Holocaust. Not only will we discuss targeted groups in the Holocaust, but we will also be discussing the Japanese Internment Camps, the genocide in Darfur, the Lost Boys, etc. so that the students are able to see modern day influences of genocide, propaganda, and the effect it has on the world. I will provide students with a list of cultures that were targeted along with outside resources for the students to refer to about their particular victims. Following the list provided, I will have the students move their desks and collaborate with each other to discover what groups they will be working on (based on the students' choice of targeted victims). The students will fill out a Describing Wheel in a Round-Robin Brainstorming activity. The students will begin to evaluate targeted victims, situations and events that they had to endure, what happened to the social group after World War II ended, and start creating their Comic Life stories. I will act as a facilitator and walk around the room to answer clarifying questions, assess their progress, and give feedback on the students' brainstorming and idea for stories.
 * Equip, Tailors: Bodily Kinesthetic, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal**, **Aural, Linguistic, Logical**

Day 1: I will introduce to the students the project that they will be working on for this particular lesson. The students will work in groups of four and create a Comic Life story (similar to that of Art Spiegelman's __Maus)__ on the particular targeted group of victims that the students chose. I will briefly give an overview to the students on how to use the software Comic Life. I will hand out a checklist to the students for the Comic Life story product. I will explain to the students that at the end of their project, they are to fill out one checklist and to make sure that they completed every required necessity of the product. The second checklist is to be left blank for the teacher to write the final comments. I will explain to the students that they need to have a rough script of the story for the next class that I see them, so that the next class, their peers can edit the stories for them.

Day 2: Students will have the full eighty minute period to work on their Comic Life stories. The students will work with their peers to revise their scripts for the first fifteen minutes. After revisions, the students can begin to create their final product. I will write them passes to go to the library or out in the hallway to quietly work on their final product. I will also open myself up to any questions the groups may have about Comic Life and the information they are providing. Students will be advised to take full advantage of this work period so they may complete their Comic Life story presentation.
 * Explore, Experience, Revise, Rethink, Refine, Tailors: Intrapersonal, Interpersonal, Linguistic****,**

The students will self-assess each others' work by exchanging stories with another group and providing feedback on them. I will meet with each group and have them explain to me how they are going to go about their Comic Life stories and what they are planning on covering for material. Each group will be allowed to revise their stories and make as many refinements as needed before the final presentations. They may tag links to valuable websites in their [|Delicious] account.

Day 3: The students will be required to have their Comic Life story PowerPoint presentations and a hard copy of their stories completed for homework.
 * Revise, Refine, Rehearse, Tailors: Spatial, Bodily-Kinesthetic, Intrapersonal, Interpersonal****,** **Aural**


 * Content Notes**

Spiegelman's //Maus//: The Intentional Subversion of Genre and Cultural Norm
Art Spiegelman first published parts of //MAUS// in the magazine //Raw// between 1980-1991. Volumes I and II of the book //Maus: A Survivor's Tale// appeared in 1986 ("My Father Blleds History") and 1991 ("And Here my Troubles began"). //Maus// is the use of a traditionally "low" genre -- the comic strip or book --for serious, grave material. It is a conscious, intentional inversion of a norm, a hierarchy, a cultural order. It is a very "strong" (in the Bloomian sense) rereading of one survivor's tale and the transmission or testimony of this tale to the son; it is at the same time a strong revamping or reconsideration of the generic possibilites of the "comic" itself. The reduction of the players to cats (the Nazis). mice (the Jews), pigs (the Poles) and other national stereotypes offers a conscious, intentional miniaturization and reduction, pointing up not merely the process of compression, simplification and devaluation not merely of the Nazi's practices before and during the Holocaust, but the reduction and simplification present in many "responses" to the Holocaust aswell. In this way, Spiegelman literalizes the call for //petits recits// so prevalent in postmodern discourse today, especially in the writings of [| Jean-Francois Lyotard]. On another level, there are multiple narratives and //kinds// of texts in //Maus//: in addition to images, dialogue boxes, and commentary, we find maps of Poland and the Camps, diagrams of hideouts, real photographs from the family archive, detailed plans of the crematoria, an exchange table for goods in Auschwitz, and a manual for shoe-repair. Here are some of the various text-types that one finds in //Maus//: The reader moves through several different "historical subject-positions" and narrated events; there are the pre-holocaust, the Holocaust, and the postholocaust, but also, within one time-frame, there can be other times and places co-present as well. //Maus// thus juxtaposes and intertwines past and present, the different subject histories of each protagonist, and the very different cultural contexts of Nazi occupied Poland and Rego Park, New York. The very title of the books is a powerful reworking of the convention: Maus rewrites the cultural norm and invents a new discursive space to address the questions of Jewish trauma, guilt, shame and, perhaps most importantly, the transmission of these conflicts from one generation to the next, especially in the case that they are not sufficently worked-through. //Maus// encompasses many small narratives: not merely the story of Vladek (Artie's Father) and Anje (Artie's Mother, who committed suicide after surviving Auschwitz and coming to America), but of Artie himself in his struggle to understand his family origins and himself. It addresses the constant resurfacing of a traumatic and "unmastered" past on a number of levels: the death of his brother, Richieu, of a poison given to him by the woman who was taking care of him as they were about to be sent to Auschwitz to be gassed, the suicide of his mother in 1968, and the murder of the European Jews. This is perhaps nowhere more evident than at the end of Volume I "My Father Bleeds History," where Artie asks Vladek for Antje's diaries. Vladek first tells Artie that the Diaries are gone, and then finally remembers that he himself had destroyed them -- burned them to be exact -- in the depths of depression. Vladek not only burned the diaries -- in a ironic enactment of Nazi Book-Burning -- but he sadistically adds salt to the wound when he tells Artie: "I looked in, but I don't remember [...] Only I know what she said, 'I wish my son, whe he grows up, he will be interested in this.'" Artie, who himself suffered a depression after his mother's suicide, calls Vladek a "murderer," unable himself to understand Vladek's action as itself an act of acting out the legacy of the Holocaust. In this transmission circuit, Artie is tied to his father, and we see this played out in //Maus// in his complete dependence on Vladek for the narrative of his own story. The "broken" relationship between Artie, Vladek, and this unmastered past is exemplified in the broken relationship Artie has to his own Jewish heritage. In //Maus I//, Vladek is in a German work-camp and has a dream in which his dead Grandfather comes to him and tells him that he will leave this place and go home to his wife and child on Parshas Truma. Artie then asks his father what Parshas is, unaware of the symbolic and literal meaning of this in his life and in Jewish tradition. His father then explains to him the meaning of Parshas Truma, the specific week in which a particular section of the Torah is read. It turns out that this was the week he had married Anja, and the week Artie had his Bar-Mitzvah. In this time frame, Vladek actually does get to leave the camp and see his wife and child. The broken circuit is thus restored in the text precisely because of Artie's interest in the narrative and the construction of the text //Maus// itself. But the evidence of a failure in the transmission of culture and tradition, the traces of this broken connection to the past and to history is present to the extent that Artie must now relearn this complex history. //Maus// is allegorical, not merely to the extent that it treats the individuals as figures in a much more complex and global story, but insofar as its very textual structure is comparable to the allegorical structure of the emblem, with a graphic image elucidating the text, as well as a superscript expressing the "topic" or "theme," the actual statements of the individuals in the frame, and often a subscript containing unconscious thoughts or afterthoughts. In //Maus//, the image is never left to stand alone, but is always caught up in the differential between narrative, image, dialogue and reflection. In this manner, an opening or aperture for critical thinking on the transmission of past trauma is created. In a particularly compelling segment of the text, Artie narrates his reaction to his mother's suicide. A comic book within the comic book //Maus// entitled "Prisoner on the Hell Planet: A Case History," this text-within-the-text recounts Artie's own incomplete or failed attempt to work through the trauamatic loss of his mother, his own melancholic and masochistic tendencies to internalize the dysfunction of his family and his mother's depression, and the degree to which his writing bears the mark of that loss and is itself a type of working-through in its own right. The subtitle "A Case History" mocks the case history in psychoanalysis, in which the patient is "cured" of the incessant return of the traumatic past through rigorous therapeutic intervention. In "Prisoner from the Hell Planet," there isn't any easy closure, and the suffering individual remains captive in the prison of his own masochistic melancholia, the jail cell of his own wounded self, not really understanding the unconscious connection to the melancholia of the mother and the unconscious identification with the damaged father. Traversing the breach between past and present, Father and Son, language and image, manifest and latent, Spiegelman's //Maus// bears witness to the process of bearing witness, and the technical and technological requirement of writing and tape-recording in order to produce a narrative of the trauma and thereby alleviate the symptomology of depression and withdrawl that is the danger of a past left to fester as an unhealed wound. Paul Celan's essay [|Meridien] states that every piece of authentic writing has a date and a place: it speaks a specificity, and in that specificty it gestures towards an Other. Spiegelman's //Maus//, in transmitting the story of the father through the son, does not avoid or gloss over any of the difficulties entailed in working-through trauma, which, as we know, always brings with it some degree of "acting-out". //Maus// enacts the difficulty of working through a traumatic historical past that defies attempts at mastery, and is a visceral presentation of the postmodern fragmented self struggling to come to terms with this damaged and wounded history in a conscious manner. //Maus II// ends with the reunification of Vladek and Anja after Auschwitz. In the final scene, Vladek tells Artie he is tired of talking: "I'm tired from talking, Richieu, and it is enough stories for now." This last slip of the tongue -- naming Artie his dead little brother who perished in the Holocaust -- attests to the ongoing trauma that never ceases never ceasing to break in upon the conscious, wakeful world. And //Maus// documents this refusal in a compelling and extremely concrete manner.

Nazi Propaganda and Censorship
Once they succeeded in ending democracy and turning Germany into a one-party dictatorship, the [|Nazis] orchestrated a massive propaganda campaign to win the loyalty and cooperation of Germans. The Nazi Propaganda Ministry, directed by [|Dr. Joseph Goebbels], took control of all forms of communication in Germany: newspapers, magazines, books, public meetings, and rallies, art, music, movies, and radio. Viewpoints in any way threatening to Nazi beliefs or to the regime were censored or eliminated from all media. During the spring of 1933, Nazi student organizations, professors, and librarians made up long lists of books they thought should not be read by Germans. Then, on the night of May 10, 1933, Nazis raided libraries and bookstores across Germany. They marched by torchlight in nighttime parades, sang chants, and threw books into huge bonfires.On that night more than 25,000 books were burned. Some were works of Jewish writers, including Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. Most of the books were by non-Jewish writers, including such famous Americans as Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, and Sinclair Lewis, whose ideas the Nazis viewed as different from their own and therefore not to be read. The Nazi censors also burned the books of Helen Keller, who had overcome her deafness and blindness to become a respected writer; told of the book burnings, she responded: "Tyranny cannot defeat the power of ideas." Hundreds of thousands of people in the United States protested the book burnings, a clear violation of freedom of speech, in public rallies in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and St. Louis. Schools also played an important role in spreading Nazi ideas. While some books were removed from classrooms by censors, other textbooks, newly written, were brought in to teach students blind obedience to the party, love for Hitler, and [|antisemitism]. After-school meetings of the Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls trained children to be faithful to the Nazi party. In school and out, young people celebrated such occasions as Adolf Hitler's birthday and the anniversary of his taking power.

Nazi Racism
For years before Adolf Hitler became [|chancellor] of Germany, he was obsessed with ideas about race. In his speeches and writings, Hitler spread his beliefs in racial "purity" and in the superiority of the "Germanic race" -- what he called an [|Aryan] "master race." He pronounced that his race must remain pure in order to one day take over the world. For Hitler, the ideal "Aryan" was blond, blue-eyed, and tall. When Hitler and the [|Nazis] came to power, these beliefs became the government ideology and were spread in publicly displayed posters, on the radio, in movies, in classrooms, and in newspapers. The Nazis began to put their ideology into practice with the support of German scientists who believed that the human race could be improved by limiting the reproduction of people considered "inferior." Beginning in 1933, German physicians were allowed to perform forced sterilizations, operations making it impossible for the victims to have children. Among the targets of this public program were Roma ([|Gypsies]), an ethnic minority numbering about 30,000 in Germany, and handicapped individuals, including the mentally ill and people born deaf and blind. Also victimized were about 500 African-German children, the offspring of German mothers and African colonial soldiers in the Allied armies that occupied the German [|Rhineland] region after World War I. Hitler and other Nazi leaders viewed the Jews not as a religious group, but as a poisonous "race," which "lived off" the other races and weakened them. After Hitler took power, Nazi teachers in school classrooms began to apply the "principles" of racial science. They measured skull size and nose length, and recorded the color of their pupils' hair and eyes to determine whether students belonged to the true "Aryan race." Jewish and Romani (Gypsy) students were often humiliated in the process.

Antisemitism
//Antisemitism// is a starting place for trying to understand the tragedy that would befall countless numbers of people during the Holocaust. Throughout history Jews have faced prejudice and discrimination, known as [|antisemitism]. Driven nearly two thousand years ago by the Romans from the land now called Israel, they spread throughout the globe and tried to retain their unique beliefs and culture while living as a minority. In some countries Jews were welcomed, and they enjoyed long periods of peace with their neighbors. In European societies where the population was primarily Christian, Jews found themselves increasingly isolated as outsiders. Jews do not share the Christian belief that Jesus is the Son of God, and many Christians considered this refusal to accept Jesus' divinity as arrogant. For centuries the Church taught that Jews were responsible for Jesus' death, not recognizing, as most historians do today, that Jesus was executed by the Roman government because officials viewed him as a political threat to their rule. Added to religious conflicts were economic ones. Rulers placed restrictions on Jews, barring them from holding certain jobs and from owning land. At the same time, since the early Church did not permit //usury// (lending money at interest), Jews came to fill the vital (but unpopular) role of moneylenders for the Christian majority. In more desperate times, Jews became [|scapegoats] for many problems people suffered. For example, they were blamed for causing the "Black Death," the plague that killed thousands of people throughout Europe during the Middle Ages. In Spain in the 1400s, Jews were forced to convert to Christianity, leave the country, or be executed. In Russia and Poland in the late 1800s the government organized or did not prevent violent attacks on Jewish neighborhoods, called //pogroms//, in which mobs murdered Jews and looted their homes and stores. As ideas of political equality and freedom spread in western Europe during the 1800s, Jews became almost equal citizens under the law. At the same time, however, new forms of antisemitism emerged. European leaders who wanted to establish colonies in Africa and Asia argued that whites were superior to other races and therefore had to spread and take over the "weaker" and "less civilized" races. Some writers applied this argument to Jews, too, mistakenly defining Jews as a race of people called Semites who shared common blood and physical features. This kind of racial antisemitism meant that Jews remained Jews by race even if they converted to Christianity. Some politicians began using the idea of racial superiority in their campaigns as a way to get votes. Karl Lueger (1844-1910) was one such politician. He became Mayor of Vienna, Austria, at the end of the century through the use of antisemitism -- he appealed to voters by blaming Jews for bad economic times. Lueger was a hero to a young man named Adolf Hitler, who was born in Austria in 1889. Hitler's ideas, including his views of Jews, were shaped during the years he lived in Vienna, where he studied Lueger's tactics and the antisemitic newspapers and pamphlets that multiplied during Lueger's long rule. During the era of the Holocaust, German authorities also targeted other groups because of their perceived "racial inferiority": [|Roma] (Gypsies), the disabled, and some of the Slavic peoples ([|Poles], Russians, and others). Other groups were persecuted on political, ideological, and behavioral grounds, among them Communists, Socialists, [|Jehovah's Witnesses], and [|homosexuals]. ||  ||
 * The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. "Holocaust" is a word of Greek origin meaning "sacrifice by fire." The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were "racially superior" and that the Jews, deemed "inferior," were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community.

The Holocaust [|See maps] ||  In 1933, the [|Jewish population of Europe] stood at over nine million. Most European Jews lived in countries that Nazi Germany would occupy or influence during [|World War II]. By 1945, the Germans and their [|collaborators] killed nearly two out of every three European Jews as part of the "[|Final Solution]," the Nazi policy to murder the Jews of Europe. Although Jews, whom the Nazis deemed a priority danger to Germany, were the primary victims of Nazi racism, other victims included some 200,000 Roma (Gypsies). At least 200,000 mentally or physically disabled patients, mainly Germans, living in institutional settings, were murdered in the so-called [|Euthanasia Program]. As Nazi tyranny spread across Europe, the Germans and their collaborators persecuted and murdered millions of other people. Between two and three million [|Soviet prisoners of war] were murdered or died of starvation, disease, neglect, or maltreatment. The Germans targeted the non-Jewish Polish intelligentsia for killing, and deported millions of Polish and Soviet civilians for [|forced labor] in Germany or in occupied [|Poland], where these individuals worked and often died under deplorable conditions. From the earliest years of the Nazi regime, German authorities persecuted homosexuals and others whose behavior did not match prescribed social norms. German police officials targeted thousands of political opponents (including Communists, Socialists, and trade unionists) and religious dissidents (such as Jehovah's Witnesses). Many of these individuals died as a result of incarceration and maltreatment. || ||
 * ||  || [[image:http://www.ushmm.org/lcmedia/animatedmap/wlc/image/hol.gif width="140" height="88" link="http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/media_nm.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005143&MediaId=3372"]]

[|Personal stories] ||  ||  ||   || Karel Bruml's concentration camp cap ||^  ||
 * [[image:http://www.ushmm.org/lcmedia/artifact/wlc/image/1998wr96.jpg width="240" height="179" link="http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/media_da.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005143&MediaId=119"]] ||  ||   || The elder of two daughters born to a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, ...
 * ^  || [|See more artifacts]


 * || In the early years of the [|Nazi regime], the National Socialist government established [|concentration camps] to detain real and imagined political and ideological opponents. Increasingly in the years before the outbreak of war, SS and police officials incarcerated Jews, Roma, and other victims of ethnic and racial hatred in these camps. To concentrate and monitor the Jewish population as well as to facilitate later deportation of the Jews, the Germans and their collaborators created [|ghettos], transit camps, and forced-labor camps for Jews during the war years. The German authorities also established numerous forced-labor camps, both in the so-called Greater German Reich and in German-occupied territory, for non-Jews whose labor the Germans sought to exploit. ||  ||

In the final months of the war, SS guards moved camp inmates by train or on forced marches, often called “[|death marches],” in an attempt to prevent the Allied liberation of large numbers of prisoners. As Allied forces moved across Europe in a series of offensives against Germany, they began to encounter and [|liberate] concentration camp prisoners, as well as prisoners en route by forced march from one camp to another. The marches continued until May 7, 1945, the day the German armed forces surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. For the western Allies, World War II officially ended in Europe on the next day, May 8 (V-E Day), while Soviet forces announced their “Victory Day” on May 9, 1945. In the [|aftermath] of the Holocaust, many of the survivors found shelter in [|displaced persons] (DP) camps administered by the Allied powers. Between 1948 and 1951, almost 700,000 Jews emigrated to Israel, including 136,000 Jewish displaced persons from Europe. Other Jewish DPs emigrated to the United States and other nations. The last DP camp closed in 1957. The crimes committed during the Holocaust devastated most European Jewish communities and eliminated hundreds of Jewish communities in occupied eastern Europe entirely. ||
 * || Following the [|invasion of the Soviet Union] in June 1941, [|Einsatzgruppen] (mobile killing units) and, later, militarized battalions of Order Police officials, moved behind German lines to carry out mass-murder operations against Jews, Roma, and Soviet state and Communist Party officials. German SS and police units, supported by units of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS, murdered more than a million Jewish men, women, and children, and hundreds of thousands of others. Between 1941 and 1944, Nazi German authorities deported millions of Jews from Germany, from occupied territories, and from the countries of many of its Axis allies to ghettos and to [|killing centers], often called extermination camps, where they were murdered in specially developed [|gassing facilities].


 * Scientific racism** denotes the use of scientific, or ostensibly scientific, findings and methods to support or validate [|racist] attitudes and worldviews. It is based on belief in the existence and significance of racial categories, but extends this into a hierarchy between the races to support political or ideological positions of [|racial supremacy]. Scientific racism can refer to both [|obsolete] and contemporary scientific theories, and includes the use of [|anthropology] (notably [|physical anthropology]), [|anthropometry], [|craniometry], and other disciplines in the construction of [|typologies] and the classification of humans into distinct biological races. Scientific racism was most widespread during the [|New Imperialism] period in the second half of the 19th century. These theories often worked in conjunction with [|racism], for example in the case of "[|human zoos]", in which human beings of various races were presented in cages during [|colonial exhibitions]. Such theories, and associated actions, have been strongly denounced since [|World War II] and the [|Holocaust], in particular by a 1950 [|UNESCO] statement, signed by an international group of scholars, known as //[|The Race Question]//.[|[][|1][|]] Today, the phrase is used either as an accusation, or to describe what critics consider to be historical racist [|propaganda] alleging the existence of different races. These critics point to //The Race Question//, which advocates the use of the more precise term "[|ethnic group]". The phrase "scientific racism" has been applied retroactively to publications on race as far back as the 18th century. Such theories, which often postulated a "[|master race]", usually "[|Nordic]" and "[|Aryan]", were along with [|eugenics], pioneered by [|Sir Francis Galton] (among others) and popularized at the turn of the 20th century, a [|main influence] of the [|Nazi racial policies] and their [|program of eugenics]. [|Galton] developed the [|science] of [|Eugenics] whose primary concept was "control" and promotion of quantification and analytical measurements of "desirable traits" so as to set a guide on how to obtain the "truly proper breeding". [|[][|2][|]] However, this was not necessarily a continuous relationship, as several influential authors of [|Nazism] were not themselves [|anti-semitic]. Quite to the contrary, [|Arthur de Gobineau] (1816–82), for example, was a [|philo-semite] who placed the "[|Jewish] race" above all. Thus, although his racial theories largely influenced Nazi ideologies, they had to adapt him to suit their mindset. Apart from Gobineau's 1853 //[|The Inequality of Human Races]//,[|[][|3][|]] other scientific racist works that largely influenced Nazism include [|Francis Galton]’s 1870 //Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into Its Laws and Consequences//,[|[][|4][|]] [|Madison Grant]’s 1916/1924 //[|The Passing of the Great Race]//[|[][|5][|]] and [|Lothrop T. Stoddard]’s 1920 //[|The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy]//[|[][|6][|]] For the most part, however, scientific racism is a pejorative label sometimes given to modern theories or arguments that allege that [|scientific evidence] shows significant [|evolutionary] differences between races or [|ethnic groups]. In this sense, the term is used to criticize modern studies of [|human genetics] or studies claiming to show a link between [|race and intelligence], as well as hierarchically classifying races, hence asserting the superiority or inferiority of specific ones. Critics of such studies assert that both "race" and "intelligence" are [|fuzzy concepts].

President [|Franklin Roosevelt] authorized the internment with [|Executive Order 9066] on February 19, 1942, which allowed local military commanders to designate "military areas" as "exclusion zones", from which "any or all persons may be excluded." This power was used to declare that all people of Japanese ancestry were excluded from the entire Pacific coast, including all of California and most of Oregon and Washington, except for those in internment camps.[|[7]] In 1944, the [|Supreme Court] upheld the constitutionality of the exclusion orders,[|[8]] while noting that the provisions that singled out people of Japanese ancestry were a separate issue outside the scope of the proceedings.[|[9]] In 1988, [|Congress] passed and [|President] [|Ronald Reagan] signed legislation which apologized for the internment on behalf of the [|U.S. government]. The legislation stated that government actions were based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership".[|[10]] About $1.6 billion in [|reparations] were later disbursed by the U.S. government to surviving internees and their heirs.[|[11]]
 * Japanese American internment** refers to the forcible relocation and [|internment] of approximately 110,000 [|Japanese nationals] and [|Japanese Americans] to housing facilities called "War Relocation Camps", in the wake of [|Imperial Japan]'s attack on [|Pearl Harbor].[|[1]][|[2]] The internment of Japanese Americans was applied unequally throughout the United States. Japanese Americans residing on the [|West Coast of the United States] were all interned, whereas in [|Hawaii], where over 150,000 Japanese Americans composed nearly a third of that [|territory]'s population, an additional 1,200[|[3]] to 1,800 Japanese Americans were interned.[|[4]] Of those interned, 62 percent were [|United States] citizens.[|[5]][|[6]]

=Japanese Relocation Centers=

by Ricco Villanueva Siasoco and Shmuel Ross
On February 19, 1942, soon after the beginning of World War II, [|Franklin D. Roosevelt] signed Executive Order 9066. The evacuation order commenced the round-up of 120,000 Americans of Japanese heritage to one of 10 internment camps—officially called "relocation centers"—in California, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arkansas.

Why Were the Camps Established?
Roosevelt's executive order was fueled by anti-Japanese sentiment among farmers who competed against Japanese labor, politicians who sided with anti-Japanese constituencies, and the general public, whose frenzy was heightened by the Japanese attack of [|Pearl Harbor]. More than 2/3 of the Japanese who were interned in the spring of 1942 were citizens of the United States.

Similar Orders in Canada
In [|Canada], similar evacuation orders were established. Nearly 23,000 //Nikkei//, or Canadians of Japanese descent, were sent to camps in British Columbia. It was the greatest mass movement in the history of Canada. Though families were generally kept together in the United States, Canada sent male evacuees to work in road camps or on sugar beet projects. Women and children //Nikkei// were forced to move to six inner British Columbia towns.

Conditions in the U.S. Camps
The U.S. internment camps were overcrowded and provided poor living conditions. According to a 1943 report published by the War Relocation Authority (the administering agency), Japanese Americans were housed in "tarpaper-covered barracks of simple frame construction without plumbing or cooking facilities of any kind." Coal was hard to come by, and internees slept under as many blankets as they were alloted. Food was rationed out at an expense of 48 cents per internee, and served by fellow internees in a mess hall of 250-300 people. Leadership positions within the camps were only offered to the //Nisei//, or American-born, Japanese. The older generation, or the //Issei//, were forced to watch as the government promoted their children and ignored them. Eventually the government allowed internees to leave the concentration camps if they enlisted in the U.S. Army. This offer was not well received. Only 1,200 internees chose to do so.

Legal Challenges to Internment
Two important legal cases were brought against the United States concerning the internment. The landmark cases were [|//Hirabayashi//] v. //United States// (1943), and [|//Korematsu//] v. //United States// (1944). The defendants argued their fifth amendment rights were violated by the U.S. government because of their ancestry. In both cases, the [|Supreme Court] ruled in favor of the U.S. government.

Closure of the Camps
In 1944, two and a half years after signing Executive Order 9066, fourth-term President Franklin D. Roosevelt rescinded the order. The last internment camp was closed by the end of 1945.

Government Apologies and Reparations
Forced into confinement by the United States, 5,766 //Nisei// ultimately renounced their American citizenship. In 1968, nearly two dozen years after the camps were closed, the government began reparations to Japanese Americans for property they had lost. In 1988, the U.S. Congress passed legislation which awarded formal payments of $20,000 each to the surviving internees�60,000 in all. This same year, formal apologies were also issued by the government of Canada to Japanese Canadian survivors, who were each repaid the sum of $21,000 Canadian dollars.

Other Groups in the Camps
While Japanese-Americans comprised the overwhelming majority of those in the camps, thousands of Americans of German, Italian, and other European descent were also forced to relocate there. Many more were classified as "enemy aliens" and subject to increased restrictions. As of 2004, the U.S. Government has made no formal apology or reparations to those affected.

The **War in Darfur** is a conflict that is in the [|Darfur] region of western [|Sudan]. Unlike the [|Second Sudanese Civil War], the current lines of conflict are seen by some reporters (such as those with USA Today and Slate magazine) to be ethnic, rather than religious.[|[6]] However, a [|United Nations] report[|[7]] states that the various tribes under attack by the Sudanese troops and [|Janjaweed] (chiefly the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa tribes) do not appear to have a distinct ethnicity from their attackers. There is controversy over whether or not the conflict involves a [|genocide]. (See the [|list of genocide declarations] and the following list of statements opposing such declarations, below.) One side of the armed conflicts is composed mainly of the [|Sudanese military] and the [|Janjaweed], a Sudanese [|militia] group recruited mostly from the [|Afro-Arab] [|Abbala] tribes of the northern [|Rizeigat] region in Sudan. They are mainly camel-herding [|nomads]. The other side comprises a variety of rebel groups, notably the [|Sudan Liberation Movement/Army] and the [|Justice and Equality Movement], recruited primarily from the land-tilling non-Arab [|Fur], [|Zaghawa], and [|Masalit] ethnic groups. The [|Sudanese government], while publicly denying that it supports the [|Janjaweed], is accused of providing money and assistance to the militia and has participated in joint attacks targeting the tribes from which the rebels draw support.[|[8]][|[9]] The conflict began in February 2003. Since the start of the conflict, about 450,000 people have been killed, and 3,000,000 people have been displaced.

Causes
The combination of decades of [|drought], [|desertification], and [|overpopulation] are among the causes of the Darfur conflict. The [|pastoralist] [|Baggara] nomads searching for water have to take their livestock farther south, and this causes conflict in land primarily occupied by [|Black African] farming communities. [|[10]] There are many estimates of the number of human casualties. Reports of violent deaths compiled by the UN indicate between 6000 and 7000 fatalities from 2004 to 2007.[|[11]] According to Sudanese authorities, about 9000 civilians have been killed. [|[12]] Some [|non-governmental organizations] claim 200,000 to more than 500,000 people have been killed; the latter is a figure from the [|Coalition for International Justice].[|[13]] As many as 2.5 million people are thought to have been [|displaced] as of October 2006.[|[14]] (//see [|Mortality Figures] section, below//). AU: [|African Union] DLF: [|Darfur Liberation Front] ICC: [|International Criminal Court] IDP: [|Internally Displaced Person] JEM: [|Justice and Equality Movement] SLA: [|Sudan Liberation Army] SLM: [|Sudan Liberation Movement] SPLA: [|Sudan People's Liberation Army] UN: [|United Nations] UNAMID: [|United Nations African Union Mission in Darfur] UNSC: [|United Nations Security Council] ||
 * List of abbreviations used in this article

The Sudanese government has been accused of suppressing information by killing witnesses since 2004, and tampering with evidence (such as [|mass graves]) to eliminate their probative value.[|[15]][|[16]][|[17]] In addition, by obstructing and arresting journalists, the Sudanese government has been able to obscure much of what has gone on.[|[18]][|[19]][|[20]][|[21]] While the [|United States government] has described the conflict as [|genocide],[|[22]] the UN has continuously stopped short of using such language.[|[7]] (//see [|List of declarations of genocide in Darfur]//). In March 2007 the UN mission accused Sudan's government of orchestrating and taking part in "gross violations" in Darfur and called for urgent international action to protect civilians there. After fighting stopped in July and August, on 31 August 2006, the [|United Nations Security Council] approved [|Resolution 1706] which called for a new 26,000-troop UN [|peacekeeping] force called [|UNAMID] to supplant or supplement a poorly funded and ill-equipped 7,000-troop [|African Union] [|Mission in Sudan peacekeeping force]. Sudan strongly objected to the resolution and said that it would see the UN forces in the region as foreign invaders. The next day, the Sudanese military launched a major offensive in the region. On 14 July 2008, prosecutors at the [|International Criminal Court] (ICC), filed ten charges of [|war crimes] against Sudan's President [|Omar al-Bashir], charges that included three counts of genocide, five of [|crimes against humanity], and two of murder. The ICC's prosecutors have claimed that al-Bashir "masterminded and implemented a plan to destroy in substantial part" three tribal groups in Darfur because of their ethnicity. The ICC's prosecutor for Darfur, [|Luis Moreno-Ocampo], asked a panel of ICC judges to issue an arrest warrant for al-Bashir.[|[23]] The ICC prosecutor's indictment has drawn widespread international criticism.[|[24]]. The warrant was issued on March 4, 2009 and has caused many concerns that this could further divide the opposing groups. Omar al-Bashir responded with a statement in which he denied any involvement.[|[25]]  Main article: [|Timeline of the War in Darfur] A rebellion started in 2003 against the Arab-dominated Sudanese government, with two local rebel groups — the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLA) — accusing the government of oppressing non-Arabs in favor of Arabs. The government was also accused of neglecting the Darfur for a [|Commission of Inquiry on Darfur] to assess the Sudanese conflict. On 31 January 2005, the UN released a 176-page report saying that while there were mass murders and rapes of Darfurian civilians, they could not label the atrocities as "genocide" because "genocidal intent appears to be missing".[|[26]][|[27]] Many activists, however, refer to the crisis in Darfur as genocide, including the [|Save Darfur Coalition] and the [|Genocide Intervention Network]. These organizations point to statements by former [|United States Secretary of State] [|Colin Powell], referring to the conflict as genocide. Other activist organizations, such as [|Amnesty International], while calling for international intervention, avoid the use of the term genocide. In May 2006 [|Minni Minnawi]'s faction of the main rebel group, the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army, agreed to a draft peace agreement with the Sudanese government. The other faction of the SLM, led by [|Abdul Wahid al Nur], the founding leader of SLM, refrained from signing the agreement. On 5 May, the agreement, drafted in [|Abuja], [|Nigeria], was signed by Minnawi's faction and the Sudanese government. In February 2009 the [|Justice and Equality Movement] planned a ceasefire with the Sudan government within the next three months.

United Nations
UN Security Council chamber Sudan's government has "orchestrated and participated in" war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur, according to a report by UN investigators on the 6th of June 2005. The report to the [|UN Human Rights Council] said the situation in Darfur is "characterized by gross and systematic violations of human rights and grave breaches of [|international law]".[|[29]] It called for the UN Security Council to take "urgent" action to protect Darfur's civilians, including the deployment of a joint UN/African Union force and the freezing of funds and assets owned by officials complicit in the attacks.[|[30]] During the American Presidential Election campaign of 2008, Democratic nominee and ultimate winner Barack Obama said he would provide helicopters and logistics support to the AU. An estimated three million people have been displaced and more than 200,000 have been killed since 2003. A peace deal was signed May 2006 by the government but by only one of the main rebel groups. The rest refused and the violence has only increased. The head of the UN investigating team, the [|Nobel Peace laureate] [|Jody Williams], described the international response to the crisis as "pathetic". The [|United States], [|Britain] and the [|European Union] have repeatedly condemned the atrocities but have failed to carry out any of their numerous threats. The US referred to the killings as genocide in 2004, while in 2006, [|Tony Blair] said the situation was "completely unacceptable" and called for "urgent action". None of the resolutions passed by the Security Council regarding Darfur have been implemented. Attempts to negotiate ceasefires and peace deals have been sporadic and piecemeal. A [|US Democratic] presidential candidate [|Bill Richardson] met President Omar al-Bashir in [|Khartoum] in January. He left trumpeting a 60-day [|ceasefire] he had persuaded Mr Bashir to agree to. Within the week Sudanese planes were again dropping bombs in Darfur. Some 7,000 African Union troops are operating in Darfur but their limited resources and mandate has made it all but impossible for them to protect civilians. The force's 150 translators are on strike because they have not been paid since November. A deal appeared to have been struck last November that would have allowed the AU mission to be strengthened into a 22,000-strong combined UN/AU force. However, President Bashir appears to have reneged on the agreement. [|Jan Pronk], who was the head of the UN mission in Sudan until he was unceremoniously kicked out of the country by the Khartoum government, said Sudan had realized it could "get away with anything". In a recent posting on his [|blog], Mr Pronk wrote that the Sudanese authorities have continued to "disregard Security Council resolutions, to break international agreements, to violate human rights and to feed and allow attacks on their own citizens. They could do all this without having to fear consequences. On the contrary, the Council and its members and the rest of the international community have been taken for a ride." The Human Rights Council team faced similar problems. President Bashir promised [|UN secretary general], [|Ban Ki-moon], that Sudan would co-operate fully with the inquiry, including granting access to Darfur. But despite more than a dozen attempts by the UN team to apply for visas, Khartoum refused to allow them into the country. Instead they travelled to eastern Chad where more than 230,000 Darfuri refugees have fled. The conflict has followed the refugees over the border, with Chadian Arabs - backed by Sudanese Janjaweed militia - attacking black tribes inside Chad. A mounted [|Janjaweed] miltiaman. In January 2005, the UN Secretary-General's International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur issued a well documented report that indicated that there was by then already some 1.6 million internally displaced persons as a result of the ongoing violence, more than 200,000 refugees from Darfur into neighbouring Chad, and that Government forces and allied militia had committed widespread and consistent war crimes and crimes against humanity including murder, torture, mass rape, summary executions and arbitrary detention. The Commission found that technically there was not a genocide in the legal sense of the term but that massive violations of human rights and humanitarian law were continuing. The Commission also found that the Janjaweed militia operated alongside or with ground or air logistical support from the Government's armed forces. [//[|citation needed]//] In early 2007, a High Level Mission on the situation of human rights in Darfur was set up to look into reports of ongoing violations and to try to work with the Government of the Sudan to put a stop to the atrocities. The Mission was led by Nobel Prize Winner Jody Williams and included a number of diplomats and human rights practitioners. The Mission travelled to [|Ethiopia] and Chad but it was never admitted into Sudanese territory itself because the Government refused to issue visas to the Mission. As a result, the High Level Mission could only collect information and in its report of March 2007, it underlined the Government's responsibility to protect civilians in Darfur, noting with regret the Government's abject failure to fulfill this responsibility. [//[|citation needed]//] [|[31]][|[32]][|[33]]  =Genocide in Darfur, Sudan=  About the size of Texas, the Darfur region of Sudan is home to racially mixed tribes of settled peasants, who identify as African, and nomadic herders, who identify as Arab. The majority of people in both groups are Muslim. In the ongoing genocide, African farmers and others in Darfur are being systematically displaced and murdered at the hands of the Janjaweed, a government-supported militia recruited from local Arab tribes. **The genocide in Darfur has claimed 400,000 lives and displaced over 2,500,000 people. More than one hundred people continue to die each day; five thousand die every month.** Government neglect has left people throughout Sudan poor and voiceless and has caused conflict throughout the country. In February 2003, frustrated by poverty and neglect, two Darfurian rebel groups launched an uprising against the Khartoum government. The government responded with a scorched-earth campaign, enlisting the help of a militia of Arab nomadic tribes in the region against the innocent civilians of Darfur. Americans have a particularly important role to play in supporting peace in Darfur. The US government has been proactive in speaking out in support of the people of Darfur, but there is still much work that needs to be done. The United States and international governments have yet to take the actions needed to end this genocide. Long-term peace in Darfur requires that the government of Sudan, the Janjaweed militia forces and the rebel groups of Darfur find a way to resolve their political and economic disputes. The international community managed to broker a peace deal in May 2006, but violence in Darfur actually increased in the wake of this deal. Thousands of innocent civilians continue to die from murder, disease and starvation every month. Today, millions of displaced civilians living in refugee camps are in dire need of international support as the violence continues. At this time, human security is the highest priority for the people of Darfur. The world has left the responsibility of providing security to the African Union Peacekeeping Mission in Darfur. **As Sally Chin of Refugees International has noted, the world has given the African Union “the responsibility to protect, but not the power to protect.”** We must now work to ensure that the world fulfills its responsibility to protect the civilians of Darfur.
 * Since February 2003, the Sudanese government in Khartoum and the government-sponsored Janjaweed militia have used rape, displacement, organized starvation, threats against aid workers and mass murder.** Violence, disease, and displacement continue to kill thousands of innocent Darfurians every month.

 Checklists Describing Wheel Graphic Organizer Propaganda poster question Worksheets Outside resources on topic
 * Handouts**