Germany
Say?/ Summary
Document #4 Killing Ideas
By May, the Nazis were burning books. The first book burning took place on May 6, 1933. Students from the Berlin School of Physical Education
demolished the Institute of Sexual Science, one of the first scholarly groups to study homosexuality ceremonially hung a bust of the institute’s
founder, and then burned twelve thousand books as they sang the nation’s anthem. Four days later, the Nazi German Students’ Association set
up more bonfires, this time to burn books written by Jews and other “undesirables.” At one gathering, Joseph Goebbels told a cheering crowd,
“The soul of the German people can again express itself. Those flames not only illuminate the final end of an old era; they light up a new!”
Document #5 Murders
Q: And finally it was your turn.
A: And finally my turn came. There was my younger sister, and she wanted to leave, she prayed with the Germans; she asked to run, naked; she
went up to the Germans with one of her friends; they were embracing each other; and she asked to be spared, standing there naked. He looked
into her eyes and shot the two of them, they fell together in their embrace, the two young girls, my sister and her young friend. Then my second
sister was shot and then my turn did come.
Q: Were you asked anything?
A: We turned towards the grave and then he turned around and asked “whom shall I shoot first?” We were already facing the grave. The
German asked “Who do you want me to shoot first?” I did not answer. I felt him take the child from my arms. The child cried out and was shot
immediately. And then he aimed at me. First he held on to my hair and turned my head around; I stayed standing; I heard a shot. But I continued
to stand and then he turned my head again and he aimed the revolver at me and ordered me to watch and then turned my head around and
shot at me. Then I fell to the ground into the pit amongst the bodies: but I felt nothing. The moment I did feel I felt a sort of heaviness and then I
thought maybe I am not alive anymore, but I feel something after I died. I thought I was dead, that this was the feeling which comes after death.
Then I felt that I was choking; people falling over me. I tried to move and felt that I was alive and that I could rise. I was strangling. I heard the
shots and I was praying for another bullet to put an end to my suffering, but I continued to move about…
Argument Statement:
In _________________________________(name of document), ______________________ (author) describes ______________________(method of control)
as a form of state control in ___________ (country). “_____________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________________” (quote) illustrates this.
Russia
Say?/ Summary
Today, reliable academic estimates place the number of Ukrainian victims of starvation at 4.5 million to 7 million… The famine was in part the
by-product of Stalin's relentless drive to collectivize Soviet agriculture. The famine was a clear result of the fact that between 1931 and 1933,
while harvests were precipitously declining, Stalin's commissars continued to confiscate grain. Peasants were shot and deported as rich,
landowning "kulaks". . . . While the drive to collectivize agriculture was a wide-ranging phenomenon common to the entire U.S.S.R., only in the
Ukraine did it assume a genocidal character. Indeed there can be no question that Stalin used the forced famine as part of a political strategy
whose aim was to crush all vestiges of Ukrainian national sentiments.
Document #6 "Forced Famine in the Ukraine: A Holocaust the West Forgot" by Adrian Karatnycicy; The Wall Street Journal, July 7, 1983
The radical step forward by the majority of the peasantry towards a collective way of life was taking place against the backdrop of a bitter
struggle between Soviet power and the kulaks. The [kulaks] stooped to all possible means to wreck the collectivization campaign. They murdered
collective farm activists and Party and government officials sent to the villages to help the peasants; they set fire to collective farm buildings;
they poisoned the cattle and destroyed farm machinery. . . . The Soviets had the right to banish them from their villages. . . . The exploiter
class—the rural bourgeoisie—was finally abolished....
Document #7 The Land of Soviets, published in the U.S.S.R
Argument Statement:
In _________________________________(name of document), ______________________ (author) describes ______________________(method of control)
as a form of state control in ___________ (country). “_____________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________________” (quote) illustrates this.
Say?/ Summary
Italy
Document #7 Photo
Blackshirts with Benito Mussolini
during the March on Rome on 27
October 1922.
"Either the government will be
given to us or will shall seize it by
marching on Rome."
Benito Mussolini, October 1922
Argument Statement:
In _________________________________(name of document), ______________________ (author) describes ______________________(method of control)
as a form of state control in ___________ (country). “_____________________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________________________” (quote) illustrates this.