Today's Itinerary and Activities
Day 6: July 11
We started this day from our Nijmegen base on the Groesbeek Heights, where the Canadian Army made its home during the Winter of 1944-45. Then we traveled east across the German border to study the largest set-piece battle ever orchestrated by Canadians, the February – March 1945 Battle for the Rhineland. Our day culminated at the Hochwald Gap and the Rhine crossing before heading back to the massive Groesbeek Cemetery, where we visited Lance Corporal Bernard Asplund, Private Leonard James Harper, Private Gustave Caron, Sergeant Aubrey Cosens, Flying Officer Duncan Cumming, and Private Harold Chappell.
We started this day from our Nijmegen base on the Groesbeek Heights, where the Canadian Army made its home during the Winter of 1944-45. Then we traveled east across the German border to study the largest set-piece battle ever orchestrated by Canadians, the February – March 1945 Battle for the Rhineland. Our day culminated at the Hochwald Gap and the Rhine crossing before heading back to the massive Groesbeek Cemetery, where we visited Lance Corporal Bernard Asplund, Private Leonard James Harper, Private Gustave Caron, Sergeant Aubrey Cosens, Flying Officer Duncan Cumming, and Private Harold Chappell.
Today the tone of the war changes. 1st Canadian army headquarters is in Nijmegen and it is time for rest and recovery, training, and building rapport with new replacements. Newspapers in Canada talking about the hockey tournament we held in Nijmegen – stay tuned as we post the sources for you to bring this back to the classroom!
We are longer simply pushing the German army out of occupied countries – we become invaders ourselves. Our question for today in our groups: How do we plan to deal with a defeated Germany? How do we negotiate civil affairs in Germany? When dealing with an occupied country, we have previously had 2 areas of focus, not interrupting military operations and restoring civil society. In Germany, what else do we need to consider? Our job for today is an exercise in perspective-taking, to suspend what we know did happen, keeping in mind that the decisions made were not necessarily the best decisions that could have been made, that they could have been different. |
Groesbeek HeightsSee the Dutch – German border through the trees?
We are that close! |
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Teaching through concepts |
Teaching the Holocaust |
The position of our tour leaders is that we should be teaching history through the exploration of first order concepts such as justice, human rights, and government. These become a vehicle for content, for example, posing the question "Is this an example of genocide?" when examining Canadian residential school policy to have students consider what the concept means, what it looks like, where the debates and tensions are about what constitutes a genocide.
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How do you teach about the Holocaust?
One of our teacher participants teaches it as a mini-unit, as the Holocaust has a very minimal role in the curriculum. Using the resources at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, another teacher gives profiles of Jewish people who were victims of the Holocaust to students, who keep track of them as through move through the war in the classroom. Another plans literature circles using the diary of Anne Frank, which is a recommend reading in her provincial curriculum. The student participants shared that they watched Schindler's List in class, with a list of critical questions to follow through the film. The argument from one of our tour leaders is that you cannot talk about the social impact of the war on people without talking about the war. To more fully understand the impact of the Holocaust and the decision-making of Allied and German forces in their consideration of the Holocaust, we must understand civil affairs, German military needs from their perspective, and Allied military needs from theirs. |