Just a Number : Student ‘Prisoners’ Get Taste of Holocaust’s Horrors

A recorded train whistle blew in the Robert Fulton Middle School auditorium foyer Wednesday as a young group of World War II Nazi death camp “prisoners” filed into their new prison.

Some of the 31 eighth-graders giggled as they were issued color-coded identification tags and serial numbers were “tattooed” on their arms with marking pens by ninth-grade “SS guards.”

Others stared glumly at the ominous surroundings created by Louise Guarella, their English teacher, in her efforts to re-enact the horror of the Holocaust to teach students the importance of ethnic tolerance and empathy, a program that drew criticism from some education thinkers.

“Cool, we get tattoos!” one student exclaimed while shuffling through the processing center of what he was told was the “Notluf Concentration Camp,” which is Fulton spelled backward.

“Please remain quiet,” responded Guarella, who with co-coordinator Mary Grunthaner, stood impassive throughout the event in her “commandant” uniform of black turtleneck shirt and black pants. No swastikas were used.

“All females form two lines by colored ID tags and males form another,” Guarella instructed.

“Welcome to Notluf,” Grunthaner added, escorting the mostly Latino students toward a bleakly lit auditorium stage.

Guarella, in her first year as an English teacher at Fulton, returned in March from an annual California League of Middle Schools conference in San Diego brimming with innovative ideas. The 26-year-old Guarella had heard a variety of presentations in several teaching method workshops at the conference, but one given by a pair of teachers from a small school 100 miles north of San Francisco caught her attention most.

“They informed us how they were able to re-enact the Holocaust for a whole day at their school using all the core subjects,” Guarella said. “They’d just completed their second year of doing this, using a group of eighth- and ninth-graders.

“The ninth-graders who were this year’s guards were prisoners last year. So, they got to see both sides of the exercise,” she said.

Guarella thought the program would work well with her eighth-grade honors English students, whom she was about to assign to read “The Diary of Anne Frank,” the best-selling diary kept by a Jewish girl hiding from the Nazis in wartime Holland. She contacted Grunthaner, who is currently reviewing World War II in her ninth-grade world history classes, and the two devised a proposal.

“The school liked it, and we’ve been getting great support from other teachers,” Guarella said.

“We hope they can realize how difficult things were for real Jewish prisoners. We want them to be made uncomfortable through the experience. We still live in a society where there is a great need for people to tolerate each other’s differences.”

In creating an anxiety-filled atmosphere for the “prisoners,” the teachers set up the stark auditorium in a way that would have made Franz Kafka proud. They were required to perform a number of senseless work activities to the tape-recorded crescendos of Wagner’s “Die Walkure,” a favorite musical work of Hitler and other Nazi leaders.

Two chairs stood alone on stage with a “hospital” banner linking them. Eighth-graders would find themselves randomly selected to sit near that banner as “contaminated prisoners.” Shortly afterward, black circles were stuck to their name tags, signifying that, due to their weakness, they’d just been executed.

Others were just “executed” at random.

“At Notluf, weakness means death,” Grunthaner announced sternly after each execution, pacing before the students, hands clasped behind her back.

Interspersed with the random deaths and meaningless chores such as picking up loose paper around “barracks” areas and pulling auditorium seats up and down repeatedly, handouts were given to the students to give them a chance to record impressions of their concentration-camp experience.

Lunch consisted of watered-down potato soup, bread and water.

Later, the students watched a video reflecting how susceptible some individuals are toward fascistic behavior.

“I feel like I am not a person anymore,” wrote 13-year-old Chol Kim about his tattoo. “And that my goal in life is to work and die.”

Resenting the authority some of his schoolmates had over him during the event, Chol often mocked the SS guards into disciplining him, while his fellow prisoners laughed.

“Go ahead, report me,” he said to Araceli Barba, who was playing an SS guard. “I’ll write it down for you.”

Araceli led him to what was called the execution area, giggling along with the eighth-graders.

“It’s funny,” said Araceli. “These people are my friends and they don’t know I’m lying to them when I say I’m going to reduce their grade.”

Because the event was not taken completely seriously by the students, both members of the Jewish community and other educators were critical of its effectiveness.

“This cheapens the whole attitude toward the Holocaust,” said Irv Rubin, national chairman of the Jewish Defense League.

“How can they duplicate the vulgarity and barbarism of the camps by forcing kids to pick up paper? Unless you’re willing to beat on the kids, it’s impossible for them to realize those horrors.”

Jennifer Clark, a program associate for a Boston-area education support agency called Facing History and Ourselves, said her group advises against using simulations in school.

“I don’t think it serves any useful purpose,” Clark said. “[Students] get caught up in the drama of [simulations] and can leave identifying too much with a victim or a perpetrator. I think it can be very damaging and can minimize the actual event.”

Shirley Winger of Panorama City, who is Jewish and gave permission for her son Michael to participate in the event, disagrees.

“This is a great opportunity for my son to become more aware of the evils that exist in the world,” she said. “It’s important for these students to know that something as horrible as the Holocaust can happen to anybody at any time.”

During a class discussion after the event was over, 14-year-old Maria Castillejo reflected on the horrors of that possibility.

“I was afraid of the SS guards,” she said. “I could barely move, I was trembling so much. Every time I looked at that tattoo, I felt like washing it off. It felt uncomfortable.

“I learned what the Jews had to go through,” Maria continued. “I didn’t know much about the Holocaust before, but now I know enough to fill my heart with sadness.”

Times staff writer Abigail Goldman contributed to this story.