# data[].attributes.body
Nachts Schlafen die Ratten doch is a story set in Germany in either 1944 or 1945 in a bombed out city. I have always personally pictured it set in Dresden due to the heavy bombings. Wolfgang Borchert wrote the story and personally, he is my favorite German author because of the way he represents war and the psyche of the soldier.

I wanted this to be the topic for the reading to write presentation. This story offers the potential for a lot of uses in classes. What we will name in the presentation are:

English composition: Using the sequential methods, students would work on the story and compose a series of essays with set objectives. For instance, presenting from the old man, boy, and perhaps, even the rat.
Literature: Reading for meaning is crucial here. Students may be asked to read and then write a completion to the story keeping the time period in mind. The tone, vocabulary, all of it could be added to a rubric for evaluation.

And then my two personal favorites:

***History: Using the story as a primary source, one could use it to add credibility to a larger paper. Providing a historical analysis and evaluating the mindset of those left to rebuild would also lend itself to being used in academic fields that research Germany and focus on the three theories that seek to offer a possible explanation to why the Holocaust happened and the rise of Hitler. It would fit nicely in the  "Sonderweg" theory.

Also in K12: Writing in a journal or keeping a diary from the perspective of someone in this setting not only helps students learn how to "imagine what it's like to be in another's shoes" but it activates their creativity and allows them to take more risks because it's not "as personal" as if it was coming straight from them.
They can also do something like this with the Diary of Anne Frank which most schools teach in 7th or 8th grade and with just about any other texts that is somewhat deeper and heavy. Because writing a diary helps with emotional processing, this may even help their overall mental health and develop healthy strategies for dealing with difficult emotions.

In short, the focus of this will be how this story and stories like it can be used when teaching about WWII or any other highly politicized or controversial historical event in order to bring more depth to the topic and allow for new perspectives to flourish or develop in general.

# data[].attributes.body
While I could list the many ways one can interpret a text and why it is written or how it is written I'll try to keep it brief. The text offers a real look at the lives of a little boy and an old man at the time. This something that can be applied to anyone and everyone.

The boy waits among the rubble all day and night in order to protect his dead brother who died in the bomb shelter during the bombings. He believes that he can protect him from the rats and sits up all night long to do so. His teacher told him that the rats eat the dead bodies under the rubble and the thought of his brother, "he's four. He's much, much smaller than me,"  is too much for him to handle. He is falling asleep when an old man appears.

The old man is very old and could be seen as malnourished due to the large gap between his curved legs. He cares for his rabbits and is going about getting them their food as if there is no war/since the war was over. He sees the boy and asks him what he is doing. When he tells him why he's there and what he's doing an exchange occurs where he tries to convince the boy that the rats sleep at night and that he needs to see his rabbits and even get one for himself.

Their interaction is a glimpse that we the reader get into the lives of these two Germans at the end of the war. A young boy and an old man in a destroyed city. For students who are familiar with the topic of WWII, this might be something they've never read or been presented with. I know that I only encountered this in college in a 3000 level German Literature class.

Perhaps, because the emotions that are presented within the text are so normal and so relate-able that it was overlooked in classes before? Or, maybe, it didn't fit in the narrative of the topic? As teachers of content, we are often faced with leaving out details in order to hit the highlights for testing. In broad survey classes we wade through material without ever going beneath the surface.

Would painting these two characters who represent enemies of my country in WWII have been detrimental to me understanding the conflict better?

That's a scary thought.

# data[].attributes.body
The point of the text seems to be that even in the darkest of times kindness is still possible. It could also be some sort of hearkening back to Blake's Songs of Innocence and the man is seeking to preserve what little innocence he can in the boy. There are a myriad of ways that it can be interpreted but what I look at it is more in the realm of your perspectives work and my own personal masochism. I am always searching for an answer to why?  even though I know that there is no answer. I reject the Warumverbot as destructive, but I do see why it took such a hold after the liberation of the camps. By the way, below is a poem from Blake's Songs of Innocence:

THE LITTLE BOY LOST ‘‘Father, father, where are you going? Oh do not walk so fast! Speak, father, speak to you little boy, Or else I shall be lost.’’ The night was dark, no father was there, The child was wet with dew; The mire was deep, and the child did weep, And away the vapour flew.

Works like Nachts schalfen die Ratten doch are helpful but strangely dangerous. The powers of literature are not lost on us as educators. Good propaganda is well written and perfectly designed to incite emotion. While I do not believe this is propaganda, perhaps Borchert is the ideal pacifist propagandist but that would require a whole new padlet to explain, I do realize it's potential to be manipulated.

In this case, or our case, this story can be used to show a certain positive perspective that all people are the same everywhere. They live, they love, they feel pain. My Rabbi says "grief is not unique." In this story, with such devastation, it is easy to relate to the sadness that the boy feels over his dead brother and also of the compassion the man shows when he tells him, "The rats do sleep at night!" This compassion is what makes the story really settle in the soul of the reader because even if one has not been personally touched by loss one surely knows someone who has.

The reader finds themselves viewing an intimate moment and relating to it. They find it applicable and humanizing. But, is that a good thing? Is this humanization potentially harmful? Can we become so sympathetic that we sometimes neglect fact or forget to stay objective?

# data[].attributes.body
Humanizing one another is not only the desirable thing to do, but the responsible thing to do.

(I care about forging peaceful coexistence between people on the local and then global scale. I cannot stomach intolerance and I feel a moral obligation to seek out Tzedek for those who deserve it.)

Literature like this can be used as a tool to encourage other perspectives and humanize those who may have been seen as harmful or Fremd (Alien, Foreign, Ger). We as readers begin to feel concern, sympathy, even a strange frustration for the ruins that these two live in. We forget that this is taking place in Nazi Germany. We forget that these are people living in a culture of perpetrators. We feel that the war is far away and not relevant here. We forget the horrors of the war machine, the state sanctioned slaughter of millions, the denial of rights. We begin to form opinions. We compartmentalize and our heartstrings begin to take over how our mind looks at the situation as a whole objectively.

Enough literature like this presents a side of Germans rarely seen. Normal, everyday citizens with hard choices to make because of the war. The story is short, but effective. The reader by the end has more than likely changed their opinion to a certain degree by the end of the texts.

Literature as a tool to change perspectives of peoples not familiar with or newly confronting difficult situations is invaluable.

This is something that can be used in relation to: the Armenian genocide, anything going on with the Kurds, the Cambodian genocide, the raping of Nanking, Japanese comfort women, those affected by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, everything going on in the Ukraine, the Iranian revolution, SYRIA, and many others.

# data[].attributes.body
But, what happens when the perspective breeds sympathy or even glorification of a cautionary tale?

Our goal as teachers is to breed peace and understanding of complicated humanistic situations so that a desired resolution to conflict can be achieved and learned from. We say Nie Wieder, but there has been a Wieder ever since the words were spoken.

We've seen this in the neo-nazi movement here and abroad and the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland) in Germany. This glorification of the values of the Nazis have created a new subculture with it's own religious belief and underground network of high and low ranking public officials. (See Welcome to Leith to understand just how dangerous and well connected the White Supremacist groups are in the states. I'm sure Donald Trump has re-tweeted a few of those represented in the documentary.)

While WWII has now officially become solely relegated to history books with people of the Greatest Generation slowly dying out, as is happening with those who survived the Shoah which is presenting even more problems when combating the rise of antisemitism, students are now even more susceptible to the siren's song of highly exclusive prepackaged hate that thrills before it kills. Somehow Thomas Mann and Nietzsche rise up in the classroom and appeal to the darker spots of our humanity and how do we combat this? While Nazism is what I am predominantly focused on, it's not the only threat that this applies to. (We can apply this to any religious extremism or group that functions on exclusivity) Where there is this specific type of elitism, there is ideology and dogma behind it that follows a similar pattern. This pattern seems to wrap up a great deal of people and that is what stories like this can be used to combat or encourage.

(See Kriegerin, English title Combat Girls, for a horrifying look at what that culture looks like in Germany today. Be sure also to watch NSU Germany History X because the first episode will surely be enough to represent the strange allure that the culture has to those who seek to belong. One can also follow it up with the classic The Believer to take a look at  the strange manifestation that is the so called "self hating" Jew.)

The interesting thing that I get from this work personally is that I realize that the end should feel anything but sympathy for them because of exactly where and who they are. While this is not what I really feel, I will freely admit that I have been conditioned to believe that the Germans are bad and they deserved what they got and this is how many of my peers in my small town felt when handling the subject. America had to save the world or we'd all be speaking German, right? Also, we never lost *The War of Northern Aggression. (Please note, that is sarcasm. My Alabama education was poor and biased. I was led to believe that the Civil War was either a war we fought at the same time as that one or it didn't exist.)

Of course, as I researched more and more into the complex world that is politics, war, hate mongering, tyranny, and anti-antisemitism I was able to change my perspective on the situation and thus,  I now feel burdened by being educated.What made me research? Being exposed to literature and movies about certain topics and a naturally suspicious and curious nature.

I do feel sympathy for the little boy. I feel such sincere sympathy for his loss and the state of his world. But, I do not feel as sorry for the old man as I think one would want me to. Perhaps, this is an emotional iceberg? If I have this emotional iceberg about these people then others must have the same or similar ones.

I wonder less about the good fortune of the child and more about that of the old man. Historically, I know that in '43 the senior classes at the NAPOLA were sent to fight in the east since the losses at Stalingrad were so devastating. Russian winters, operation Barbarossa, and a stunned Stalin who nearly stayed in Moscow from shock and then let his hatred fester meant that the Germans were going to need bodies and need them quickly.

When they depleted the youth, they went for the old. They would round men up near the end of the war and conscript them there and then. But, as the end grew near and the Soviet tanks were on the horizon they rounded these same men up and executed them for not doing enough. Children, like the boy, who had been in Hitler Youth or were almost old enough for it were also left to man guns and hold flimsy barricades. So, as I read and allow my thoughts to sit I wonder just how innocent this exchange really is?

But, then the power of literature saves the day and through it I learn more and become more informed.  This information allows me to answer the question of Kollektive Schuld. Do I believe that this post Wall generation of Germans should be held responsible for the actions of their grandparents? No. Do I see their parents as guilty? Maybe a little bit. Why? The entire Spiegel Affair, RAF, and stances on the Vietnam war make that generation complicated for me. Their grandparents, those who were alive at the time, I definitely see them as guilty. But, being shown this new German generation and it's struggles of brothers dead in bunkers and rubble filled streets allow me to swallow some bitterness and shift the guilt. I'm only human.

This story allows me to see things with more depth. It humanizes enemies and it brings forgiveness to new generations. It opens the door for discussions. But, it also complicates these discussions because it pulls at the heart strings. When we sympathize so wholly we sometimes forget that justice needs to be achieved.

# data[].attributes.body
Hence why I wanted to talk to you about using methods like this to encourage changing perspectives. You may wonder why I went off the dangers but I felt I had to since perpetrators are now stealing victim rhetoric in order to better gas light and manipulate their and other's perceptions of them. Get enough sympathetic literature out there and soon the foundation of right and wrong starts to wear away.

However, it's pieces like this that, if Incorporated in the correct ways, can help destroy some of the preconceived prejudices some students may have about a historical event or currently situation.

I'll leave on a personal story: A very dear friend of mine's family hosted students from all over the world while she was growing up and one of the students from Yemen made a lasting impression when she showed him Schindler's List. He'd been asking to see it because it is banned in his country. She and her family sat down and he watched in rapture the entire film. At the end, they turned the TV off and he turned to her mother who asked what he thought of the film. He took a deep breath and then said quiet impressed, "That was some good propaganda."

As someone who deals in cinema and knows the benefits of the screen I wasn't surprised. I've sat through a few glorious revolutions myself. However, while he may have been moved and may have enjoyed the movie, he clearly had deep underlying beliefs about the infamous "Holocaust." As an American, I have been brought up with deep underlying beliefs about a lot of things, too. Racism and a hatred for the "krauts" are at the top as a Southerner. Stories liked this show that after war, the only thing we all have in common is grief. And as was previously stated, that grief is not unique. Schindler's List shows that theme among many others.

Whether it is a story of motion picture, these are valuable tools to incorporate with students when trying to create or foster empathy for others.