Poetry in the Classroom - Who Was the Woman Who Wore the Hat?

While in middle school, I discovered war ration books in a box in our attic that belonged to my father's family. I also found pictures of fighter planes, my father alongside them, taken while he was stationed at Pearl Harbor during the later years of the war. Finding these bits of family history ignited a lifelong interest in WWII and particularly the Holocaust. I have a large collection of books on this subject, many of them children's books, though I don't use of any of them with students younger than middle-school age. One book I find particularly moving is actually a poetic meditation on a woman's hat once on display in a museum.

Who Was the Woman Who Wore the Hat?, written and illustrated by Nancy Patz, was the winner of the Association of Jewish Libraries Sydney Taylor Award in 2003. On a visit to the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam, Nancy Patz saw a hat in a glass case. In the author's note she writes, "That's all there was--no label, no explanation, just a woman's hat on a stand. As I looked at it, I realized that this remnant, this quite ordinary hat, was all that remained of a woman's life."

After drawing the hat in her sketchbook, Patz drew a self-portrait of herself in the hat, and then wrote several poems. When she realized that the poems could become the text of a book, she focused on the illustrations. She crumpled her drawing papers, stained them with watercolor, and tore the edges. She taped copies of photographs to the sketches, which she later integrated into her pencil drawings. As a result of this work, readers find themselves faced with a mix of pencil drawings, watercolors, and photographs that bring this woman and the horrible reality of the time to life.

Here is an excerpt from the middle of the poem.

When did she buy it?
      I wonder.
And where did she wear it?
      Downtown, shopping with her
      daughter?
      Laughing with her little girl
      as they hurried along to Grandma's house?
      Happily walking home
      with her husband
      in the chill of evening?

I wonder
if she wore it
the day she left home the last time,
that cold, cold day in Amsterdam--
      that cold, cruel day in Amsterdam
      when the Jews were herded together
      and arrested in the Square.

The poem ends with an extensive author's note and a chronology of the Holocaust. This is a haunting poem that helps to put a human face on the atrocities of war.

Here are some additional resources for teaching this topic in the classroom.

• Monica Edinger at educating alice has a post on the Holocaust for young children, and why it isn't necessary to introduce it to children at such an early age.
• The History Place has an informational site on genocide in the 20th century.
• NOVA Online has a site entitled Holocaust on Trial, which examines the notion of Holocaust denial.
• The BBC History site has a comprehensive resource on World War Two, as well as one on Genocide Under the Nazis.
• The Florida Center for Instructional Technology has a teacher's guide to the Holocaust.
• The United States Holocaust Museum has a wealth of resources for teaching about the Holocaust.
• Teaching Tolerance magazine has a teaching kit for grades 8-12 entitled One Survivor Remembers.
• The Virginia Holocaust Museum also has resources for teaching.
• You can take a virtual tour of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp.
• Remember.org is a cybrary of the Holocaust that shares art, photos, poems, facts and much more.
• The Simon Wiesenthal Center has a Multimedia Learning Center with virtual exhibits, teacher resources, and more.
• You can learn more about Anne Frank at the web site of the Anne Frank Museum Amsterdam.
• The Holocaust History Project is a free archive of documents, photographs, recordings, and essays.
• The Jewish Virtual Library has an informational section on the Holocaust.