Suzannah Niepold: This is a very small exhibition called Inventing a Better Mousetrap, and it’s all about patent models of the type that would have been displayed here when this was the Patent Office Building. There is one case of “mystery patents,” where you’re just given one clue and you’re asked to figure out what you think the thing made. I want to start by breaking up into groups and having you try and guess. The goal of this is for you to be sort of conscience of your process—when you’re faced with an object, what do you look for? How do you try to reason out the purpose? And remember these are models, so the real thing could be much, much bigger, but does not have to be. [Visitors commence group discussions] [Group 1:] Speaker 1: Patent 1368. Speaker 2: It’s got little doors on it. It looks like a submarine almost. Speaker 1: Are there numbers on the windows on the other side? Speaker 2: Yeah, those are for the—I think those are for the schematic though, they’re not for the— Speaker 1: This correlates to that. Speaker 2: Cause there’s an eight on this door—Look at this door. And the portholes are clear. The copper bands to keep the pressure, but I’m worried I’m kind of locked into this submarine thing. I don’t know why I think it’s underwater, I don’t know what the invention might be. Speaker 1: 1858, so we’ve got— Speaker 2: Brooklyn. Speaker 1: St. Louis. Speaker 2: Well, the clue doesn’t help because I was thinking this was maybe the submersible to dig the pylons for the bridge. But what would "mayday" be? It has the top door, and then it has that. Speaker 1: Right, an extra door. And there’s nothing inside except little bits of wood. Speaker 2: Is it like a flare or something? Maybe it is just that size in the "mayday"? Like a signal flare? [Group 2:] Suzannah Niepold: Just try and figure out what it is. Speaker 1: You see that wire? Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, I was thinking it had something to do with that wire at the end. So those spools come in and it twists them. It’s an automatic fence builder; you’ve got the posts so it’s like— Speaker 1: Yeah, 'cause there’s the fence post— Speaker 2: And that you put the fence post in you see where that little hook is? You put the fence post in the slot, push it, and then the wire comes— Speaker 1: Oh, there you go, you see the little fence post receiver? [Group 3:] Speaker 1: Like a submarine cap, the helmets. Speaker 2: Incense or something like that? Potpourri? Speaker 3: Because, whatever that is…I know you all have talked about this, there’s a little lever. Speaker 4: Oh, I didn’t even see the lever. Speaker 2: That’s the ash maybe? Speaker 3: Yeah, or something. Speaker 4: That’s for a high or a low setting. Speaker 3: Oh, okay. Speaker 2: To let oxygen in or something. Speaker 3: The top thing looks like a lid. Do you think it was something that they would use to eat, or something to produce a smell? Speaker 4: It could be like potpourri? Speaker 1: I’m just thinking, like, to keep your food warm. Speaker 4: It’s functional. Like a food warmer. Speaker 1: Like, I don't know what it's called, it's not a crockpot. I can't remember what it’s called, but you put your food in it, you put your flame at the bottom and then it keeps the heat going. Speaker 4: The first microwave. Speaker 2: A chafing dish, is that what you’re thinking? Speaker 1: Chafing dish, thank you! Speaker 4: I have never heard of that before, I have no idea. Speaker 3: What material do you think it is? What do you think it’s made out of? Speaker 4: It looks like wood. Speaker 3: So if it’s made out of wood it's flammable. Is it wood? Or is it cast iron? The whole thing is iron. Speaker 1: Steel? Speaker 3: If it’s wood it’s going to burn. But I don’t think it's cast iron, I think it’s wood.

Suzannah Niepold: As I said, some of them are more difficult to figure out than others so the goal here was not necessarily for you all to get a right answer. But I’m curious what kinds of things, what kinds of questions did you ask yourself? What kind of information did you need to look for?

Speaker 1: Materials, what’s it made out of?

Speaker 2: Do you recognize any of the parts?

Suzannah Niepold: How else did you try and think things through?

Speaker 3: If it’s very ornate, it was made for people who had income to buy it. So some of these, like this one, it’s very decorated, painted.

Suzannah Niepold: So you meant audience as well, who was this made for? How about, can we go model by model? Group Number 1, what did you think your piece was?

Speaker 4: It’s a burglary system; it’s going to shoot bad guys if they open the door. You open the door, the gun shoots.

Suzannah Niepold: So with this one, you open the door, and the gun shoots. That is a yes. “Theft prevention device. When a thief or intruder entered from the other side of the door, the weighted chain attached to the door released the cocked hammer of the loaded pistol which discharged at the intruder.” The next one, I think, is one of the more challenging ones, 1888. Does anyone have any idea?

Speaker 5: We did it, right? Isn't that Number 2? It’s a fence builder.

Speaker 6: How could you tell?

Speaker 5: We thought it was a barbwire machine maker, because we saw the wire getting twisted, and then you see the wire is getting twisted around pieces of wood. And then you can just sort of see that it used that big hook to push the boards through after they get slid into the wire.

Suzannah Niepold: Yeah, you see the fence essentially coming out this end of the machine. Okay, that’s absolutely what it is. “This contraption automatically twisted the wires around the fence posts that were fed by hand into the machine. This is one of the few models that showed the finished product emerging from the machine.” So of course the real thing in this case would be a lot bigger. Number 3 is a bit of a trick question one. What did we think Number 3 was?

Speaker 7: We thought it was just like a mobile cotton gin. The fact that you say it’s a trick question—we didn’t get it.

Suzannah Niepold: Everyone is so familiar with the cotton gin that as soon as you see cotton, you go right to that. It certainly has to do with cotton, but it’s a cotton seed planter, rather than a cotton harvester that pulls the—it says, “The seeds were poured into the top of the planter; the pins on the rotating shaft prevented the seeds from clogging, while funneling them downward as the farmer pushed the planter along a plowed furrow.” Model Number 4, is the one someone pointed out as maybe made for a wealthier audience—less utilitarian, more attractive. Any idea what it was?

Speaker 8: We’re guessing a bad version of a crockpot? It has the little lever at the bottom so you can adjust what the flame is going to be and how hot it will keep your food. It has the opening at the top for the steam to come out. Or it could be for potpourri.

Speaker 9: It says “smell,” doesn’t it?

Speaker 8: So we were thinking like yummy food—

Suzannah Niepold: How’d you figure out the flame part? The bit at the bottom you connected to a flame—

Speaker 8: Are we right?

Suzannah Niepold: A little bit, not on the crockpot part, but on the flame bit.

Speaker 9: Is it an incense burner?

Suzannah Niepold: It is an incense burner. “A small oil burner inside the base ignited a fuse that was connected to a metal container under the removable cover of the urn. Powdered incense placed in the container then burned, emitting a pleasing odor through the openings in the cover.” Okay, Number 5 was the most challenging. What was your thought process? How did you try and tackle this?

Speaker 10: We started this by trying to figure out the shape and what it was made out of—and from there we just got lost and started talking about submarines and submersibles.

Suzannah Niepold: What led you from the shape of the materials to the idea of a submersible?

Speaker 11: The portholes, the metal bands around it. I think we got kind of sidetracked with this idea of pressure, it’s got a door. And then there’s this red herring, it was invented in Brooklyn. I got totally focused on this idea that it might have been a submersible to dig the support pylons for the Brooklyn Bridge. Then at the very end we were like maybe it’s actually this size? The clue was “mayday,” so I had zero idea. It has an opening hatch, as I was pointing out, but it also has a door on one side, the portholes are—

Suzannah Niepold: Scale is a huge challenge, right? As long as models have to be scaled for display, but it could be any size. So the answer is it’s a life-preserving container. “After the occupants,” so occupants plural, “entered the container through the door at one end it automatically detached from its fastenings on the deck as the ship sank. The floating container was fitted with three bunks for sleeping, compartments for water and provisions, and a sliding hatch cover on top that could be opened for light and air.”

So this was meant to be an example of object-based learning. How do you take an object when you have no idea what it is and kind of logic through what you’re doing. The process is a little bit different with art, as you may have seen. But you’re still sort of taking an object you don’t necessarily know the background information on and getting as much out of it as you can just by looking.

Christina Chavarria: So just kind of look around. What feeling is evoked? Is there anything that might remind you of something? Or maybe nothing at all. Visitor 1: We were just taking [about] the stairs. Almost as if you can be kind of spread out, and then as you go up closer you have to bunch together to file in. I've never seen stairs that do that, it's weird. Christina Chavarria: Okay, that's true. And when you mention that I think of also the train tracks and how they're kind of elongated and they fade and they seem to become more narrow the further away they become. Anybody else have any thoughts about the architecture, the building? Visitor 2: I think it's overwhelming. It makes you feel small. Christina Chavarria: That's very true. That's a very good point. Because, like I said, going back to the importance of the individual in this history, one of the things that we do with teachers is that we really encourage that you translate statistics into people, that instead of focusing solely on the millions of victims or the thousands who may have died in one place, you take those individual stories and you pull them out using primary resources. Christina Chavarria: What the purpose of these cards do, especially in a teaching standpoint, is, again, they focus on the individual. How many of you have somebody who is not Jewish? Anybody have somebody who is not Jewish? Okay, who? Visitor 3: I have Lucian Belie Brunell. He's born to Catholic parents, he's a priest. Christina Chavarria: Okay, we have a priest. Anybody else have somebody who is not Jewish, somebody who is Roma? Disabled? Okay, how about does somebody have—how many of you have somebody from Poland? Germany? Austria? Italy? France? Denmark? The Netherlands? Greece? Yugoslavia? Okay, any other place that I did not mention? Visitor 4: Romania. Visitor 5: Lithuania. Visitor 6: Hungary. Visitor 7: Czechoslovakia. Christina Chavarria: So another purpose of these is for us to see the range of geography. That this did not happen solely in Germany, even though it began there. This did not happen only in Poland. That it spread geographically. It spread all the way into Northern Africa and other parts of the world were impacted, even if they were not occupied by Nazi Germany. Christina Chavarria: Look at the monitor. TV Documentary: "—called in by radio, said that we have come across something and we're not sure what it is. It's a big prison of some kind, and there are people running all over—sick, dying, starved people. You can't imagine it, things like that don't happen." Christina Chavarria: So as we go through, as I mentioned downstairs, I'm not going to point out everything to you, but there are certain elements that I want to point out because we will talk about them in the afternoon. This, in particular, I think is very striking for us as teachers, as social studies teachers, as teachers in the United States. You notice at the top it says, "Americans encounter the camp." We don't use the word in this picture—we don't use the word "liberation." Why not? You couldn't just walk out and go home, first of all. And liberation has that connotation of being free, and yet the obstacles that lay ahead for those who did survive will be so vast—the obstacles, the challenges, for the Allied forces and relief workers who come into the camps. So, we chose that word "encounter." And this was not, as we know now, this was not the first that we knew of the camps. It was the first maybe that we had seen of the camps with our own eyes, but we will see that. When you look at this history again we define it the years 1933–1945. Christina Chavarria: Where you all came in, we call that the Eisenhower Plaza. This quote up here that's on the side of the building, of the museum structure. Because if you look at it, I think this is an excellent quote to use with students because it takes us back to that theme of anti-Semitism and that theme today of Holocaust denial.

Christina Chavarria: I think as teachers here in the United States, the issue of race science, which was very popular in the United States, it was not only in Nazi Germany. If you look at your own states—if each individual state looks at its history—you can look and see the laws that were on the books regarding sterilization, regarding who could marry whom. So, again, looking at U.S. history, especially in the latter part of the 19th century and the eugenics movement and how this became so popular. And the whole notion of race, the definition of race, and categorizing people. This is very, very relevant. Christina Chavarria: What are the questions that your students ask when you're teaching this? How many of you have taught about the Holocaust? Visitor 1: They want to know why; they want to know how could this have started? They want to know, you know, why is Hitler so anti-Jewish, anti-Semitic? They want to know the root of it all. Visitor 2: They want to know, too, why they willingly were prisoners. You know, 7th grade, why, I would have not done this— Christina Chavarria: I would have fought back, right? And they did, that's a very good issue to bring up. They did, and we have to teach about resistance. One of the questions related to that is: Why didn’t they just leave? Why didn't they just pack up and go somewhere else? Well, again, the complexities of this history—don't avoid those questions when they ask you. Why didn't, why couldn't they just pack up and leave? We look at the Évian Conference, which is where we look at the failure of other nations to respond to the growing crisis in Europe. And this symbolizes that, this political cartoon. This appeared in the New York Times, July 3, 1938, just before the Évian Conference was to begin. So we can take this image and we can deconstruct this, and what do we see happening here? Visitor 3: The guy's at a stop sign with no place to go. Christina Chavarria: The stop sign is on what? Multiple Visitors: A swastika. Christina Chavarria: Every point, every direction ends with that halt—you can't, you can't go. And who is this person? Visitor 4: Non-Aryan. Christina Chavarria: Non-Aryan, presumably Jewish—the kippah. And what's on the horizon? The Évian Conference invited nations to attend to discuss the growing refugee problem. So 32 countries send representatives to this conference, but, yet, they're also told we're not going to ask you to take any more people in. So the conference was basically a failure before it even began because only one country stepped forward and said, "We're willing to take in more refugees than what we have on our quotas, listed as our quotas." Does anybody know what that country was, what that one country was? It's right down here. The Dominican Republic. This also revealed a lot of anti-Semitic thought from leaders of other nations. Some countries said, "We don't have a Jewish problem and we don't want to import one." Some said, "We're going through our own issues." And that's very true, because we've got to contextualize this from what happened in the 1920s, what happened in 1929, the economic—the Depression as well. But, yet, we also have to factor in anti-Semitic sentiments because who are these refugees? Well, they're mostly Jewish, they might take our jobs, they might take—we don't have money to support them.

Christina Chavarria: Looking at the whole idea of refuge, and the search for refuge, where do you go when nations have closed their doors to you? Where do you go? What kind of documentation do you need to get out of Germany? What documents do you need? What kind of money do you need to emigrate? These are all issues that you have to bring up with your students so that they understand why they were trapped in Europe. Christina Chavarria: This chart that we see here, this is the forced immigration chart that Adolf Eichmann's office produced to show how it was able to expel, within three years, most of Vienna's Jewish population. After the Anschluss, after Kristallnacht, this is when Jews in the occupied territories—Germany, Austria, parts of Czechoslovak—after Kristallnacht, they realized that they can no longer stay. Life is just not bearable any more; in fact it's dangerous now. In many cases, many of them actually bought visas to get out. Some countries made money, some diplomats made money selling fraudulent visas that turned out to be no good. And that is what happened with the voyage of the St. Louis. Out of the 937 passengers who were on the boat, almost—I think all but maybe six to eight of them were Jewish. They needed to get out, and Cuba was the destination of this ship, the St. Louis. It was owned by the Hamburg line, Hamburg America. They had acquired visas to go to Cuba, where they were planning to stay until their numbers came up to come to the United States. But before they reached Cuba, their visas were rescinded; in fact, many of them were fraudulent, only about 28 of them were actually valid. So when they got to Havana, they were not allowed to dock. Only those who had valid visas, which was just a miniscule number out of the over 900 those people were allowed to stay, and the rest could not get off the boat.

Christina Chavarria: Here you see newspapers from some of the major cities across the country reporting on the front page certain events that were taking place in Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1939. Right here, for example, the Dallas Morning News: Kristallnacht, November 1938, front page. This was not a secret. Christina Chavarria: This is called "The Tower of Faces." This is one thing I want to point out to you because—just take a couple minutes to look around at the pictures. This represents one shtetl, one Jewish community, in Lithuania. The little girl right here is Professor Yaffa Eliach, she lives in New York. She went back to this shtetl, Eishyshok, and she gathered the 10,000 photos, many of which you see here, and which we have online. Again, what this does, we look at the individual; we look at the victim not as a "victim," but as a vibrant human being. I think anything we teach, whether it's the Holocaust or any other topic that we're looking at in history, we have to look at the individuals. Christina Chavarria: This milk can is one of three milk cans that was used to bury documents and chronicles of life in the Warsaw Ghetto. And in 1950, two of the milk cans were excavated as well as the other metal boxes. Within them they found a very rich documentation of what life in the ghetto was like. Christina Chavarria: Actual barracks that are on loan to us from Poland, they are not replicas. Right over here we have a large-scale model of the process of going through the selection, going to the gas chambers, because we don't have any photos of the actual gassing, of course. Christina Chavarria: The diary, the quote, and the armband, take a look at that. The diary is the first diary that was donated to us by an American in captivity. Most of the diaries that we see they were written when they were in hiding or before they had to leave, but he was able to keep his diary while he was in the camp. It's also striking because Anthony Acevedo—he's not Jewish, in fact he's the son of Mexican immigrants. He is—we consider him to be a survivor, because of the fact that he went through a sub-camp of Buchenwald. Christina Chavarria: This is one of over a thousand citizenship papers that was found in somebody's attic in Switzerland. In a suitcase were these documents, these citizenship papers, issued by El Salvador that stated that the individuals who were named in the documents, whose pictures appeared on the documents were citizens of El Salvador, when in reality they were not—most of them were Hungarian Jews. This is 1944, Hungary is invaded in the spring of 1944 by Germany, and out of about 500,000 Hungarian Jews, over 430,000 died at Auschwitz in a very short period of time.