Thursday, June 23, 2016

23/6/2016 Thursday

Hi classmates!
Today we have finished watching the documentary.

Inside the camp there was a photographer, and he gave photos of the reality of the camps to a woman, who saved the photos till the war ended and then everybody could know the true facts of the concentration camps.





Finally when the camp was discovered the prisoners were rescued: they said it was the happiest moment of their lives.

Some of them died of starvation, and others of eating after being so many days without eating anything. There were images of a man walking and he was extremely thin: he barely had flesh, he was only skin and bones.

Even though the men who were talking  in the documentary survived some of them have nightmares still  now. One of the men said that during a nightmare he hit his wife on the breass unconciously.
It has been a really interesting and striking documentary, we knew about all of these things, but this documentary has a lot of things that books in the school don't have and we need to know it.

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

21/06/2016 Tuesday

Hi! It's m,e Fernando.

As today there haven't beenmany students in class,  Paqui has asked for a volunteer to write the journal, and I have offered to do it.


                                       

http://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias/2015/10/151005_sobreviviente_campos_de_concentracion_lb

We have been watching a documentary about the concentration camps, in wich different Spanish men have been talking about their experiences in them. Being there had to be really hard for everyone who entered there.

There the prisomers had to transport granite, which then was sold. The men who failed or who couldn't do any more working were executed, thrown by a precipice or in some cases they were taken to different camps where they were asphixiated with gas (the one we use to kill rats or masquitoes, but in a very big amount).

The prisioners also talked about the food they gave them, even the dogs could eat better than them. They needed to have 3,000 calories in their diet in order to survive, and the prisioners only received 1,000 calories.

Another way of dying there was being eaten by the dogs of you made something wrong.

This documentary has been really interesting.

My favourite part about it is that there was a man who was answering some children's questions. I think that it's good so the children could know about it and learn that what Nazi people did isn't a good thing . I liked that a little girl asked: "Why did they do this?" and the man answered: "Because they considered themselves superior and thought that they could do whatever they wanted, but in fact it wasn't true".

The worst thing in my opinion about that documentary is that I couldn't understand one of the men very well, even though he was talking in Spanish I couln't understand him because he was old. Paqui has told us that only two of the eight men remain alive.

I knew some things about concentration camps and about what happened there, but with this video I have learned some more new things about them.

I feel sorrow about what the men  had to live, but on the other hand I feel relieved and happy that they could get out of there.

As a conclusion I think that it's necessary to know what happened there, because history can repeat, and if we know it, we can avoid that happens again.
We are finishing the documentary on Thursday.
Have a nice week everybody, bye.

Monday, June 20, 2016

Animated presentations of World War 2

This is an animated presentation that summarizes World War 2 in the European theater. It was made by West Point Military Academy to teach the students who want to be officers in the USA Army.

 

And on the following link you can download several animated presentations of the military operations in the Pacific: 



20th June 2016

Hi! I'm Manal and I'm going to summarize what we have done today in Social Sciences lesson. We've continued studying Hitler's Nazi Germany. Do you know who is Adolf Hitler? If you don't know,  I'll tell you.


He was born in Austira, he participated in WW1 and was promoted to corporal. After the war the army infiltrated him as an informant to repor on the DAP, an extreme right party . As he was a skilled speaker, he soon became on of its leader.



Later, he changed the name of the party to NSDAP in 1920, and he copied Mussolini's ideas, but there were  other important features:

-ANTI-SEMITISM: hate fot the Jews, considered to be the responsible of all bad things.

-SUPERIORITY OF THE ARYAN "RACE" AND NEED FOR A VITAL SPACE:space the Aryans needed to live with dignityi, which extended throughout the Great European Plain. This space included many countries which didn't agree with that, and that provoked  war.

-DEMAND OF ABROGATION OF VERSAILLES TREATY: Hitler wanted to eliminate all the sanctions of the treaty of Versailles.

The NSDAP created two Nazi paramilitary groups: 

                                                           SA: STURMABTEILUNG                                                                               




SS: SCHUTZSTAFFEL




Security Sections were guards of Hitler, but when war started, they became guards of the concentration camps.


Beer Hall Putsch

In November 1923 the Nazis tried to seize power with a coup d' État in Munich. They tried to do something similar to Mussolini, Mussolini's March on Rome had been succesful and the Fascists had  taken the government, and Hitler tried to do the same. The Nazis surrounded the Bürgerbraukeller, a beer hall where Bavarian political authorities were celebrating a meeting. The putsch failed because the army didn't join the Nazis. 14 Nazis died and their main leaders were arrrested.



Hitler was sentenced to 5 years, but he only served 8 months. During his imprisonment he wrote Mein Kampf( My Sturggle/ Battle), considered to be the bible of Nazism.

Results of the general elections.

The Nazis' results in the elections were very poor until the beginning of the 1929 crisis. The Great Depression increased their support among ruined bourgeois, middle and samll farmers, industrialists and bankers.

In july 1932 the NSDAP reached its peak: they were the most woted party with more than 13 million votes, but they didn't have majority and the president  of the republic, Marshall Hindenburg, refused to appoint Hitler prime minister. They didn't win the elections but they started increasing the number of seats in the Reichstag when the economic crisis started, but later their number of votes decreased.

In the following elections in November 1932 the NSDAP lost 2 million wotes. But in January 1933 the conservative forces convinced Hindenburg to appoint Hitler prime minister.

In Jamuary 1933, Hitler was appointed prime minister. Hitler's first government included 3 Nazis out of 11 ministers. Hitler convinced Hindenburg to call new elections for the 5th March.







Reichstage fire ( 27th february)

The Nazis committed arson against the Reichstag  and accused the communists. The government issued an emergency decree restricting liberties. Many oppositin leaders were arrested and sent to detention camps.






And in this situation, using intimidation and violence against the opposition, the Nazis won elections. Hitler demanded full powers in the Reichstag. 

The secret police (Gestapo) was created and in July the NSDAP became the only legal party.



Nazi boycott against the Jews (april 1933)

Persecution against the Jews started immediately. The Nazis did a lot of things against the Jews. German Jews who had money started emigrating to other places because they suffered a lot living in that way.



Resultado de imagen de nazi boycott of jewish businesses

Burning of books 

The Nazis burnt books of aurthors considered to be against Germany: books by Einstein, Marx, Hemingway, Proust; Heinrich and Thomas Mann and other authors were burnt. 





Forced labour camps

Members of opposition parties were the first imprisoned in concentration camps, ruled by the SS.



Night of the Long Knives

Hitler ordered to kill those who opposed him in his party. especially those in the SA. 


When HItler had almost everything controlled, the president Hidenburg died in August 1934. Then Hitler concentrated the post of chancellor and president and the Army swore fielty to him. He was called "Führer" of the Germans and proclaimed the 3rd Reich.



Nuremberg Laws

They excluded the Jews from German nationality and forbade them to work in contact with Germans or to marry them. If one of your ancestor was Jewish, you were also a Jewish. The Jewish couldn't go to the cinema, or  the swimming pool with the Aryans, so everyone who could leave, left Germany.




Night of Broken Glass

On the 9th November 1938 there were attacks to synagogues and Jewish shops all around Germany:

-90 Jews killed.
-more than 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to camps.
-massive emigration of Jews to other countries.


After all this destruction, the Jewshad to pay for all thatt happened. The government said that it was their responsibility.





Correction of the Versailles Treaty

In March 1936, they remilitarized  the West Bank of Rhineland.
In March 1936, the Nazis occupied Austrian and annexed it to Germany (Anschluss)

Munich Agreement 

Hitler claimed Sudentenland, a Czechoslvakian territory inhabited by 3 million German speakers. The main European powers met at Munich and signed an agreement to cede Sudentenland to Germany, They didn't want to provoke a war and saw Hitler as an important ally to stop Stalin.
Hitler promised to stop his territorial demands, but he didn`t keep his promise.



In March 1939 the Nazis occupied Bohemia and Moravia and established a protectorate in Slovakia.
Hitler  demanded the Danzig Corridor to Poland. Poland asked the UK and France for help.

NAZI-SOVIET PACT:

Secret agreement signed between Germany and the USSR. Hitler wanted to be sure of the USSR neutrality in the invasion of Poland and Stalin wanted to gain time in order to be ready for a future war against the Nazis.


Outbreak of World War 2

1st September: invasion of Poland using Thunder War: combined attack of artillery and aircraft.

3rd September: France and the United Kingdom declared war on  Germany.

17th September: the Soviet Union occupied the Eastern part of Poland, Finland , Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Poland was occupied in four weeks.


VOCABULARY:

Vital space: espacio vital
abrogation: supresión de una ley
SA: Secciones de asalto (camisas pardas)
SS: secciones de seguridad (camisas negras)
Beer Hall Putsch: Putsch de la Cervecería
My struggle: mi lucha
Reichstag: parlamento en Alemania
Arson: incendio provocado
boycott: boicotear
Triumph of the Will: El triunfo de la voluntad
Night of Broken glass:  noche de cristales rotos
roundup: redada
enabling aact: ley habilitante
appeasement policy: política de apaciguamiento
Puppet state : Estado títere.

Saturday, June 18, 2016

Swastikas in Spain

On the following link you will find a short history of the symbol of the swastika and how it became a symbol of the "Aryan race" and was adopted by the Nazis in Germany.

https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007453


They reached the point of including the swastika in Germany's flag between 1933 and 1945:


Flag of German Reich (1935–1945).svg


But as we studied in class, the swastika has been used  as symbol of good luck, the eternal return, birth and death... since the Neolithic. In Spain we have some old remains from the past that contain swastikas: 


Celtiberian vessel found in Numantia, Soria




Roman mosaic in La Olmeda, Palencia

Mussolini and Hitler: the Killers' Opera

This is the trailer of a documentary about the relationships between Hitler and Mussolini. In the 1920s decade Hitler admired Mussolini and his March on Rome and he tried to copy it with his Munich Beer Hall Putsch. However, Mussolini found Hitler and his book Mein Kampf boring and simplistic. They first met in Venice in 1934 and they didn't get along well, although the propaganda spread that their relation was closer than it was.

 Despite their differences they co-operated in the Spainish Civil War and in World War 2. Hitler's influence over Mussolini grew as Germany's military power showed its strenght in Europe. The last proof of their connection came when Hitler sent a group of elite paratroopers to rescue Mussolini, who had been confined in the Gran Sasso ski resort in the Apennine Mountains. But this couldn't avoid Mussolini's capture by Italian partisans and his execution on the 28th April 1945. Hitler committed suicide two days later. 



Presentation of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany

This is the presentation of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany:


 

Friday, June 17, 2016

Friday, 17th June

Hi everyone,
I’m sorry for uploading the journal today, but yesterday I had to deal with some unexpected problems. I hope you understand me.

Well, yesterday in Social Sciencies we reviewed the content of Fascist Italy and we went on with the presentation. We saw how Mussolini took the power of Italy (in my opinion he got it very, but very easily and also stupid. The king had to be on drugs or something because this wasn’t normal). Anyway, Mussolini was the typical dictator (as asshole as the others) who impose his ideology to all the State. He wasn’t a liberal, he used violence to get what he wanted, he wanted everybody to obey, believe and fight. This last point reminded me to religions, I don’t know why (I actually do).

http://skepticism-images.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/images/jreviews/Mussolini-1940.02.07.jpg

In a date I don’t remember, there was a man whose name I don’t know, that annoyed them in the Parliament because he was always there, outside, taking notes and telling everybody the truth about what was happening. Mussolini squad kidnapped him and killed him, and later Mussolini took the responsibility of his death but nothing happened. In this part of the lesson I was amazed: I mean, everybody knew that he killed the man but no one really cared. Are we mad?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ae/Bundesarchiv_Bild_102-09844,_Mussolini_in_Mailand.jpg/300px-Bundesarchiv_Bild_102-09844,_Mussolini_in_Mailand.jpg

Another anecdote was that Mussolini was atheist, although he signed peace with the Church and he let the Church have their own State. Hypocrisy? Where?

http://www.nuevatribuna.es/media/nuevatribuna/images/2015/08/25/2015082512263283856.jpg

In Italy, as they wanted to be self-sufficient, they produced all by their own and this meant that there were periods where food wasn’t abundant, so they made advertisements saying that people should eat more rice for example, because it was super healthy or things like that, but in reality this was because they only had rice to eat and they didn’t want anybody to be aware of this. Something similar happened with coffee.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/content/images/articles/289/289891/coffee.jpg

The members of the Parliament who didn’t belong to the Fascist Party had to leave (they only were 1/3 of all the seats of the Parliament) because most of them were persecuted and sent to jail. This way, the fascists didn’t have opponents.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Gran_Consiglio_Fascismo.jpg/300px-Gran_Consiglio_Fascismo.jpg

They also taught children to leave in a dictatorship. When I watched the images of the children wearing soldiers’ uniforms, I turned a little bit sad.

http://histclo.com/youth/youth/image/imgnat/fascisti01s.jpg

When we finished with Fascist Italy we started with Nazi Germany. The first thing we studied was the period of time where Germans printed a lot of money to pay the debt of the war. This was so ridiculous that even children played with the notes. To buy a lettuce, for example, they had to carry sacs of money because the value of the currency was very low. At the end they had to burn everything and create new money.
http://www.kevinpezzi.com/blog/images/German_mark_kids_playing_with.jpg


We started also watching something about Hitler, but not so much. We saw that there was a photo manipulated where Hitler seemed to appear but in reality he wasn’t there. This was made to show people that Hitler was very nationalist. 

https://gabriellebossy.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/hitler14.jpg?w=480&h=270&crop=1

Thursday, June 16, 2016

Monday, 13rd June 2016

Monday, in social sciences class, we had to make exam of unit seven and eigh.
The exam was consists of five exercises:

  • The first exercise it was to choose four words and explain all that you know.
  • The second exercise was about incomplete sentences that have holes and your taperworms to complete.
  • The third exercise was about choose to develop one of the options you preference, you can choose one of two
  • The fourth exercise was a true and false about USA, and if the questions were false had to correct
  • And the fifth and last exercise was to develop a question from USA
The exam is easy if you study a lot

Tuesday, June 14, 2016

Tuesday, 14th of June

Hi mates!
In less than one week we are in holidays, so today is my last time to do the journal. Let's start to review.
At the beginning of the lesson Paqui has given us the examns. She has corrected with us the exercise 2 and 4. I have obtained a good mark, so I'm happy.

Then María has asked Paqui about Franco. because Maria's grandmother told her about him. Paqui has said that during the republic women and men had the same rights while  the Dictatorship of Franco the women couldn't do anything without the consent of their spouse, divorse was not allowed and few women studied, worked and married .

Some minutes later Paqui has written on the blackboard the  ''Chronology of Spain in the 20th century''


--> Alphonse XIII (from 1903 to 1931)
--> Second Republic (from 1931 to 1936)
--> Coup D'Etat ( 18th of July1936 )
--> Civil War ( from 1936 to  to 1939)
--> Franco's dictatorship (from 1939 to 1975 )
--> Transition to democracy (from 1975 to 1982)
--> Democracy (from 1982 to present)

After that we have spoken about the ''Femenine Section''. It was a manuel that explains how women had to be  at Franco's Dictatorship.
Source: http://factoriadesociales.blogspot.com.es/2012/07/guia-de-la-buena-esposa.html

Mussolini and Hitler had the same ideas than Franco. Hirler's slogan for women was: KINDER, KIRCHE & KÜCHE (children, church and kitchen)

Suddenly my mates have started to speak about what Veet says.  ''if women don't shave, they are not women''.All of  the girls of my class have revolted. Now, there are associations created by model like Madonna against shave. Doctors don't recommend to shave your joints. All the people do this because it's fashion.

Source: http://modaellos.com/como-depilarse-las-piernas-hombres-sin-morir-en-el-intento/
Write your opinion downstairs. 

If you want to learn abour the History of Spain in the 20th century and Francoism you should read books of  historians, like ''50 causas que debes saber sobre la historia de España'' (50 causes that you have to know about the history of Spain ) & ''Bulldozer negro del general Franco''. They are not expensive, if you like that you should by one of them or both.

Source: http://www.libros-antiguos-alcana.com/ficha-50+cosas+que+hay+que+saber+sobre+historia+de+espana-gil+andres+carlos-715399

Source: http://libros.fnac.es/a1209949/Bulldozer-negro-del-general-franco

Finally Paqui started conplaining one more time about  that we only have 3h per week  and with this time she couldn't teach us the 15 units.

VOCABULARY
-sprinster - solterona
-shave - depilarse

SEE YOU NEXT YEAR, BYEE!







Sunday, June 12, 2016

Art project

Church of Sainte Madeleine


This building was designed by Pierre Alexandre Vignon between 1807 and 1827. This type of architecture belongs to the the New Classicism. Napoleon was who ordered the construction of this church, this was a temple for the glory of the French Army. This church has the structure of a Greek temple, it has high columns, on it there is a pediment with the figure of people sculpted, its doors have a lot of details too, in the interior you can see domes paintings and sculptures of angels. The basic material used was stone sculpted to make the characteristic details of this style. This church belongs to the New-Classicism because of the details it has, for example the use of columns and pillars, the domes, the pediment and its arches.



Two old men eating soup

This painting was made by Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, a Spanish painter who was born in Zaragoza, Fuendetodos in 1746. He made this painting between the 1819 and 1823. It doesn’t belong to a general style, this is one of the Black Paintings which he painted when he retired to a house on the banks of the river Manzanares called house of the Deaf Man, he startied painting on this way when he became deaf, because of this illness his paintings became more cirtical and introspective ans colours were darker, that is why they were called Blaack Paintings. He didn’t paint this work because someone connisioned him to do it, he made paintings on the walls of his house when Ferdinand VII came back and he lost his job, on that period he became completely isolated. On it there are two old men painted. The man who is on the left is smiling, he  has got a spoon in his right hand, I can also see that the two men are looking at their left, the two men are bold, the two man are covered with something which seems to be like a bed sheet, on the bed sheet there is a plate with soup, the man who is on the right has no eyes, the whole background is black. It was made by a technique called oil painting. On this painting no one knows who the men are, some people think they are witches but we can't know it exactly because Goya didn't put a name to this paintings. This painting belongs to the dark paintings of Goya, these ones are featured by being painted with dark colours like grey, black…

The puddler


This sculpture was made by Constantin Meunier, a Belgian painter who was born in Etterbeek. He made this sculpture in 1885. This work belongs to the Naturalist style, the last stage of Realism. On this sculpture I can see a man who is sitting, he is wearing a hat, trousers and boots, the whole sculpture is brown, this is because of the material used to make it. It is sculpted on bronze. This sculpture shows a worker, this is one of the sculptures he made when he came back to Belgium. We can say this sculpture belongs to the Naturalism because of the details it has and its theme, the work, this is one of the main themes of realism.