Lesson Plan 4:
A Mother’s Love
In this lesson, students will learn about Ilse Weber, a Jewish songwriter and mother. Despite the horrors she faced, she used music as a means for comfort and testimony. Students will watch two performances of songs Weber wrote that are centered around her love for her sons: one song for the son she sent away in order to save him; another song for the son who was killed with her in the gas chambers in the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Grades: 8-12
This lesson plan is designed for teachers and students working at an introductory level. If your students are just beginning their study of the Holocaust, we suggest taking a look at the following pre-teaching resources:
Holocaust Encyclopedia from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM)
Yad Vashem Teaching Materials
If you are interested in doing further research into specific topics mentioned in this lesson plan, we suggest the following resources:
About Ilse Weber
About Theresienstadt
Starting in October 2025, you will be able to stream the full-length documentary, The Last Musician of Auschwitz, for free via BBC Select to prepare your classes.
For definitions of Holocaust terms, you can visit the USHMM Glossary or the Museum of Jewish Heritage Curriculum Glossary. All the specific terms mentioned in this lesson plan are also explained at the end.
You can also explore further resources about the Holocaust and Antisemitism on the Center for Jewish History website.
Both songs in this lesson plan were written by Jewish songwriter, Ilse Weber. Weber used songwriting as a method of coping. Although from Czechoslovakia, she wrote in German.
Und der Regen rinnt (And the Rain Runs) was written in 1939 after Weber had sent her young son, Hanuš, to the United Kingdom to save him from the Nazis. Weber wrote the song about a mother missing her child.
After the end of World War Two, at least 50 years passed before the song was sung again.
Wiegala is a lullaby that Ilse Weber wrote between 1942 and 1944 for the children in the Theresienstadt infirmary. According to a witness, she sang the song to the children while they were being killed in a gas chamber in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
The song is a lullaby, so lines like Wiegala, wiegala, weier (Beddy-bye, beddy-bye, bire) are nonsensical and are not supposed to mean anything.
In the documentary, both songs are performed by Liv Migdal, a German violinist and singer.
Introduce your students to some basic information about the persecution of Jews and the Nazi camp system. If your students are new to studying the Holocaust, you can provide additional historical context by sharing some information from the USHMM’s Introduction to the Holocaust.
Quick-Write Prompt: Give students 3 minutes to jot down songs that remind them of someone they love and why?
Prepare your students by setting the context. They are going to watch two different clips of performances of songs written by Jewish writer, Ilse Weber. Ilse Weber was born in Czechoslovakia and lived in Prague but spoke and wrote in German.
The first song is called Und der Regen rinnt (And the Rain Runs). In 1939, Ilse Weber sent her young son, Hanuš, to the United Kingdom to save him from the Nazis. She wrote the song about missing Hanuš.
Stress that this clip is not historical, but a contemporary artist singing the song. Then explain that in the clip, students will see historical footage of children travelling to the United Kingdom without their parents but that they will not actually see Hanuš in this footage.
Note: Ilse Weber saved her son by sending him on a Kindertransport (or children’s transport) from Prague to the United Kingdom. Unless you have previously talked to your students about the Kindertransport, we suggest omitting the historical background, and to simply say that she sent her son away to save him. If you want to talk about the Kindertransport in more detail, you will find additional teaching materials in Extension Activities at the end of this lesson plan.
Class discussion:
Now set the context for the second clip, a performance of the song called Wiegala (Beddy-Bye). Before showing it, explain some background about the Theresienstadt ghetto and the Auschwitz concentration camp to your students.
After sending her firstborn son to safety, Ilse Weber was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto together with her younger son, Tomáš, and her husband. In Theresienstadt, Weber worked in the children’s infirmary. At night, she composed poetry and songs to keep the young Jewish children in the ghetto entertained.
In 1944, Weber was deported from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz together with her son and the children from the infirmary. Ilse sang the lullaby, Wiegala, to the children while they were being killed in a gas chamber by the Nazis. She wanted to comfort the children by singing the song.
Stress that this clip is not historical footage, but a contemporary artist singing the song on the grounds of the Auschwitz concentration camp memorial site. Then explain that in the clip, students will see drawings about Auschwitz and historical photos of Jewish children persecuted by the Nazis. They will not actually see Tomáš.
Class discussion:
After showing both clips, you can give students additional background about the biography of Ilse Weber. If you want, you can show them photos of her.
Divide the students into pairs or groups. Hand out a different worksheet to each group. (There are two worksheets with the lyrics of the two songs.) Allow the groups at least 10 minutes to read the lyrics and discuss their findings.
Then have students discuss the following questions (also printed on the worksheets):
Have each pair/group present their answers. Write down main themes on the blackboard.
The photos of Jewish families and children arriving in Auschwitz shown in the clip of the song Wiegala were taken from the “Auschwitz Album.” The Auschwitz Album is the only surviving visual evidence of the mass murder at Auschwitz. The photos were taken by SS men at the end of May or beginning of June 1944.
The whole album is available digitally (here) at the website of Yad Vashem. You can look through it together with your students.
Ilse Weber rescued her son Hanuš by sending him on a Kindertransport to the United Kingdom. If students are interested in learning more about this unique rescue operation, there are a number of teaching resources available:
Auschwitz – complex of three Nazi camps established between 1940 and 1942. Originally a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners, it grew into the largest site of mass murder in the Holocaust.
Concentration Camp – place where large groups of people, often political prisoners or minorities, were imprisoned without trial, usually under harsh conditions. Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its allies established more than 44,000 camps and other incarceration sites (including ghettos).
Death Camp – see Killing Center
Deportation – forced removal and transportation of populations (primarily Jews and also Roma and political opponents) by the Nazis to ghettos, concentration camps, or killing centers, often in overcrowded freight or cattle cars under brutal conditions.
Gas chambers – specially constructed rooms in the Nazi Killing Centers (or death camps) designed to carry out the murder of European Jewry.
Ghetto – a ghetto was a part of a city where Jewish people were forced to live, separated from the rest of the population. These areas were often overcrowded, had poor living conditions, and were controlled by Nazi authorities.
Holocaust - a word of Greek origin meaning complete destruction, especially by fire. The word is used to describe the state-sponsored systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945.
Killing Center – specialized Nazi camps designed solely for mass killing during the Holocaust. Victims, mainly Jews, were transported to camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka, where they were murdered, often in gas chambers.
Kindertransport (or children’s transport) – the rescue of over 15,000 (mostly Jewish) children to countries like the UK, France, Sweden or Switzerland. The children could be saved because their parents were willing to separate from them and to send them to safety by themselves. With 10,000 children saved, the British Kindertransport was by far the largest.
Nazi – a member of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party that took political control of Germany under Adolf Hitler in 1933, after gaining mass popular support. The Nazi Party was violently antisemitic. In addition to Jews, Nazi persecution was directed toward Roma and Sinti (Gypsies), Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, and political enemies of the Nazi Party.
Selection – the process where SS officers decided who would be forced into labor and who would be sent to death.
SS (Schutzstaffel, or Protection Squads) – originally established as Adolf Hitler’s personal bodyguard unit. It would later become both the elite guard of the Nazi Party and Hitler’s executive force prepared to carry out all security-related duties, without regard for legal restraint. The SS was responsible for enforcing racial policies and running concentration camps.
Theresienstadt – a Nazi-controlled ghetto and transit camp in Terezín (on the territory of today's Czech Republic). It was falsely portrayed as a “model camp” to mislead the world. In reality, thousands died from starvation, disease, and brutal conditions or were deported to Death Camps like Auschwitz.