As you know we are working a Project about the HORROR of the WAR through History, Physics and Chemistry and English.
This is the task you have tio do before the 4th of February:
1.1. Watch these videos:
26th April 1939. The Bombing of Guernica
It
was market day in Guernica when the church bells of Santa Maria sounded the
alarm that afternoon in 1937. People from the surrounding hillsides crowded the
town square. "Every Monday was a fair in Guernica," says José
Monasterio, eyewitness to the bombing. "They attacked when there were a
lot of people there. And they knew when their bombing would kill the most. When
there are more people, more people would die."
For over three hours, twenty-five or more of
Germany's best-equipped bombers, accompanied by at least twenty more
Messerschmitt and Fiat Fighters, dumped one hundred thousand pounds of
high-explosive and incendiary bombs on the village, slowly and systematically
pounding it to rubble.
"We were hiding in the shelters and praying. I
only thought of running away, I was so scared. I didn't think about my parents,
mother, house, nothing. Just escape. Because during those three and one half
hours, I thought I was going to die." (eyewitness Luis Aurtenetxea)
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Those trying to escape were cut down by the strafing
machine guns of fighter planes. "They kept just going back and forth,
sometimes in a long line, sometimes in close formation. It was as if they were
practicing new moves. They must have fired thousands of bullets."
(eyewitness Juan Guezureya) The fires that engulfed the city burned for three
days. Seventy percent of the town was destroyed. Sixteen hundred civilians -
one third of the population - were killed or wounded.
1.3 Imagine you are a survivor and a witness of the bombing of Guernica:
Write
a letter to Picasso asking him to paint the horrors the
bombing left and suggesting him the elements he should draw and what they
should represent. (the war, the brutality, the wounded, the death…)
Let him know you want this horror to stop.
(140 – 200 words)
When you finish writing the letter in groups, you will post it in the class website.
Good luck!
