Warm-up (written on board): What's your opinion on capital punishment (i.e. executing criminals who commit heinous crimes)? Are you for or against it? Explain your answer.

Discuss student responses. Mention that this film is about a man who creates capital punishment devices, so students should monitor how their feelings about capital punishment change or remain the same.

Hand out the Mr. Death: A Fragmented Tale handouts to students. Before going over the directions, show students a printout of the Citizen Kane poster. I talk about how this poster is similar to the assignment we’ll be doing while we watch Mr. Death. The film Citizen Kane is famous for a number of reasons. One reason is that it was the first film to show the life of one man from many different perspectives, as this poster points out. You’ll notice that some of the people in the poster say "He’s a saint!" or "He’s a scoundrel!" Some people say,"He’s crazy!" and some say, "He’s a genius!" The funny thing about this film is that all of these perspectives on who Citizen Kane is are correct. He is all of these things.

Well, that’s essentially what we’re going to be doing with this film. You’ll find as we watch this film that there are many different perspectives about Fred Leuchter. Is he a good person? Is he bad person? You may even find your own opinions about what type of person Fred is will change and be somewhat contradictory. As we watch this film, we will pause occasionally and I will ask you to write down your opinion of Fred. Also be sure to write down the opinions that other people have of Fred during this film. For example, if someone says "Fred is a saint," write that down.

Viewing Mr. Death. I paused in about two places in the film. I paused it after the whole "capital punishment" section in which he talks about his former job. Then I paused it right after they talk about the results of the Zündel trial. After you pause it each time, have a student share what their opinion of Fred is.

When the film is over, talk with your students about all the different perspectives that were presented in the film and the different perspectives that people in the class had about Fred. I usually close this discussion by talking about how each one of us is viewed differently by many people. Some people may think we are a saint, some people may think we are a devil---and what’s funny is that each of them are a little bit true to a degree.

After the film, I have students choose one of the following three questions to respond to.

1) Before viewing Mr. Death, you wrote about your opinion on capital punishment. Did your opinion on capital punishment change at all by watching this film? Why or why not? Explain your answer.

2) One of the issues which are central to this film is the notion of freedom of speech. Do you feel that Zündel should have the right to publish anti-Holocaust material even though it could cause racial problems? Explain your answer.

3) Do you feel that Fred Leuchter deserves the treatment he received from others after he testified in the trial? Is it fair for him to be treated this way? Explain your answer.

The students got into groups of three and discussed the three questions together. After their discussion, we then arranged the classroom into two circles---an inner one and an outer one. Each group was required to have one "fish" (one of their group members---a different one for each question) join one of the discussions in the inner circle (only those on the inside were allowed to talk) and the fish were required to participate at least once. The other group members were to keep track of how often their "fish" participated. When the discussion could go on no longer, we switched to a different question and had new fish come in. We had discussions on each of the three questions in this manner.

Finish Unit Three Project.

The Fishbowl Discussion went moderately well---I used it with my one class who really enjoyed having debates. For my other class, I had a guest documentarian speak. He showed some of his films and talked about how he loved that documentaries were an alternative way of telling stories---and how they give you a chance to hear from people you wouldn’t normally hear from.

If you can arrange it, I would recommend getting a documentary filmmaker come to your class to talk about why he/she went into documentary film and why he/she feels it is a worthwhile film movement, maybe show a clip from some of their documentaries. There are a surprising number of documentary filmmakers around. You can try contacting some of your local universities to see if there are any faculty or students who specialize in documentary film. You could also try contacting your local public television stations. Documentary filmmakers aren’t terribly hard to find.