Teaching the Holocaust & Other Genocides is an online resource guide designed to assist social studies, English Language Arts, and Humanities teachers as they design curriculum units and lessons to meet the 1994 mandate to teach the Holocaust and other genocides.
The breadth of scholarship that is related to the Holocaust and human rights violations is daunting and still in process. Therefore, it is sometimes difficult for the novice as well as the veteran teacher to keep abreast of all the information available on these pivotal historical events. In the preparation of this resource guide, the writers and consultants made careful decisions regarding which readings and activities to include and which to leave out. These decisions were made after a review of the vast amount of resources available and were based upon the following considerations:
- The appropriateness of materials and readings for the selected student audience (upper elementary, middle school, or high school)
- The need to include a variety of materials, readings, and student activities in order to account for diverse student learning styles and interests
- The need to present accurate historical accounts of the Holocaust and other genocides
- The need to present information about the positive actions that individuals and groups took to counter the evils associated with acts of genocide, in other words, resistors and rescuers.
Before using the resource guide, teachers should read through the entire publication and select those readings and activities which best fit their courses or programs. Please remember this guide is NOT a curriculum or a textbook, but rather a collection of materials and activities about the Holocaust and other examples of genocides. The guide provides materials and activities that may be used in depth or selectively. Some teachers may use the material in a unit of three periods to two weeks. Others choose a more extensive interdisciplinary approach. It is possible to use the guide in the development of a semester course in Holocaust and Human Rights Studies. Teachers play a crucial role in the creation of curriculum because they choose the material that will ultimately be presented in their classrooms. Instead of dictating what should be taught, this resource guide offers teachers a broad range of primary source documents, reading passages with questions, case studies, worksheets, literary resources, and individual and group projects. Teachers can design lessons by using those activities and materials most appropriate for their students in their school or district. Because of the sensitivity of the materials, teachers should select readings and activities with great care with attention to age-appropriateness.
Certainly, the guiding principles behind this resource guide extend beyond mandates, standards and state assessments. By using this guide, we hope students integrate will integrate an understanding of history with civic responsibility and a willingness to serve as guardians of democracy and protectors of human rights, to be Upstanders not bystanders and to act with greater humanity toward one another. Study of the Holocaust and other genocides raises a number of important questions about the nature of human behavior:
- What does the Holocaust tell us about our conceptions of what constitutes civilized or rational human beings?
- How can we confront the moral and philosophical dilemmas posed by the Holocaust?
- What can we do to prevent violations of human rights in the future?
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in its Guidelines for Teaching the Holocaust strongly recommends that we “translate statistics into real people.” The sheer number of victims – six million Jews and five million others (Roma and Sinti, disabled, other Slavic groups (Poles, Russians), communists and socialists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, etc. are hard to comprehend. Hence, one aim of this Resource Guide is to provide “case studies” of “real” people, some well-known, but most not, ordinary people whose lives were disrupted by the Nazi war machine. Some became victims of the genocide; others were involved in rescue or resistance efforts; others survived the most horrific situations. In addition, we have included numerous excerpts from memoirs and hyperlinks to first-person testimonies from survivors.
Studying the Holocaust and other genocides provides teachers and students with an opportunity to explore controversial issues in global history. The approach taken in this resource guide us to emphasize the complexity of history by presenting multiple perspectives. Activities, readings with questions, case studies, and document analysis are part of the learning experiences that encourage students to think write and speak as historians, to analyze historical material, to question their assumptions, to gather and organize evidence before reaching conclusions, to discover connections between events, to recognize parallel developments that may not be directly related, and to realize that conclusions are subject to change as new evidence emerges. As they study the Holocaust and other genocides students should come to realize that historians do not have all the answers about the past or the present. We hope that the material in this Resource Guide allows room for widespread debate and promotes a broad dialogue on what makes us human and what is the responsibility of society.
The teaching of the Holocaust, although embedded in the key ideas in the Social Studies Framework, is not exclusively the domain of social studies teachers, but also part of the literary selections that enhance the ELA class. In New York, the Grades 6-12 Literacy Standards states that “a high degree of proficiency is essential as students attempt to acquire and build knowledge in each of the content areas. Students must be able to read social studies textbooks, analyze historical documents…. As well as respond to issues in their subject area content through speaking, writing and crafting responses. “The English Language Arts Learning Standards indicates that students should “experience a balance of literature and informational texts in the context of instruction designed to create opportunities for learners to engage with a variety of topics and texts…” This may include memoirs, and diaries, poetry, drama, and historical fiction (based on historical accurate accounts.) But teachers must be especially careful when using fiction. Historical fiction mixes real events with imagined characters or dialogues, which can lead to confusion between what happened and what was invented by the author. This can distort historical understanding, especially if the reader assumes everything is factual. Carefully selected historical fiction can make the Holocaust feel more personal and real and can encourage empathy and curiosity. But historical fiction should be paired with non-fiction accounts and survivor testimonies for a full, accurate understanding.
Although labeled by the author John Boyne a fable, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is widely read in many classrooms in the context of teaching about the Holocaust. This novel has been widely criticized by educators, historians, and Holocaust education organizations for its numerous historical inaccuracies and its misleading portrayal of the Holocaust. The central premise—that an eight-year-old German boy, Bruno, could regularly approach and converse with a Jewish prisoner, Shmuel, through a fence at Auschwitz without being noticed—is historically implausible. Auschwitz was one of the most heavily guarded and secretive death camps, with electrified fences, armed guards, and strict surveillance, making such interactions virtually impossible. In addition, Bruno should have been far more familiar with both Auschwitz and Nazism, given his background as the son of a high-ranking Nazi commandant stationed at Auschwitz, Bruno would have likely been exposed to Nazi ideology from a young age. In Nazi Germany, children, especially those from elite Nazi families, were heavily indoctrinated with propaganda promoting antisemitism, nationalism, and loyalty to Hitler through school, youth organizations like the Hitler Youth, and his family environment. It is highly unlikely that a child in Bruno's position would be so naïve about the Holocaust or unaware of the function of a concentration camp, particularly when his father is directly responsible for its operation. The idea that Bruno could crawl under a fence and blend in with prisoners, unnoticed by SS guards, also ignores the brutal and dehumanizing nature of the camp system. These inaccuracies not only distort the realities of the Holocaust, but also risk misleading readers, especially young ones, about the true nature of Nazi atrocities.
There are many survivor accounts of the Holocaust that are accessible to young readers, or novels that are more accurately based in fact and less problematic from a historical and ethical point of view, that teachers could use quite effectively in the classroom. This Resource Guide contains a section on Literature with both an annotated bibliography of age-appropriate books, as well as several in-depth units of study.
Finally, we organized this Resource Guide to be most effective in curriculum development:
Here are the modules:
We have included the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Guidelines for Teaching the Holocaust. We hope that this vital document will provide answers for any questions that arise when teachers develop the curriculum to implement the state mandate and provide their students with a robust study of the Holocaust and Other Genocides.
