Guidelines for Teaching the Holocaust

Why Teach Holocaust History

One of the most effective, and most extensively documented subjects for a pedagogical examination of basic moral issues

Rationale should fit your class

• Why should students learn this history?

• What are the most significant lessons to be learned?

• Why is a particular resource appropriate?

• What is the focus of your curriculum?

What can students learn?• Responsible Citizenship• Appreciation for

democracy• Silence and indifference

can perpetuate problems.• History doesn’t just

“happen.” It occurs because individuals, organizations, and governments made choices.

Ramifications of prejudice, racism, and stereotyping.

Dangers of apathy and indifference

Responsibility when others

are being denied civil

rights

Methodological Considerations

Age Appropriateness

Define the term “Holocaust”

The state-sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Jews were the primary victims– 6 million were murdered; Gypsies, handicapped, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, and homosexuals also suffered grievous oppression and death.

There are no simple answers

Avoid Comparisons of Pain

Avoid Generalizations

The Holocaust was not inevitable

The Holocaust took place because individuals, groups, and nations made decisions to act or not to act.

Strive for precision of language

• Prejudice and discrimination

• Collaborators and bystanders

• Armed and spiritual resistance

• Concentration camps and killing centers

• Guilt and responsibility

Make careful distinction about sources

• Fact, opinion, fiction

• Primary and secondary sources

• Court testimony, oral history

• Photographs

Avoid Stereotypical Descriptions

• All experiences of Jews were not the same.

• All Germans were not Nazis.

• Although groups can share common experiences, generalization tend to stereotype group behavior.

Do not romanticize to engage student’s interest

• The number of non-Jews who helped rescue Jews in a small fraction of the population.

• Give a balanced perspective.

• Do not use the worst aspects of human nature to hook your students, they will become desensitized.

How many is 6,000,000

People not Statistics

                          

                                        

                

                         

                    

                          

                                  

                          

                  

                          

If you were to live 6,000,000 hours, how many years would

you be alive?

685 Years

How many times would 9-11 need to occur to equal 6,000,000

deaths?

Every day for 5.8 years

Be Sensitive with visual and written content

                                        

                          

Balance of Perspective

Appropriate Learning Activities

Why Remember?