Remembering The Holocaust

Resources for Teachers

In honor of Holocaust Remembrance Month in April, these interdisciplinary activity ideas and online resources for your classroom.

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Teaching Ideas

Daring to Resist: A Play in Five Acts

Many people know that the Holocaust claimed millions of victims. Although millions of people suffered terribly during their time in concentration camps and prisons, they did not sit passively without resisting. Their individual and collective efforts to survive were a major part of their lives, and often were acts of great risk and heroism.

Ask students to think about the words "survivor" and "victim." What does each mean, and what is the difference between the two, if any? What does it mean to be a victim of a terrible crime, versus being a survivor? Can you be a victim and a survivor at the same time? Explain that the purpose of the lesson is to evaluate how victims of the Holocaust attempted to survive, and how they resisted the situation at the time.

Organize students into five groups, and let a leader pick a form of resistance out of a hat or bowl:

• Death Camp Revolts
• Ghetto Revolts
• White Rose
• Yad Vashem (What is it, and how did these people contribute to acts of resistance during the Holocaust?)
• Resistance at work and in factories

In 3-4 minute role plays, each student group should act out or demonstrate how Jews and other persecuted peoples used a certain form of resistance against their oppressors during the Holocaust.

Students will want to start with general search engines such as Yahoo.com and Infoseek as well as the following Web sites to research their assigned form of resistance:

• Transcripts to read from the PBS "Daring to Resist" broadcast
  http://www.pbs.org/daringtoresist/tgtranscript.html
• Cybrary of the Holocaust
  http://remember.org
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
  http://www.ushmm.org
• Museum of Jewish Heritage
  http://www.mjhnyc.org/home.htm
• Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies
  http://www.library.yale.edu/testimonies/homepage.html
• The Holocaust History Project Homepage
  http://www.holocaust-history.org

The Holocaust: How Could It Happen?

Many studies of the Holocaust concentrate on the atrocities that occurred. Students may have an awareness that it happened, but they should also develop an understanding of the political, economic, and social causes that let to the events of the Holocaust. Creating a timeline of events from 1936-1945 will help students identify, illustrate, explain, and interpret the causes and progression of events that led to the Holocaust.

Students will work in small groups to create a life-size timeline on large poster paper or newsprint sheets. Each large blank sheet should represent one year, and that year will be written in large bold print on the top, starting with 1936. Student will work in their groups to decorate their year sheet with: pictures (photographs or drawings), slogans, artwork, poems, copies or re-created newspaper clippings, and other memorabilia. Encourage students to research the important events of that year and think it terms of people and their ideas, the government, and the economy. When student groups are finished with their posters, they will be hung on a wall in the classroom or hallway, in consecutive years to create the timeline.

Here are some Web sites to get students started on their research:

• American Experience: America and the Holocaust
  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust/
• Daring To Resist: Three Women Face The Holocaust
  http://www.pbs.org/daringtoresist/
• Frontline: Shtetl
  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shtetl//
• People's Century: Master Race
  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/peoplescentury/episodes/masterrace/index.html

Extension:

1. Have each student group present and explain their timeline year to the class as a whole.
2. Evaluate student's on their understanding of the political, economic, and social causes of the Holocaust, by answering the lesson's question with an essay or a letter to people in the future: The Holocaust happened because..."

PBS Online Resources: Sites to See

• The American Experience: America and the Holocaust
  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust/tguide/index.html
  Explore anti-Semitism in America during the '30s and '40s and official U.S. government response to the Holocaust during World War II. Also, draw comparisons to hate crimes and ethnic cleansing taking place today. This site also includes a teachers guide, timelines, maps, letters, interviews, biographies, and more.
• Daring To Resist: Three Women Face The Holocaust
  http://www.pbs.org/daringtoresist/teachersguide.html
  Through the life stories of Barbara Ledermann, Faye Schulman and Shulamit (Shula) Lack, learn about the experiences of Jews who resisted the Nazis, and understand resistance movements taking place around the world today. The site includes study questions, activities, a timeline, and biographical information for the three women featured.
• Frontline: Shtetl
  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shtetlguide/
  On November 8, 1942, Nazi soldiers rounded up the Jews living in a shtetl, a small village, in Bransk, Poland; within a day's time, more than 2,500 villagers died in Treblinka's gas chambers. Explore the nature of shtetl community life before the Nazi invasion, Polish-Jewish relations prior to World War II, and learn more about Treblinka, through articles, timelines, interviews, and a teachers guide.
• NOVA: Nazi Designers of Death
  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/teachersguide/nazi/index.html
  Learn how historians and investigators use blueprints, photographs, and other primary source documents to establish the scope of the Nazi's plans for genocide in Europe. Read "The Selection" by Elie Weisel and get a firsthand account of life in Auschwitz.
• People's Century: Master Race
  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/peoplescentury/teachers/tgmaster.html
  Learn more about Kristallnacht and anti-Semitism in Europe in the decades preceding World War II. This site includes a teacher's guide, interviews, submission area, and program description.

Schindler's List

For years, the world took little note of Oskar Schindler. Although film documentaries were made of his life, Schindler's story was mainly kept alive in the memories of the Schindlerjuden (Schindler Jews), who took turns supporting the post-war bankrupt businessman in his declining years. Oskar Schindler had been dead for six years when a broken briefcase and an Australian credit card lifted him from the shadows of history.

In October 1980, Australian novelist Thomas Keneally brought his briefcase into a Beverly Hills luggage shop owned by a man named Leopold Page. Years before, as Poldek Pfefferberg, Page had been one of the workers on Schindler's list. During the 20-minute wait for telephone approval of Keneally's Australian credit card transaction, Page told the author the entire story of Schindler and the Schindlerjuden. He had recited it many times to various writers over the years, but in Keneally he finally found a kindred spirit.

The Academy Award winning movie directed by Stephen Spielberg was based on this book. Videos of the movie are available for classroom use.