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Guidelines for Teaching the Holocaust

Learn the challenges of teaching Holocaust history effectively, understand the importance of using historical film footage in classrooms, and gain insights on responsible methodologies. Explore the tragic events of the Holocaust and genocide, teaching strategies, and contextualization of historical facts. Utilize survivor testimonies, primary sources, and media literacy skills while avoiding inappropriate educational approaches. Gain a nuanced perspective on the Holocaust and foster critical thinking among students.

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Guidelines for Teaching the Holocaust

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  1. Guidelines for Teaching the Holocaust

  2. What are the challenges of teaching and learning about the Holocaust?

  3. What would you need to do/know to be able to use this historical film footage in the classroom?

  4. Rationale Why? Your students (background knowledge, geographic settings, culture, etc.) The Holocaust/Genocide In this unit/course Now (at this age, at this time in history, etc.) With this resource (book, film, handout, website, etc.)

  5. Guidelines for teaching the Holocaust (http://www.ushmm.org) Define the Holocaust. Do not teach or imply that the Holocaust was inevitable. Avoid simple answers to complex questions. Strive for precision of language. Strive for balance in establishing whose perspective informs your study of the Holocaust. 6. Avoid comparisons of pain. 7. Do not romanticize history. 8. Contextualize the history. 9. Translate statistics into people. 10. Make responsible methodological choices

  6. Define the Holocaust. The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. During the era of the Holocaust, German authorities also targeted other groups because of their perceived “racial inferiority”: Roma (Gypsies), the disabled, and some of the Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians, and others). Other groups were persecuted on political, ideological, and behavioral grounds, among them Communists, Socialists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals.

  7. Contextualize the history.. German troops parade through Warsaw after the invasion of Poland. Warsaw, Poland, September 28-30, 1939. — National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Md.

  8. Define the Holocaust. The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators. During the era of the Holocaust, German authorities also targeted other groups because of their perceived “racial inferiority”: Roma (Gypsies), the disabled, and some of the Slavic peoples (Poles, Russians, and others). Other groups were persecuted on political, ideological, and behavioral grounds, among them Communists, Socialists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals.

  9. Translate statistics into people. Avoid comparisons of pain. David Bayer discusses life in his hometown of Kozienice after the German invasion of Poland in September, 1939 in a podcast.

  10. Strive for precision of language. What are “ethnic Germans”? Ethnic Germans of the city of Tarnow, Poland welcome the German troops. Sept. 3, 1939. -From the Mit dem Führer album of pictures taken by Heinrich Hoffman

  11. Avoid simple answers to complex questions. Why didn’t they just leave? Why didn’t they resist? Why didn’t anyone help?

  12. Complexity

  13. Strive for balance in establishing whose perspective informs your study of the Holocaust. HOW DID NEIGHBORS RESPOND? Neighbors denounce Jews hiding under false identities, while others offer shelter. Lilly AppelbaumMalnik was born in 1928 in Antwerp, Belgium. Germany invaded Belgium in May 1940.

  14. Make responsible methodological choices. Content Context Complexity Critical Thinking

  15. Refrain from using.. • Simulations • gimmicky exercises (word searches, counting objects, crossword puzzles, etc.) • large amounts of graphic images • texts that exploit students’ emotional vulnerability, are historically inaccurate, or that are disrespectful to the victims themselves

  16. Instead, use… • Survivor testimony • Primary sources, including maps, documents, photographs, and articles • Historically accurate texts, literature, and films • Media literacy skills to help students deconstruct and critically analyze text, photos, and film

  17. “To suffer is one thing; another thing is living with the photographed images of suffering, which does not necessarily strengthen conscience and the ability to be compassionate. It can also corrupt them. Once one has seen such images, one has started down the road of seeing more – and more. Images transfix. Images anesthetize.” ― Susan Sontag, On Photography

  18. A pile of clothing stripped off of corpses found on the death train, May 1945.

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