Teaching about the Holocaust has been one of my career's most meaningful and challenging tasks. No other topic has allowed my students to struggle with complex issues and moral questions quite like the Holocaust. Whether you are teaching a short unit or a year-long elective, there is never enough time.
From respecting the memory of survivors and victims, to the sheer complexity of the topic, to the time constraints you face in covering it, teaching about the Holocaust can seem overwhelming.
No matter how much time you have or your experience level, here are 10 tips to help you achieve your goals and help your students understand how and why the Holocaust happened.
1. Focus on your goals. I am a huge believer in starting with what you want your students to learn and working backward to determine how to achieve it. You won’t be able to cover everything, so start by considering your rationale for teaching this history.
What are the most fundamental topics, and why do you think they’re important? Why is the Holocaust relevant to your students?
These answers will help you hone in on what lesson plans and resources match your goals, so you can make the most of your time.
2. Don't go it alone. There are many outstanding organizations that are dedicated to assisting you in delivering high quality Holocaust instruction to your students for free! Connecting with them can provide you and your students turn key resources, materials, lesson plans and professional development on the Holocaust. There are over 150 local Holocaust education centers, museums, and memorials in the United States alone. They are all independent so they won’t all have the same resources, but these are often excellent places to learn about local speakers, exhibits, and professional development workshops. You can search for a Holocaust education center near you. In addition to your local center, there are many outstanding national organizations that offer excellent (and free!) turn key resources (including free digital textbooks!) as well as training and professional development (many of which are available online and are pre-recorded so you can access them when your schedule allows.) Some great places to start include: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), Echoes and Reflections, Facing History And Ourselves, and The U.S and the Holocaust PBS LearningMedia Resources.
3. “You don’t need all the answers, you just need to know reliable places to find them!” This was the advice given to me by a senior educator in my department when I was thrown into a teaching assignment I was wholly unprepared for. (Thanks, Tom!) The Holocaust is a complex topic — it took place over twelve years, in almost every country in Europe, and included millions of unique experiences. No one expects you to know all the nuances here. So what do you do when your students have questions that you don’t know the answer? No need to guess or give a simple answer to a complicated question — model how to find out together.
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has a frequently asked questions for educators page and a Holocaust Encyclopedia that will probably contain the answers to most of your students’ questions. (And for particularly tricky ones, fill out this form and the Holocaust Museum staff will help you out!) Teaching the process of how to find reliable answers is more important today than ever!
4. Prepare for emotional responses. The Holocaust can evoke strong responses in students — including anger, confusion, and sadness — so ensure that your classroom is a safe space for students to express these feelings in your discussions. Facing History does a great job of helping teachers plan ahead for these moments in thislesson on preparing students for difficult conversations.
Consider how you could accommodate a student who may not be emotionally prepared to deal with this topic due to past or current traumas. Give students time to decompress and reflect in their journals on what they have learned privately before sending them off to their next class — your students and peers will appreciate it!
5. Aim for Critical Thinking. While you should be prepared for your students' emotional responses, your goal shouldn’t be for students to cry, it should be for them to think. Simulations can give students the impression that they know what victims experienced, which is impossible — and why would you want them to experience that? Consider the materials you use in class carefully and use primary sources and testimonies to encourage critical thinking about how and why the Holocaust happened. If we are ever to prevent something like this from happening again, we must understand how and why it happened in the first place. Don’t lose sight of that focus!
6. Context is Key!The enormity of the horror of the Holocaust often makes people want to look at it in isolation from both the history that led up to it and the events surrounding it. Don’t fall into this trap! Make sure your students understand that the antisemitism that fueled Nazi ideology and politics was present in Europe for centuries before the Nazi Party came to power. The Nazis merged racism and antisemitism. To them, Jews were a separate, inferior race. Because of that, religious practice didn’t matter. Jews couldn’t convert to Christianity to escape Nazi persecution. (Check out Why the Jews? from USHMM for more.) Introducing students to the concept of antisemitism and to common antisemitic stereotypes will help your students identify and reject those stereotypes when they see them in their own lives. The Anti-Defamation League has some great resources to address and challenge antisemitism you may find helpful.
Time and place had a massive effect on what people experienced and what options were available to them. Utilize timelines to help your students place whatever books, testimonies, and primary sources you’re using within the proper historical and geographical context. Here’s an interactive Holocaust timeline from Echoes and Reflections and a timeline activity with multiple extensions from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
7. Focus on individuals and their experiences. Six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, which is nearly impossible to understand. Rather than focusing on what six million looks like, incorporate the stories of individuals — including both survivors and victims — into your classroom. Utilize survivor testimony or reach out to a local holocaust center to bring in a survivor speaker if you can. The USC Shoah Foundation’s iWitness archive has thousands of clips of survivor testimony, and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has lesson plan suggestions and activities for utilizing survivor testimony in your classroom.
Introduce your students to primary sources like diaries, poems, andletters. The animated series from the USHMM Behind Every Name also has a lesson plan to help you use the films in your classroom.
8. Beware of Romanticizing History. Unfortunately, very few non-Jews engaged in rescue or resistance work, so while it’s important to emphasize that people had choices and that some did incredible things at great personal risk, we also don’t want to leave our students thinking that these heroic acts were common. The categories of victim, bystander, and perpetrator were often fluid, and individuals embodied different roles at different times depending on their circumstances.
Allow your students to grapple with the complexity of human nature without creating a false sense of what actually took place by creating a fairy tale ending to a real life genocide. What really happened is compelling enough. Trust your students to grapple with the reality of this history.
9. Remember, this didn’t have to happen. The German people weren’t brainwashed but supported (or tolerated) Nazi policies for many reasons, including personal gain, nationalism, and the unwillingness to protest. Countries, communities, neighborhoods, and individuals made choices. Those choices made history. Just because the Holocaust happened didn’t mean that it had to happen. Focusing on these decisions can lead to valuable classroom discussions about history, human nature, and what could have been done to stop this horrific tragedy.
10. Encourage students to make connections while avoiding comparisons of pain and Holocaust analogies. One of the joys of teaching is seeing your students make connections and comparisons with what they are learning to other historical and current events. It’s human nature to want to rank things and see patterns where they may or may not exist. When teaching about the Holocaust these tendencies require some special attention on the part of an educator. Steer your students away from false hierarchies of suffering and instead focus on the similarities and differences between the Holocaust and the experiences they’ve brought up. Ask why they see a connection, as well as what information they would need to know in order to make a list of similarities and differences.
Due to the commonness with which Holocaust analogies appear in current political discourse, you shouldn’t be surprised to see them appear in your classroom as well. It’s important to stress that making Holocaust analogies are not only disrespectful to the memory of those who suffered through this tragedy but are also always a red flag for a poor argument. Two great articles I share with my students are Let’s Avoid Holocaust Analogies in the Public Square by the ADL and Why Holocaust Analogies are Dangerous from USHMM. Your students can and should apply what they learn without demeaning the memory of what took place. With some pre-planning on your part you can make this happen.
I hope that this article has been helpful and thought provoking for you. I want to thank you for teaching about the Holocaust. You are helping to fulfill the hope that many victims will be remembered, and the goal of survivors bearing witness for future generations. It can be a daunting task, but your work in the pursuit of a better tomorrow has never been more important. All the best to you!
