Find Lessons
We’ve scoured the best sources from around the world and put them in one place. Use our filter below to find what works best for you and your students.
13 Results Meet Your Requirements
A Poem for the Victims
Create a poem based on letters written by Holocaust victims sent to family members from home, hiding, ghettos, prisons, and concentration camps.
Bystander’s Guilt
Students will learn the definition of being a bystander to the Holocaust. They will have the opportunity to think critically about what it really means to be a bystander, the different levels of inactivity and passivity, and whether or not calling oneself a bystander deflects responsibility.
Bystanders in a Small Town
Watch a video on bystanders in the small town of Buczacz in the Ukraine by Facing History and Ourselves. Students will catch a glimpse of the side of the Holocaust that was not carried out by systematic murder in the camps.
Carrying Out The Final Solution
Students will watch a documentary on the Stanford Prison Experiment. Open the class into a discussion on the psychology of violence and group behavior.
Deconstructing the Familiar
Complete an activity having students analyze photographs from the Holocaust with and without context; the photos are from the United States Holocaust Memorial site. Students see the actions of perpetrators, bystanders, and victims in these primary sources.
Dehumanization
Read through an account by survivor Primo Levi on identity in the camps and then take the class through an activity on dehumanization using the Echoes & Reflections Timeline of the Holocaust.
Did You Take the Oath?
A brief case study highlights how individual decisions strengthen Nazism.
No Time to Think
Milton Mayer, an American journalist and educator, interviewed people to find out how they reacted to Hitler’s policies. Students will read a testimony from a German professor on his being a bystander during the Nazi era.
Revisiting the Past
Listen to a podcast episode from We Share the Same Sky presented by USC Shoah Foundation. Students will hear about the host’s experience visiting Sobibor extermination camp and her connection to the victims.
Schindler’s Heroism
Read through a testimony provided by one of the people saved by Oskar Schindler. Understand what it was like for a Jewish person to trust a German during this time.
Some Were Neighbors
Explore an online exhibition from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum titled, “Some Were Neighbors.” Students will look into the different categories of collaborators that assisted in carrying out the Holocaust.
The Heroines
Explore the stories from women rescuers during the Holocaust. Students will have the opportunity to learn the stories of courageous female upstanders and what they risked in order to save the lives of Jews.