Distribute the Range of Human Behavior Vocabulary Terms worksheet by Facing History and Ourselves. Go over the actual meaning for each of the terms with the class. Tell students to keep these worksheets as they could be useful in later lessons/discussions about perpetrators, victims, and upstanders.

Perpetrator: a person who carries out a harmful, illegal, or immoral act.
Victim: a person harmed, injured, or killed as a result of a crime, accident, or other event or action.
Bystander: a person who is present at an event or incident but does not take part.
Upstander: a person who speaks or acts in support of an individual or cause, particularly someone who intervenes on behalf of a person being attacked or bullied.

Direct students to the resource, No Time to Think by Facing History and Ourselves. There is an audio version of the testimony that you can play if you would like to have your students listen as they follow the written testimony. Alternatively, you can just read it without listening to the audio.

Before breaking students off in groups to complete the Output section, click on the identity chart link from the second question at the bottom of the page and show the students what it is supposed to look like.

In groups of three to five, have students go over the Connection Questions found at the bottom of the page. If time permits, open up into a group discussion going over some (or all) of the questions. Have groups share their identity chart.

Explain to the students that they will listen to a podcast hosted by the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor. The host, Rachel, tells bits of her grandmother’s story in each episode. This episode is about Rachel’s trip to Sobibor- visiting the extermination camp her family was sent to in 1942.

Warn students that the content can be unsettling.

Play the podcast episode Chapter IV: The End of The World by We Share the Same Sky. Explain to students that this podcast is hosted by the grandaughter of a Holocaust survivor. The host, Rachel, researches and retraces her family history in order to tell their story.

While they listen, ask students to write down something they found powerful.

Divide students into small groups of two or three to discuss the questions below. Come back together as a class and ask the students to share what their groups discussed.

1. Rachel describes her trip to Sobibor as a journey “to the end of the world” and she wonders what the trees would say if they could talk. In your own mind’s eye, what would the trees tell us?
2. Hana describes life during the Holocaust to “slowly being peeled off like an onion.” She says, “You are being conditioned to worse and worse situations…and to live a subhuman life…And when you are looked at like subhumans, no one has trouble killing you.” How were layers of humanity slowly peeled away from Jews and other victims during this time?
3. What is dehumanization and why is it dangerous?
4. The Nazis believed Jews and others- homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the mentally ill, Roma- were subhuman. How did this portrayal of these groups of people impact the victims, soldiers, and ordinary citizens?
5. Rachel describes the podcast as a ‘story of memory.’ In this episode, the details of her family’s deaths are only known from stories passed on from one person to another and may not be historically accurate. However, this is how many families, during and after the Holocaust, learned what happened to their loved ones. In what ways does this affect how we listen and understand survivor testimony? What do you take a “story of memory” to mean, as compared to what you might expect to find in a historic record?

Collect the answers to the major questions to be used in later discussions about the Holocaust and historical testimonies.

Tell students that the letters that they will look through in this exhibit were sent from the Czech lands, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, and the Ukraine and that they were written by victims of the Holocaust.

Not all authors of these letters understood their fate. Some letters may depict uncertainty, some optimism, and others may show that the author knew exactly what awaited them. There were also cases when people were coerced to write letters saying all was well, when the reality was far more grim.

Direct students to the handout “Creating a Found Poem” by Facing History and Ourselves. Read over the instructions as a class before directing students to the Yad Vashem exhibit, “Last Letters From the Holocaust:1944”.

Each letter is accompanied by some background information on the sender and receiver; students should read these as well.

Create a poem together as a class in order to give students an idea of what to do. Use the short letter, “Dear Papa” as an example. Ask students to brainstorm ideas on how to write the poem. Remember, you can reuse words to help make the poem longer than the postcard. Be creative!

Have students look through the Yad Vashem exhibit and choose a letter to write their poem from. Allow your students some time to complete their poems. When it appears that everyone is done, get the conversation flowing by asking the following questions:

1. How did it feel reading these letters?
2. Did you feel a connection to the person whose story you wrote about?

Let students have the opportunity to take their poems home to keep working on them for the next day or two. Collect the poems at the end of the class (or week if you decide to give more time). Keep them as a class project that you can use as an example in doing this lesson with other classes. Ask for volunteers to read their poems aloud to the class.

Write the term “dehumanization” on the board. As a class, compose a definition. Present and review the definition of dehumanization with students. Students should have a basic understanding of the process of dehumanization.

Dehumanization: As a political or social measure, dehumanization is intended to change the manner in which a person or group of people are perceived, reducing the target group to objects or beings not worthy of human rights.

Direct students to the resource, Identity in the Camps by Facing History and Ourselves. Read the passage by Primo Levi as a class. Explain that Primo Levi is a Holocaust survivor that spent time as a prisoner in Auschwitz concentration camp and has written works about his time there.

According to Primo Levi, what happened to the identities of the prisoners in the camps?

Divide the class into groups of two or three and assign the group a single year, between the years 1933-1945.

Ask students to examine their assigned year using the Timeline of the Holocaust by Echoes & Reflections and find what they believe to be the three most influential events and stories for that year that contributed to the dehumanization of the Jewish people. Identify and be prepared to justify choices.

Have students share the events they identified from their research of the Timeline, and then as a class respond to the following questions:

1. What are some examples of how Jews were dehumanized socially? How was their political power taken away?
2. Identify three opportunities in the year you were assigned that show how an individual was able to make their own choices or have “agency” -to act independently.
3. How might a neighbor, friend, or citizen have helped?
4. What choices were Jews forced to make?
5. Whose opportunity for human agency is most resonant with you? In your opinion, why is this story meaningful? What does this show you about dehumanization?

Read this quote by Holocaust historian, Raul Hilberg, from “Destruction of the European Jews” to the class. “In retrospect it may be possible to view the entire design as a mosaic of small pieces, each commonplace and lusterless by itself.” (Hilberg, 1885, P. 263)

Ask students, What could have happened if one of these “mosaic pieces” were to refuse an order?

This lesson has been simplified from a lesson created by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (full lesson can be found here). Distribute this worksheet and the caption-less photographs to students in groups of three. Explain to them that they will first receive a photograph without any context and that they will be asked to answer the questions as best they can.

Provide each group with a photograph without a caption and a worksheet. There are seven different photographs, depending on the size of the class some groups may be examining the same picture.

Allow students some time to look over the picture and answer the questions in Section 1 of the worksheet. When everyone is finished, hand out the same photograph this time including the caption. After looking over the photograph and caption, ask students to answer the questions in Section 2 of the worksheet.

Have each of the groups share what they learned from their photographs. If possible, project the pictures on a large screen so the entire class can see the picture the group is describing.

How does looking at the pictures after receiving the context change how you feel about the photo?

Prepare students by telling them the preface of the Stanford Prison Experiment; that it was a social psychology experiment to investigate the psychological effect of perceived power and dehumanization of the “other.” While this study was put into the context of a standard prison, it has often been used to help explain the psychology of perpetrators during the Holocaust.

Explain that many perpetrators signed up to work at a concentration camp or killing center and that there are countless stories of unnecessary brutality from many of the SS guards.

Play the BBC Documentary about the Stanford Prison Experiment (29 minutes). Explain to students that while this was a real study that took place, the ethics of it were questioned and regulations for social experiments have since been put into place. Some question the validity of this study as some students may have been playing up their roles to give the researcher “something to work with.” However, even if some actions were played up, it can still help to stir a conversation about the effects of dehumanization and authority.

After the video, open up a class discussion about what they saw. Many students will have strong opinions about this video, so the discussion may be led in different directions. The questions below are meant to guide you, but you can also let the conversation flow naturally. It is most important that the conversation is brought back to the context of the Holocaust.

1. What did you find the most shocking?
2. What were the effects on the guards? On the prisoners?
3. As mentioned in the beginning with the example of Milgram’s experiment, how does the presence of an authoritative person “taking the blame” affect how people act?
4. How can this be related to perpetrators of the Holocaust?
5. What sort of tactics did they use to dehumanize the prisoners?
6. How did the uniform the guards wore help to disconnect them from the prisoners? *Hint* Think about their eyewear.
7. What role do you think “herd mentality” (the act of adopting certain behaviors based on influence from peers) played in people’s participation?

Read this quote by Holocaust historian, Raul Hilberg in “Destruction of the European Jews” to the class:

“An administrative process of such range cannot be carried out by a single agency, even if it is a trained and specialized body like the Gestapo or a commissariat for Jewish affairs, for when a process cuts into every phase of human life, it must ultimately feed upon the resources of an entire community…. The machinery of destruction was the organized community in one of its specialized roles.”

Ask the students to take a moment to think about what it is saying. What are some things that come to mind? Have them jot down some notes for two minutes before asking them to share. This does not need to be a lengthy discussion, just call on a few people to get class started.

Direct students to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum online exhibit, Some Were Neighbors: Collaboration and Complicity in the Holocaust. Allow students and opportunity to explore the site, become familiar with navigating around it. See what they hone in on as they do so. At the bottom of the page there are different tabs featuring different categories of collaborators. Some were: Neighbors, Workers, Teenagers, Policemen, Religious Leaders, Teachers, or Friends.

Divide the class into groups of three or five. Assign each group a category: Neighbors, Workers, Teenagers, Policemen, Religious Leaders, Teachers, or Friends.

Each group should prepare a brief presentation on their category. The presentation does not have to be a visual presentation, just ask the students to discuss their category with the class. They do not have to describe all of the pictures, just ask them to pick a few that they found the most compelling. If possible, allow students to project some of the pictures they chose to show the class.

Provide students with the following points to help structure their presentations:

1. What group are you presenting? Summarize some of the information you have gathered.
2. What do you think made people in this group participate?
3. Were there opportunities to resist or opt out?
4. Were they acting as part of their job?
5. What role do you think peer pressure had on their decision to act?