Population and Place
Read a short text about the reality of life after the war in Displaced Person (DP) camps. Students will engage with the content by exploring a variety of questions about the post-war situation for Holocaust victims.
The process of rebuilding lives after the Holocaust was often long, painful, and arduous.
Lead a class discussion, asking students what they think of when they think of the word “home.” What does home mean to them?
Read the resource, Displaced Persons by Echoes & Reflections with the class, taking time to answer questions and clarify if necessary.
Take time to look at the statistics of Jewish DP’s in camps by 1946, pointing out that these were the majority of the survivors remaining in continental Europe from the population of about 10 million in 1933. Point out that many were forced to live in Displaced Person (DP) camps, often built within Nazi camp structures scattered across Europe.
Have students take 10-15 minutes to fill in their answers at the bottom of the resource they read by Echoes & Reflections. Once they finish, return as a class to go over their answers.
Lastly, return to the question of home. Has their idea of what home means changed from the start of the lesson?
This lesson meets the following Academic Standards required by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
Before you teach, use our teacher primer to freshen up on your content knowledge.
Watch a video by Yad Vashem on the ghettos that features diary entries from a child living in the Lodz ghetto.
Diary entries and testimonies help people today to understand the horrific conditions people suffered living in the Nazi ghettos.
Ask the students if any of them have ever read Diary of Anne Frank or Diary of a Wimpy Kid. What sort of things do people write in diaries?
Watch the 16 minute video, The Ghettos by Yad Vashem. Take about 5 minutes having students go around and give examples of what sort of challenges people faced. Then ask, how did people try to maintain a sense of dignity or humanity?
Ask students to reflect on what they just watched and discussed. How did hearing the testimonies and diary entries help paint a picture of what life was like in the ghettos? Provide 10 minutes for students to write and reflect.
If time permits, have students share their reflections.
This lesson meets the following Academic Standards required by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
Before you teach, use our teacher primer to freshen up on your content knowledge.
Students will learn about the difficult circumstances that survivors faced after the war in rebuilding their lives, and learn about the different factors in many people’s decision not to return to the countries where they had previously lived.
Often, Jewish survivors made the decision to settle in countries besides their native ones after the war because their families, communities, and lives back home had been destroyed and they faced continued violence and antisemitism there.
Ask the students what kinds of problems they thought survivors might have faced when they were finally liberated. Lead a short discussion, based on previous knowledge of the war and the Holocaust, about the difficulties in rebuilding people’s lives.
Read the resource, Survivors and the Displaced Persons era by ‘The Holocaust Explained,’ The Wiener Holocaust Library with the class, including the accompanying images. You can stop reading at the section titled, ‘German-Jewish Communities Outside the Camps.’ Take time to answer questions to the best of your ability and clarify if necessary. Ask students to take notes on key facts that stood out to them about why survivors felt they could not return to their home countries, or the antisemitism they continued to encounter.
As a class, discuss the reasons why many people may have chosen not to move back to countries such as Poland or Hungary at the end of the war.
Lead a discussion with students about what the word “home,” “country,” or “citizenship” means to them, and how difficult it would be to have lost these things. Make sure to discuss how difficult it was to feel as if you could not go back to where you were before because you might be injured or worse, but how other countries did not want you, either.
This lesson meets the following Academic Standards required by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
Before you teach, use our teacher primer to freshen up on your content knowledge.
Explore an interactive map and tap into first-hand accounts from various sites of massacre across Eastern Europe, a space that came to be known as the Bloodlands.
Mobile killing squads massacred over one million Jews in the first years of the war and were aided by the neighbors of the victims.
Explain to students that one of the tactics used by the Nazi regime in their attempt to mass murder was the use of Mobile Killing Units, or the Einsatzgruppen. Under the cover of war, these groups marched into territories where they targeted and killed over half a million people, primarily Jews.
Navigate the Yahud-in Unum map. The map is dotted with red and blue marks, each indicating a site of a massacre committed by the SS. It is recommended that you and your class familiarize yourself with navigating the map–zooming, dragging, clicking in and out of the sites.
Then, select a single country to focus on as a class. Centering attention in this way helps generate a sense of greater accomplishment at the end of the lesson.
After selecting a country, refer to the map of SS movements. Note which SS groups would have been in the country and when–how long has this community been suffering from war? What might be their level of fear, hunger, or desperation when the SS show up?
Now, divide the class into groups of 3.
Each group must:
As the groups present, collect their answers to the major questions. These lessons can then become touchstones for continued discussion and inquiry about the Holocaust, about intolerance and about exploring the past.
This lesson meets the following Academic Standards required by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
Before you teach, use our teacher primer to freshen up on your content knowledge.
