Cause
Introduce students to the Einsatzgruppen and methods of extermination during the Holocaust.
Mobile killing squads massacred over one million Jews in the first years of the war.
Begin by asking your students how many Jews were murdered during the Holocaust?
Then, ask them where those people died? Was death isolated to specific areas like camps?
Finally, ask them if they can imagine why killing civilians would have been considered strategically important?
Prompt students to read the article, Einsatzgruppen: An Overview, from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia.
Use the 3Ps method to dig into the reading in a critical manner. Ask students to take notes on what they find a) Powerful b) Puzzling and c) Propelling. Give approximately 10 minutes for this exercise.
In order to familiarize yourself, and your class with this model, please look over this guide: 3Ps: A Critical Reading Guide.
Then, split the class into groups of four students.
Distribute the two maps from this reading, death camps and mass shooting sites.
Ask the students to compare and contrast the two maps. Note that the number of people killed at the sites identified in each map are approximately equal. Ask each group to respond to the following prompts.
After 15 minutes ask for group responses and broaden into a large class discussion.
Finally, return to the 3Ps that they recorded at the beginning of the lesson and share their Profound or Propelling comments, adding additional context to their comments.
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.
Examine the dismissive language used by world leaders who attended the Evian Conference in 1938 and decided not to expand their aid to refugees seeking asylum from Nazi persecution.
Countries with a great deal of power sometimes do what is in their best interest rather than what is right or ethical.
Review the timeline from Echoes & Reflections between 1933 and 1938 to get a better picture of the context in which the Evian Conference occurred. What was the Evian Conference? Where was it? Who attended?
Highlight some of the major moments of persecution that Jews already witnessed at the hands of Nazis, like the boycott of Jewish businesses, the Nuremberg Laws or the expulsion of Jews from professional services.
If need be, review the basic concept of the Evian conference. If time permits, students can read this short summary from Facing History and Ourselves. Then, divide the class into five groups, assigning each group to one of the countries represented in the reading here.
Ask the groups to read their quotes very carefully. It will seem to be accomplished easily, they should read these quotes with great acuity and attention to detail.
Ask all the groups to consider the following set of questions and record their group answers:
Each group should then present what they found in closely reading the quotations from their country. Take note of the themes that emerge–words like ‘impossible’ or ‘incapable’ will continue to come up. Ask how it is that countries like the USA are ‘incapable’ of something?
Then prompt the final question:
This could be answered immediately, or, if time permits, groups could reconvene and come up with specific arguments about why the decision was defensible or justifiable. Possibly leave the class with a question about what motivated these countries to act to participate in WWII? If it wasn’t the plight of Jews, what was the reason these countries entered the war?
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.
Examine a detailed video about the international response to growing evidence of Nazi war crimes and learn about the effect that public pressure can have on the decisions of governments.
International leaders were slow to respond to the evidence of the mass murder of Jews by the Nazi regime.
Prompt students to do a bit of pre-writing about the subject. Ask them to reflect briefly on the motivations of the Allied forces of World War II. Specifically, prompt them to see if the likes of Great Britain, the USA and France were focused on stopping the Holocaust. After a few minutes, ask students to voice their answers and orient them to the predominantly political nature of the conflict.
Before showing the video, anticipate some of its content by asking students to pay close attention to the following questions:
Then, show the first 8:20 of the video, Did the world remain silent? produced by Tel Aviv University.
After the video, see if your students can answer the five questions listed above.
After establishing the facts around these international responses, split the class into three groups, each of whom will respond to a different troubling fact discussed in the video. Ask each group to tackle these questions in depth, thinking about the context of the situation as much as they can.
Group 1: At 1:42, the speaker suggests that the Russians saw evidence of the Holocaust in early 1942, but concealed the fact that murders were taking place specifically against Jews. Why?
Group 2: At 5:08 the speaker mentions that even at the end of 1942, ‘no concrete action’ to stop the Holocaust was mentioned by the Allies, despite mounting evidence of the murders. Why would the Allies not develop a plan to stop the atrocities?
Group 3: At 5:28, the speaker mentions that the War Refugee Board, which helped save the lives of thousands of Jews, was created as a result of public pressure. What does this say about your role as a citizen?
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.
