
For Educators in Jewish Settings: Teaching Holocaust and Human Behavior
Duration
Multiple weeksSubject
- History
- Social Studies
Grade
6–12Language
English — USPublished
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About This Unit
Developed specifically for educators in Jewish settings, the five new lessons combined with select lessons from Teaching Holocaust and Human Behavior are designed to lead middle or high school students through an examination of the catastrophic period of the Holocaust from a historical perspective and also to consider what this particular history has to do with what it means to be Jewish today.
Students begin this journey by considering the place the Holocaust should take in the collective memory of the Jewish people, how memory and history are related in Jewish history, and what tensions arise when we have multiple belongings, such as identifying as both Jews and Americans. Later in the unit, the lesson on Jewish life before the war addresses the Haskalah and the issues arising alongside the newly gained freedoms of the Enlightenment. The Holocaust section of the collection includes a lesson on Jewish resistance, in which students discuss what it meant to resist the Nazis on both a physical and a spiritual level. In the final lessons, students grapple with the question of retaining faith after the unfathomable atrocities and cruelties that this history presents us with.
Essential Question
The following essential question provides a framework for exploring this unit’s main ideas and themes:
What does learning about the choices people made during the Weimar Republic, the rise of the Nazi Party, and the Holocaust teach us about the power and impact of our choices today?
This essential question challenges students to make important connections between history and the power of the choices and decisions they make today. We do not expect students to determine a single, “correct” answer. Essential questions are rich and open-ended; they are designed to be revisited over time, and as students explore the content in greater depth, they may find themselves emerging with new ideas, understandings, and questions.
Learning Goals
After going through all 27 lessons, students will:
- Recognize the human tendency to create “in” groups and “out” groups and the consequences of that behavior for a society’s universe of obligation.
- Understand the particular historical context in which the Nazi Party established a dictatorship in Germany, marginalized Jews and other minority groups within German society, and ultimately committed genocide under the cover of war.
- Wrestle with the choices that individuals, groups, and nations made in response to the Nazi dictatorship and the violence and terror it caused, as well as the aspects of human behavior that contributed to those choices.
- Make connections between universal themes related to democracy, citizenship, racism, and antisemitism that this history raises and the world students live in today. Understand their responsibilities as global citizens to make choices that help bring about a more humane, just, and compassionate world.
- Consider the role of memory when learning about this history and its relationship to what it means to be Jewish today.
A Note to Teachers
Before teaching this unit, please review the following information to help guide your preparation process.
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