Holocaust Literature Introductory Lessons

These lessons are not text-specific and can be modified or adapted based on your students’ prior knowledge of the Holocaust, your classroom context, and available time. We recommend teaching them in the sequence provided, even if you choose not to teach all of the activities, before introducing your Holocaust anchor text. This intentional preparation helps students enter the narrative space equipped with the necessary context and strategies in order to foster a safer and more reflective environment for exploring the complex themes and questions inherent in a work of Holocaust literature.

Lesson 4 in this sequence, Preparing for Emotionally Challenging Content, guides students through a classroom contracting activity in which the class develops agreements to ensure a mutually supportive space for reflection and discussion of challenging topics and texts.

Lessons 1 through 3 introduce emotionally challenging topics that students will engage with more deeply in the lessons that follow. We have chosen to introduce these topics before the contracting process so that students can take into account their initial understanding of the nature of the material that they will be reading about and discussing as they develop classroom agreements. Lesson 4 also features the poem “Take This Giant Leap” by Holocaust survivor Sonia Weitz, and some knowledge of the Holocaust is necessary as grounding for students to interpret the poem and connect it to the lessons that follow. 

However, you can always develop or revisit an existing classroom contract before teaching any of these introductory lessons if doing so would support your students in engaging with these topics.

The Holocaust took place throughout Europe between 1933 and 1945. In Facing History’s Holocaust history and literature resources, we examine this catastrophic period when Nazi Germany murdered 6 million Jews and millions of other civilians in the midst of the most destructive war in human history. In attempting to define the complex events of this time period, scholars and institutions emphasize different aspects of the history and offer different stances on whether the word “Holocaust” refers specifically to the genocide of 6 million European Jews or is inclusive of the millions of other victims of Nazi persecution and murder. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum refers to the Holocaust as “the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators.” ¹

Victims of Nazi terror and persecution were targeted for reasons of race, biology, politics, and/or ideology. A core tenet of Nazi ideology was antisemitism, or the hatred of or prejudice against Jews. The Nazis took measures against other groups identified as undesirable, inferior, or incompatible with Nazi ideology. These groups included Soviet prisoners of war, ethnic Poles, Roma and Sinti people, Serbians, people with disabilities, German political dissidents and Germans accused of criminal activity, Jehovah’s Witnesses, men accused of homosexuality, and Black people in Germany. ²

Many of the beliefs, ambitions, choices, and circumstances that led to the Holocaust also contributed to the atrocities against these other groups. At the same time, the histories of these groups, their relationships to the Nazi Party and ideology, and the particular events and circumstances of the atrocities they endured are distinct. Facing History’s resources for teaching Holocaust history and literature specifically focus on the Holocaust as the orchestrated murder of 6 million Jews by the Nazis. We also endeavor to recognize and share stories of the similar experiences and fates of other victims of Nazi terror, and to preserve the memory and legacy of lives from all of the groups that were lost or displaced.

• 1“How Many People Did the Nazis Murder?,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
• 2“How Many People Did the Nazis Murder?,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

As you support students in learning about the Holocaust, it is important to guide them to distinguish between what is particular and what is universal about this moment in the past. While historical events are all products of their unique times, places, and circumstances, they also often connect to universal themes and patterns in history and human behavior. Identifying these connections can help students reach a deeper understanding of themselves, their experiences, and the world they live in today.

Distinguishing between the particular and the universal can also help students avoid making oversimplified comparisons between historical events. The history of the Holocaust does not provide a template for understanding how another genocide or atrocity occurred in history, even as certain universal human behaviors may play roles in both.

Finally, it is also crucial to help students avoid using this history to make generalizations about specific religious and national groups. In other words, students should be strongly discouraged from seeing the history of the Holocaust as a lesson about all Jews, all gentiles, all Germans, all Americans, or any other group.

The three learning dimensions at the heart of any Facing History unit address students’ cognitive, emotional, and moral growth. ​​Aligned to each learning dimension are specific learning objectives, which describe the observable knowledge, skills, attitudes, and dispositions that students develop over the course of the unit.

The lessons in this sequence address the following learning objectives, drawing from both ELA and history as students develop a conceptual and historical schema for a Holocaust literature unit.

Learning Dimension 1: Identity, Membership, and Belonging – Explore the complexity of identity, membership, and belonging in order to understand human behavior and decision-making.

Learning Objectives:

• ELA 1A: Identity & Belonging. Explore the complexity of identity in ourselves and others; analyze the many factors that can shape an individual’s identity and sense of belonging.
• ELA 1B: Mirrors & Windows. Reflect on how real and imagined stories help us understand our own experiences and how others experience the world.
• ELA 1C: Social Identities. Examine how social identities such as race, ethnicity, gender, and class can influence the experiences of individuals and the outcomes of their choices.
• HIST 1D: We & They. Examine how societies have distinguished between who can be a member and who remains an outsider, and the significance of those distinctions at different moments in history.

Learning Dimension 2: Critical and Ethical Analysis – Use disciplinary tools to analyze, discuss, and reflect upon historical events, literary texts, and societal issues through a critical and ethical lens.

Learning Objectives:

• ELA 2B: Perspective Taking. Practice perspective taking in order to develop empathy, understand conflict, and recognize the limits of any one person’s point of view.
• ELA 2L: Classroom Discourse. Seek and engage with a range of perspectives during classroom discussions to develop a nuanced understanding of complex issues.
• HIST 2B: Historical Actors. Examine how diverse groups of people influenced the course of history, their motivations, and contemporary resonances of their actions.

Learning Dimension 3: Agency and Participation – Use your voice and make informed and ethical choices in order to strengthen democracy and build more civil and just communities.

Learning Objectives:

• ELA 3C: Personal Agency. Recognize that your decisions matter, impact others, and shape your communities and the world.

At Facing History, we understand that before students can engage with challenging topics, they need to feel confident that they are part of a brave and reflective community where they are known, valued, and supported by their teachers and peers. This ongoing process starts with personal reflection on the part of the teacher and invites students to help establish and uphold norms for how everyone will treat one another. 

The following resources and activities can support you and your students in cultivating a brave and reflective community. While we understand that you may not be able to make time for all of them within this text set, contracting and journaling are core to any Facing History experience. If these are not yet part of your daily teaching practice, you may want to prioritize Incorporate Daily Journaling in the list below and the contracting activity that appears in Lesson 4: Preparing for Emotionally Challenging Content. 

• Build the Foundation: Learn about the importance of engaging in your own personal reflection before teaching this text set by exploring the resources and teacher-facing activities in Section 1: Start with Yourself of Facing History’s Coming-of-Age Unit Planning Guide.
• Incorporate Daily Journaling: Journaling is an instrumental tool for helping students develop their ability to process what they are learning, practice perspective-taking, and make informed judgments about what they see and hear. Providing students with time and space to reflect on complex issues and questions allows them to formulate their ideas before sharing them with their peers. 

Write Alongside Your Students: When teachers write with their students and share their writing, no matter how messy or scattered, it sends a powerful message that writing matters, writing is hard, and even teachers don’t get it right the first time. You will create a stronger community of thinkers and writers if you participate in the learning process. If you don’t do so already, consider starting your own journal and joining your students in this exploration of power, agency, and voice.

Differentiation is an approach to teaching and learning that involves purposeful planning and instruction that is responsive to students’ identities and needs as individual learners and as members of a larger classroom community. It starts with creating a welcoming environment and includes a high-quality curriculum that all students can access in order to engage with the targeted concepts and skills.

After reviewing the materials in this text set, we recommend that you incorporate some or all of the following differentiation strategies to help ensure that the content and concepts are accessible to all of your students:

• Use a strategy like Think Aloud to make visible your process when reading and annotating texts. Start by modeling the process for your class, naming the invisible literacy moves that you are making and your reasoning behind each annotation. Then have students practice these moves in pairs before asking them to work alone.
• Provide students with models to help them understand your expectations for annotating texts, responding to discussion questions, and completing assessments.
• Create a Word Wall to help students keep track of key terms. Encourage students to sketch the terms, perhaps using a teaching strategy like Sketch to Stretch, and to incorporate them into their conversations and writing. 

Create purposeful groupings of students where possible, perhaps pairing English Learners with students who share their home language, to work through new material before creating heterogeneous language groups for discussions. For Jigsaw and similar activities, consider the text complexity, length, and relevance of each reading when creating groups. Some students may have the schema to tackle a more challenging reading if it connects to an interest or aspect of their identity.