Identity and Group Membership | Holocaust Literature Introductory Lesson 2

About This Lesson

Who am I? Who are you? Who are we? How we answer those questions shapes the way we think about, and how we behave toward, ourselves and others. And our answers to those questions are influenced by the society we live in. 

The question “Who am I?” is especially critical for students during adolescence. Understanding the complexities, formation of, and impacts of identity is essential to adolescent development and to understanding the relationship between the individual and society. Throughout history, identity and group membership have also been weaponized in acts of identity-based hate and genocide.

This lesson introduces students to the complexity of identity and group membership as a foundation for examining the Holocaust in a work of literature. Through reflective journaling, identity charts, and a reading about group membership, students explore how identities and the human desire to belong shape individual and collective perspectives and experiences. These activities are designed to cultivate reflection and empathy, foster critical thinking, and advance an awareness of how reducing individuals to a single identity marker can contribute to prejudice and persecution. This lays the groundwork for students’ social, moral, and intellectual development as they grapple with the relationships among identity, group membership, and choices—a conceptual web that is essential to understanding the actions of perpetrators, victims, bystanders, and upstanders as portrayed in a work of Holocaust literature.

Guiding Questions

• What factors shape our identities?
• How does our sense of self, and our perception of how others see us, impact our experiences?
• What makes people want to be part of a group? What can we gain and lose from being part of a group?
• What are the consequences of reducing people or groups to one factor of their identities?

Learning Objectives

• Explore the complexity of identity in ourselves and others; analyze the many factors that can shape an individual’s identity and sense of belonging.
• Reflect on how real and imagined stories help us understand our own experiences and how others experience the world.
• Examine how social identities such as race, ethnicity, gender, and class can influence the experiences of individuals and the outcomes of their choices.

Lesson Plan

Activity 1: Create Identity Charts 

Begin with a connection to the previous day’s lesson by explaining that identity plays an integral role in understanding persecution during the Holocaust, when people were targeted based solely on a flattening of their identities to one label. It is therefore important to examine identity as multidimensional, and to recognize that individual and group identities cannot be accurately defined by stereotypes, tropes, or generalizations. Instead, identity must be examined carefully, in a way that honors the fullness and variation of both individuals and groups of people. 

As preparation for creating identity charts, generate a list of categories or factors we each consider when responding to the question “Who am I?” Capture the list on the board or chart paper. Examples of categories could include our role in a family (e.g., daughter, sister, mother), our hobbies and interests (e.g., guitar player, football fan), our background (e.g., religion, race, gender, nationality, hometown, place of birth), and our physical characteristics.

After generating this list, explain to students that they will be creating a personal identity chart. It is often helpful to show students a completed identity chart before they create one of their own. Alternatively, you may choose to model this activity using the Think Aloud strategy, including factors of your identity that you feel comfortable sharing.

Have students independently create identity charts and then reflect in their journals by selecting from the following questions:

• What parts of your identity do you choose for yourself? What parts of your identity do you think are determined by others, by society, or by chance?
• Whose opinions and beliefs have the greatest effect on the way you think about your own identity?
• In what ways are you affected when others view you differently than you view yourself?
• What aspects of your identity do you feel comfortable sharing? What aspects do you keep private? Why? 

Afterward, place students into pairs or groups of three. Ask them to discuss their journal prompt responses and/or share what it was like to create their identity chart.

Conclude the activity with a brief whole-class discussion, asking a few students to volunteer to share key ideas from their journals or small-group discussions. Because students are writing about a personal topic in this activity, it is important that sharing in front of the entire class be optional. However, all students can participate in a discussion that helps them think about the complexity of identity, responding to prompts such as:

• What aspects of your identity do you think will stay the same over the course of your life? Which aspects may change over time?
• Do some aspects of your identity feel more central to who you are than others? Does that ever change? 
• What are some labels that others have put on you? Do some of these labels feel like they do not reflect who you are? 
• What does it feel like when others make assumptions about your identity?

Activity 2: Explore Group Membership

Connect back to the previous activities about identity by explaining that one important aspect of our identities is the groups to which we belong—either because we choose them or because we are placed in them by others. Tell students that they are about to read an informational text called “Why Do People Need to Belong?” 

Pass out Why Do People Need to Belong? and invite students to reflect briefly on the pre-reading questions before reading. You might read together as a class or have students work in pairs, using a strategy like Read Aloud or Say Something. If it’s the first time that your students have used one of these strategies, we recommend that you use the Think Aloud strategy to model the first section of the reading. 

As you read, pause to answer any clarifying questions that arise.

After reading, have students discuss the connection questions at the end of the reading, using the “Conver-Stations” strategy so that students can interact with a wide range of peers (see Teaching Note 4 for more information about this discussion strategy). 

• Move students into groups of four and have them count off from one to four within their groups (tell them that they need to remember their numbers!). Then instruct them to discuss the first connection question that follows the reading. They should record notes because they will be sharing their ideas with people in other groups. 
• After they have finished with the first question, instruct the 1s to move to a new group. They should share highlights from their discussion of the first question and learn what their new group discussed. Then have the groups discuss the second question. 
• Repeat this process with questions 2 through 5. For the second round, the 2s can move to a different group while other students remain sitting. Each discussion round should start with students sharing their thoughts from the previous question before moving on to the new question. Then a different number moves so that the composition of the groups changes with each round.

Then invite students to reflect on these questions in their journals:

• Have other people ever assumed something about your identity based on your membership in a particular group (e.g., “If you belong to X group, then you must be Y”)? What was that experience like for you?
• Are you able and/or willing to change or hide aspects of your identity in order to fit in? When or how can changing or hiding aspects of your identity in this way be helpful? When or how can it be harmful?

Activity 3: Revisit the Definition of Genocide

Display and review the definition of genocide that students engaged with in Introductory Lesson 1: The Holocaust, Antisemitism, and Genocide:

In 1944, Raphael Lemkin defined genocide as “the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group.” He built the word, he said, “from the ancient Greek word genos (race, kind) and the Latin cide (killing).” He wrote, “Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group.” This was an important element of the definition of genocide: people are killed or excluded not because they do or say or believe anything in particular, but simply because they are identified as members of a particular group.

Invite students to reflect in their journals, using the following prompts: 

• What connections can you make between today’s learning and this explanation of genocide?
• What new, different, or deeper understanding of genocide do you have of after today’s activities? 

If you have time, invite students to share key ideas or questions from their journal reflections in a whole-class discussion.