Justice and Judgement after the Holocaust

About This Lesson

In the last lesson, students examined choices made by perpetrators, bystanders, upstanders, and rescuers during the Holocaust. In this lesson, students will engage with dilemmas, both universal and specific to this history, about how to hold perpetrators accountable for their actions and to help society recover after the trauma of war and genocide. The study of these dilemmas begins the “Judgment, Memory, & Legacy” stage of the Facing History scope and sequence. Students will recognize that the process of seeking justice is complex and raises questions about accountability, fairness, and punishment. They will grapple with the meaning of justice and the purpose of trials as they learn how the Allies responded to the atrocities of Nazi Germany and attempted to establish a precedent they hoped would prevent such crimes from occurring again. Students will gather evidence to help them evaluate at the end of the lesson whether or not justice was achieved at Nuremberg.

Course Essential Question

• How can learning about the choices people made during past episodes of injustice, mass violence, or genocide help guide our choices today?

Guiding Questions

• Who was responsible for the crimes committed during the Holocaust? Who should be held accountable, and how?
• What challenges did the Allies face once they agreed to bring the Nazi leaders to trial after World War II and the Holocaust? How did the Allied leaders and others involved in the trials respond to these challenges?

Learning Objectives

• Students will recognize some universal dilemmas of justice and judgment faced by societies in the aftermath of mass violence and genocide.
• Students will connect universal dilemmas of justice and judgment to the challenges that Allies faced when deciding how to hold Nazi Germany accountable for the crimes committed during World War II and the Holocaust.

Lesson Plan

Day 1 

Activity 1: Explore the Complexities of Achieving Justice

Before examining the specific dilemmas of justice after the Holocaust, ask students to think about the meaning of justice in their own experiences by responding to the prompt below. Let students know that their responses will be kept private:

• Identify a time when someone wronged you or someone you care about. It might be a situation in which you or someone you love was treated unfairly, or it might be an accident that resulted in a loss or injury. After this event, what would have needed to happen for “justice to be served”?

Then tell students that the question of what would need to happen for “justice to be served” had to be answered after the Holocaust and World War II. Tell students that even before the war ended, the Allied leaders (Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin) were discussing ways to hold Germany accountable for the war and the murder of millions of civilians. In those discussions, the Allies encountered a variety of dilemmas and disagreements about what justice might look like and how it might be achieved.

Some of the dilemmas the Allies faced are probed on the handout Justice after the Holocaust Anticipation Guide. Distribute the handout and ask students to complete it on their own by circling their response to each statement (strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree) and explaining their thinking in the space provided.

After students have completed the anticipation guide, use the Four Corners strategy to discuss their responses. Remember that students can change their positions in the room if they are persuaded by their classmates in the course of the discussion. To ensure that you hear everyone’s voice, try to create space for each student to share at least one idea with the class during the discussion.

Finally, debrief the activity with the class by leading a whole-group discussion based on the following question:

• What does this activity suggest about the challenges faced by the Allies in seeking justice after World War II and the Holocaust?

Activity 2: Provide an Overview of the Nuremberg Trials

Explain to students that they will now learn about the Nuremberg Tribunal, an international court established by the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union to put Nazi leaders on trial. The first trial in Nuremberg involved the prosecution of 22 Nazi Party officials, prominent members of the German government, and German military leaders.

Students will watch the video Facing History Scholar Reflections: The Nuremberg Trials (04:27) for a brief overview of the trials. If you have time, show the video twice, sharing the questions below with students before they watch for the second time. Note that this video includes a few photographs depicting violence and mass murder.

Help students recall key pieces of information from the video to record in their notes by leading a class discussion in which you draw from the following text-dependent questions:

• Which four Allied countries made up the international tribunal?
• What was the purpose of the Nuremberg trials?
• What were four charges on which a Nazi leader could be indicted (charged with a serious crime)?
• What was significant about the charge of “crimes against humanity”?
• What was significant about the charge of “conspiracy”?
• According to Bookbinder, what evidence suggests that the Nuremberg trials were fair?

Activity 3: Assess Student Understanding

To formatively assess each student’s understanding of the content covered in today’s lesson, ask them to respond to the following questions on an exit card:

• List three things that you learned about the Nuremberg trials and the challenges that the Allies faced when seeking justice after World War II and the Holocaust.
• Write one question that you have about a statement on the anticipation guide, a detail in the video, or something that was said during class discussion.

Day 2 

Activity 1: Address Exit Cards

Start the class by spending a few minutes reading comments from the exit cards. To provide continuity with yesterday’s lesson, you might read a sampling of the things students wrote that they learned, hitting on a range of ideas. Then respond to a few of the students’ questions to help clear up any misunderstandings.

Unless students have given you permission to use their names, we recommend that you keep them anonymous and address any significant individual misunderstandings one-on-one with students outside of class.

Activity 2: Connect Nuremberg to Dilemmas of Justice

Yesterday students grappled with some of the dilemmas that the Allied nations faced when deciding how to seek justice for the atrocities committed by Germany during World War II and the Holocaust. They also watched a video that provided an overview of the crimes for which defendants could be charged and the lasting effects of the trial on how justice has been sought after genocides in recent decades. Today students will read about what happened at the first Nuremberg Trial and those that followed.

Divide the class into groups of four or five students, and ask them to take out their anticipation guides from the previous class period. Pass out the handout An Overview of the Nuremberg Trials and read the instructions aloud with the class. Complete the first statement on the handout as a whole group to make sure that students understand the instructions.

As students are working, circulate around the room, encouraging them to refer to their anticipation guides and discuss each section together before writing their notes.

After the groups have finished reading, have them complete the 3-2-1 activity included on the handout. Debrief these responses as a class, asking each group to share at least one thing they learned or one question they debated together.

Activity 3: Discuss Trials and the Goal of Achieving Justice

n these two lessons, students have learned about the dilemmas involved in seeking justice after World War II and the Holocaust and some key events from the Nuremberg trials. Now they will consider the broader goal of seeking justice and the specific role a trial plays: its purpose, its advantages, and its limitations.

To prepare for a Fishbowl discussion, ask students to respond to the following questions in their journals:

• What conflicts and challenges might remain, after the violence has ended, in a society that has experienced war and the mass murder of civilians?
• How might a trial address some of those challenges? In what ways might a trial be insufficient to bring about healing and justice?
• What else might be needed for a society to be repaired after war and a crime as severe as genocide?

After students have had some time to reflect on the questions, ask six to ten students to form a circle in the center of the room while the rest of the class gathers around the outside of the circle to listen to the conversation. You might ask the first group to address the first question in their discussion and then have the students switch places so that a new group can discuss the last two questions.

Activity 4: Evaluate the Nuremberg Trials

To finish this lesson, tell students that they will evaluate the following statement:

• The Nuremberg war crimes trials were effective at achieving justice for the crimes of World War II and the Holocaust.

Instruct them to copy the statement at the top of a sheet of paper, or in their journals, and then draw a T-chart underneath it. The columns of the T-chart should be labeled “Agree” and “Disagree.”

Ask students to work individually or in pairs to use the handouts as well as their notes from the video and discussions in this lesson to list facts, evidence, and ideas in each column of the T-chart. Which facts, evidence, and ideas might one use to justify their agreement with the statement? Which facts, evidence, and ideas might one use to justify disagreement?

After completing the chart, students might use their work to decide which column offers the more convincing case. Time permitting, the class can debrief this activity in a discussion using the Barometer strategy.