Teaching the Holocaust and Armenian Genocide: For California Educators

We believe that a classroom in which a Facing History & Ourselves unit is taught ought to be a microcosm of democracy—a place where explicit rules and implicit norms protect everyone’s right to speak; where different perspectives can be heard and valued; where members take responsibility for themselves, each other, and the group as a whole; and where each member has a stake and a voice in collective decisions. You may have already established rules and guidelines with your students to help bring about these characteristics in your classroom. If not, it is essential at the beginning of this unit to facilitate a supportive, reflective classroom community. Two ways in which you can create a strong foundation for a reflective classroom are through the use of classroom contracts and student journals. Even if you already incorporate both of these elements into your classroom, we recommend taking a moment to review them.

This unit includes an assessment that asks students to write an argumentative essay in response to the following prompt:

Over the course of this unit, you will examine the atrocities committed by the Ottoman government during the Armenian Genocide, the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany following World War I, and the pursuit of racial purity in Nazi Germany that resulted in the murder of six million Jewish individuals and millions of other civilians during the Holocaust. You will also look closely at the choices made by individuals, groups, and nations that led to these events. For the culminating unit assessment, you will construct a written argument that you support with examples from these historical cases in response to the following question:

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

Note that the objective of the essay is not to ask students to cover all of the historical topics listed above in one essay. The list is designed to spark students’ thinking and provide a range of topics that students can choose based on their interests and readiness level. Some sophisticated writers, for instance, may choose to compare and contrast different moments in the past within single paragraphs, while others might group evidence chronologically. An English Language Learner or student with an individualized education plan might use only one historical event on which to base his or her argument. We recommend that you modify the prompt according to the particular needs of your students.

Six activities are interspersed throughout the unit to introduce students to the assessment and guide them as they gather evidence and develop their ideas, develop their theses, and begin to write their essays. The activities can be skipped if you opt not to use the unit assessment.

The readings and videos in this unit introduce some vocabulary and concepts that may pose a challenge for your students, especially for struggling readers, so you may want to consider using the Word Wall strategy to keep a running list of critical vocabulary posted in your classroom that you and your students can refer to over the course of the unit. Students might have a corresponding list in a section of their journals or notebooks, and you could also challenge them to incorporate the terms into their writing and discussions to help them internalize and understand these challenging terms and concepts.