CURRICULUM RESOURCES
THE HOLOCAUST
It’s important to understand the importance of teaching about the Holocaust. These materials provide an overview of Nazi Germany’s genocide of Jews between 1933 and 1945, including the Holocaust aftermath, that resulted in the mass murder of six million Jews.
During the Second World War, Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators killed nearly two out of every three European Jews using deadly living conditions, brutal mistreatment, mass shootings and gassings, and specially designed killing death centers.
HAEA DEVELOPED MATERIALS
These materials have been created by members of HAEA. Our plan is to add more made-in-B.C. learning resources as we move forward.
RESOURCES COMING SOON
CURATED MATERIALS
These materials have been curated by the HAEA and represent some of the best resources available worldwide.
TOOLS FOR TEACHING THE HOLOCAUST - OVERVIEW
The Holocaust was the systematic, antisemitic, state-sponsored genocide and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.
One of the greatest human tragedies of all time, it is critical to understand how it happened so it cannot happen again. The Holocaust is a challenging subject to teach. These resources target various grade levels and can guide classroom activities in a variety of subjects.
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This grade 6 lesson plan introduces the concept of The Holocaust and places it in historical context. It aims to develop empathy and critical thinking skills using a variety of sources.
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This lesson plan for grades 7-12 provides an introduction to the Holocaust by defining the term and highlighting the story of Holocaust survivor Gerda Weissmann.
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Item This selection of lesson plans represents suggested unit outlines based on the specific amount of classroom time available. Since schedules, class period length, and the needs of individual classes and students can vary, you may need to make adjustments or accommodations that best fit your students and needs.
Source: Holocaust Center for Humanity
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This multi-discipline teacher guide for teaching the Holocaust in the middle years is one of a range of lesson plans and materials available Australia
Source: Sydney Jewish Museum
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This combination of lesson plans for grades 7-12 work together for students to create a Holocaust timeline and then link it to the Path of the Nazi Genocide film.
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
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Designed for history teachers in Kosovo, this resource is a supplementary, good quality teaching resource for use by teachers.
Source: Forum ZFD
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This lesson plan equips teachers and students to thoughtfully engage with stories connected to the Holocaust. A teacher does not have to be an expert in the field of art or the Holocaust to broach this topic.
TOOLS FOR TEACHING THE HOLOCAUST - SPECIFIC ISSUES
These are resources that teach specific aspects of the Holocaust and focusing on topics worth exploring in depth after a Holocaust overview has taken place.
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This lesson plan, suitable for secondary school students, will introduce your students to the history of Auschwitz-Birkenau, and shares with them the stories of some of those who were imprisoned there.
Source: Holocaust Memorial Day Trust
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This lesson allows Grade 9 students to test their preconceptions about people in the past against real case studies. It reveals to them a far more complex understanding about how the Holocaust happened, the motivations of people in the past, and the many levels of complicity that are often neglected in accounts of the Holocaust.
Source: Centre for Holocaust Education, University of London
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This discussion guide shares the stories of survivors with resources and activities for middle and high school students that will help in increasing their awareness of the Holocaust and how it affected children.
Source: Anti Defamation League
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Holocaust denial is any attempt to deny the Holocaust happened. Holocaust distortion, sometimes referred to as ‘soft denial’ or ‘Holocaust revisionism’ is where the Holocaust is acknowledged to have happened, but where the extent or nature of the Holocaust is questioned, minimised or trivialised.
Source: Holocaust Memorial Day Trust
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Denial recounts Deborah E. Lipstadt’s legal battle for historical truth against British author David Irving who sued her and her publisher Penguin Books in an English court for libel after she declared him a Holocaust denier in her 1993 book Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. The film provides an opportunity for students to learn about the Holocaust, Holocaust denial, antisemitism, and an important court battle that essentially put historical truth on trial.
Source: Anti-Defamation League
STORIES OF THE HOLOCAUST
Stories coming out of the Holocaust offer relatable ways to expose students to the Holocaust and its impacts on people, some of whom are just like them..
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This lesson plan for grades 7-12 examines Anne Frank’s diary as both a historical and a deliberately-created literary text and describes how the Holocaust affected the lives of the Frank family.
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The guide has been organized into three classroom subject areas; social studies, language arts and visual art. Teachers who wish to borrow ideas across disciplines will find that the student materials are particularly easy to adapt to different teaching needs.
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In this lesson, students will watch the short film Martha and explore the impact and legacy of the Holocaust. They will gain perspective through the story of a Holocaust survivor’s descendant and connect to one Jewish family’s storytelling journey, using their own personal experiences with storytelling to build relevance.
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This lesson plan will define the holocaust and introduce students to several child Holocaust survivors.
Source: Azrieli Foundation
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Students will be able to learn about Holocaust distortion and denial in Canada and its impact by analyzing a short film, describe what Holocaust distortion and denial is through a series of activities, understand how it has affected Canadians, individuals, and communities, and reflect on the importance of Holocaust education.
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This lesson plan is centred around the true story of Hana Brady, a young Jewish girl from Czechoslovakia who lived during the Nazi era. It is a powerful and moving account that sheds light on the human stories during the Holocaust.
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Students will learn about the experience of young children during the Holocaust through a study of the poems and pictures drawn by those imprisoned in Theresienstadt.
Source: Holocaust Museum Houston
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This high school lesson plan uses Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, to both teach about the history and human impact of the Holocaust and helps build an understanding the fuller historical context of the events described in Wiesel’s writing
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A teacher’s guide to the exhibition Art Spiegelman, Co-Mix: A Retrospective of Comics, Graphics and Scraps detailing his work and his background in the Holocaust
Source: The Vancouver Art Gallery
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This lesson plan explores responsibility for the atrocities of the Holocaust as well as the life of Raoul Wallenberg.
Source: European Commission
IMPACTS OF THE HOLOCAUST
The impacts of the Holocaust go beyond the millions of lives impacted directly and indirectly – impacts felt until this day. These materials look at what was lost because of the Holocaust, and how the modern world has been shaped by the cataclysmic event.
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This lesson plan for grades 7-12 looks at the cultural and communal life of Jews in Europe to promote an understanding on the individuality of the lives lost and the community impacts of the Holocaust.
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This lesson plan develops knowledge and understanding about the diversity of Jewish life in Europe before the Holocaust and shows its impact through an exploration of ‘what was lost’.
Source: Centre for Holocaust Education, University of London
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This lesson plan for grades 7-12 examines the complex factors that led German Jews to seek to emigrate from Nazi Germany and the complex factors that impeded their immigration to the United States in the 1930’s and 1940’s.
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This lesson plan explores the challenges of Jews trying to emigrate from Germany in the 1930s.
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This lesson plan for grades 7-12 focuses on the importance of considering perspective and historical context when viewing photographs as historical sources. Students will examine photographs taken in and around the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and killing center in 1944
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A comprehensive look at many facets of the Holocaust focusing on graphic narratives.
Source: Andrea Webb
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What does it mean to be ‘liberated’? To go ‘home’? These are ideas all of us can conceive of and relate to in some way or another. In the context of the end of the Holocaust, however, these words had very different connotations for the men, women, and children who found themselves still alive at the end of the war. In this lesson students begin to explore some of these nuances. By listening to survivors’ experiences and engaging with creative writing, they are encouraged to think about what ‘liberation’ and ‘home’ actually meant to those who experienced it in 1945.
Source: Centre for Holocaust Education, University of London
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This lesson plan aims to critically analyze the actions taken by Nazi Germany and to understand how and why the Holocaust happened by understanding the racist ideology of the regime.
Source: Holocaust Center for Humanity
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This lesson looks at how the Nazis recruited young people through the use of propaganda techniques. After obtaining a general understanding of these propaganda techniques, students will be asked to apply them to today’s marketing to teenagers.
Source: Museum of Tolerance
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How do we honor and remember those who lost their lives during the Holocaust so that part of history is never again repeated? Students will understand what the Holocaust was and when it took place, how people were part of the resistance movement and how they helped those in need by risking their lives.
MORE LESSON PLANS COMING SOON