Extra Credit Video Assignment

Because I am an English teacher and only teach the Holocaust in conjunction with teaching the memoir, Night by Elie Wiesel, I do not spend as much time on other aspects of the Holocaust as I would sometimes like, especially with snow days. So, to provide students with an opportunity to learn a little more about the Holocaust on their own, I allow them to watch a Holocaust video for extra credit, using the attached list and assignment qualifications. I do always try to preface the extra credit opportunity by saying that some of the selections are a Hollywood portrayal of the Holocaust and may have some inaccuracies. The students must write about the movie, making connections to what we have learned in class and reviewing the movie’s “credibility.” So, the extra credit opportunity also requires the students to practice some of the good writing habits that they are supposed to be developing in class.

Front loading vocabulary

Over five years ago, my high school brought in a reading specialist, Bill McBride, who talked to us about how to help students engage in reading across the content areas. While I teach communication arts/ language arts/ English, I am by no means a reading teacher, especially at the high school level, so this workshop was very helpful. Among the advice he gave us was to always “front load” the vocabulary we would be working with in a particular unit. He was kind enough to give us all a worksheet that we could take and implement in our classrooms for this purpose. I call this worksheet the “Predicting ABC’s” and have taken it and adapted it to use to introduce Holocaust vocabulary at the beginning of the Holocaust memoir unit I teach to freshmen.

I have the students think of as many terms as they can that they know about the Holocaust and write them on the chart alphabetically, and then we share out their responses. Then, I always have some that I tell them that I want them to know for the unit and test, and these are listed on the back of the worksheet. Some I already provide the definition for and others I make them take down as notes. This has been a great tool to help students know the terms that we will use during the unit, and the worksheet can be adapted for any unit in any content area.

Teaching about Rescue

Teaching the Holocaust in middle school can be tricky. On one hand, the students have had little, if any, exposure to the topic and are eager to learn everything they can about it. On the other hand, they are still a bit young to hear all of the horrific details, and they can get very sad about it very quickly. I have found it to be very important to teach the facts, while also trying to teach some of the more inspiring aspects of the topic. One of these aspects is the subject of rescue.

Many middle school students read The Diary of Anne Frank. This is a great chance to teach about rescue. Once they have read the story, you can then teach them about Yad Vashem and their Righteous among the Nations honor. All four of the Frank rescuers are on this prestigious list. You can find information about the list and a discussion of the main forms of rescue during the Holocaust. You can then discuss how the Frank family helpers fit into this list.

Another person to study is Chiune Sugihara. There is a short story written about him, included in some middle school literature textbooks, called Passage to Freedom. You can also find his story on the Yad Vashem website. This can be a great chance to talk about stereotype as well. Most students only know of Japan as being our enemy during WWII. Learning about Sugihara can illustrate to the students that not all Japanese were “bad,” and that people from many countries and of all different races did what they could to help, even risking their lives. After studying his story, you can show a short video about him and his family, including primary resource photographs and an interview with his wife.

Once students have learned about a few rescuers, you can then have them explore the actual list of The Righteous Among the Nations and choose one to write about. The website also includes rescuers from other genocides, so it could be a jumping off point to teach about these other events. Another fantastic resource for learning about rescuers is the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous. This is an organization that helps those rescuers who are still alive. Their website has the stories of many of rescuers, sorted by country. This would also help students understand that people from all over Europe tried to help. Writing about a rescuer can be a great way to cover many different curricular objectives, including research, paraphrasing and character study.

While it is important for students to understand that the Holocaust was a horrific event, I think it is also important, especially for the younger students, to see that there were people, although few in number, who risked their lives to help those who could not help themselves.

Dr. Seuss, Hitler and Human Rights

Many teachers celebrate Dr. Seuss during the week surrounding his birthday- March 2. I am an inner city school librarian working with mostly minority students. Due to my students’ poor test scores regarding nonfiction, I pledged to spend this school year on nonfiction. My middle school students shared with me their excitement about the upcoming Dr. Seuss birthday celebrations. As a librarian, it’s imperative that I collaborate with teachers in order to support what is happening in the classroom, yet I did not want to lose our momentum studying nonfiction. I work to have Holocaust studies a major part of what we learn. How do I celebrate Dr. Seuss, continue our nonfiction studies, and incorporate the Holocaust into one unit?

Fortunately, a year ago, a Cadre colleague, Cathy, shared a great text with me- Dr. Seuss Goes to War: The World War II Editorial Cartoons of Theodor Seuss Geisel, by Richard H. Minear. I created a lesson plan about political cartoons for high school juniors and seniors. But, middle school?

I began by guiding a student discussion making text-to-text connections with the works of Dr. Seuss that the students are familiar with. I guided the students to seeing the larger themes of his works, such as the equal rights message of The Sneetches and Other Stories. A couple of students were aware of the larger themes for his books, and they enjoyed sharing their knowledge with others. I also shared with them Dr. Seuss’ own brushes with antisemitism. He was German. Due to that and that he had a larger nose, many students at his college thought he was Jewish, and he was not accepted by a group (fraternity) that he wanted to join on campus, so he redirected his interests in to the campus paper.


I asked them what issues were important to Ted Geisel (Dr. Seuss). The students were impressed that he was addressing equal rights well before the 1960s. We examined his cartoon of a man sitting at an organ while another man watching tells him he has to use the black keys, too. We then moved to the pressing issues of the late 1930s- isolationism and Hitler’s growing power. Students chose one of his political cartoons addressing Hitler/ antisemitism, and wrote a reflection on the cartoon.

The most gratifying comment made in the post discussion was that one can impact many. I was thrilled; teaching our students to want to make a difference is my mission.

I teach in a Catholic school in the diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri. I currently am teaching a unit on the Holocaust to my 8th grade students. I use resources from Echoes and Reflections for survivor testimony and primary source documents. I began my unit with a lesson on antisemitism using the phrase “the longest hatred” and the quote from Raul Hilberg, “You may not live among us as Jews; you may not live among us; and you may not live." My students looked at centuries old feelings toward Jews and how that changed from a religious-based hatred to one based on political and racial reasons. This sparked interesting dialogue with students concerning the role of the Church in the religious persecution of Jews.

One thing that I do each day in class is to read a selection from Flares of Memory edited by Anita Brostoff. I choose selections that correspond with the material that we are covering in class. This week we are focusing on pre-war Germany so the selections are from that time period. I always begin class with this activity. I started out reading the selections myself, but students now want to read these. It is just one more way to personalize the study of the Holocaust. This is an excellent way to initiate dialogue with students on the material that is being studied.

When discussing Nazi ideology students often ask about whether all Germans believed these ideas and/or why did they go along with the Nazis. One useful resource I recently came across is the book Life and Death in the Third Reich © 2008 by Peter Fritzsche. This is not a source for use with students but is a very helpful resource for teachers. Its focus is on the relationship between the Nazis and the German people. Fritzsche’s use of letters and diaries enhances the ideas discussed. The book is divided into four long chapters, “Reviving the Nation,” "Racial Grooming,” “Empire of Destruction,” and “Intimate Knowledge”. Each chapter is further divided into more topic specific sections. The first two chapters are what caught my attention and led me to purchase the book. Overall these chapters in particular helped me to better understand how the Nazis were able to entice the German people to, if not totally embrace the Nazis, at least tacitly follow the regime.

Defining a "crime without a name"

“But, what difference can I really make? I am just one person.”

As a secondary social studies teacher, I hear this comment a lot. When we look at the sheer numbers of those lost in 20th century genocides, it can feel overwhelming. What can any individual do to stop so much destruction? And, so, too often, we allow ourselves to turn a blind eye. Instead, we can stress the power of one person to shape how we think of these actions. We can encourage our students to be the voice to label the “crime without a name.” (Winston Churchill labeled the actions of the Nazis in Europe in the early days of World War II as such in a radio address dated August 24, 1941)

What can one person do? They can name the crime and bring international attention. They can petition and raise awareness. They can raise their voice in the din, and refuse to remain silent. The term genocide was developed by Raphael Lemkin. The term derives from the Greek word genos for family or tribe, and the suffix cide, which translates from the Latin as to kill. Lemkin had an interest in language and had even studied linguistics at university. He sought to identify what he felt was a crime to which no law had been written. Lemkin created the term genocide to mean “a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.” (Taken from the Preface of Axis Rule in Occupied Europe)

Lemkin was at university when another young man sought to avenge his people. Soghomon Tehlirian was a survivor of the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire. One of the main planners of this action was Mehmed Talaat. Tehlirian approached Talaat on the streets of Berlin, raising a pistol and ending a single life. The assassin would stand trial for murder, while Talaat was seen to be the victim. The attention paid to the trial brought up questions surrounding the Armenian genocide, and the motives behind Tehlirian’s actions. Lemkin asked a professor at the time why Tehlirian stood trial for murdering one man, while Talaat never faced a jury for killing millions. His professor explained it in terms of state sovereignty. What a sovereign nation does to its own people is no other nation’s business. No international law allowed one country to enter another country to punish crimes against citizens of the primary nation. Only Turkey could punish Talaat for his actions, and they had no interest in resurrecting the past.

Lemkin studied law, and began practicing, while retaining his interest in the Armenian massacres. As Hitler’s ambitions grew, Lemkin grew more concerned. With the invasion of Poland in 1939, Lemkin fled to Soviet-occupied territory and eventually to the United States. He worked hard to publicize his creation of the term genocide, and sought recognition for crimes against humanity. In 1944, he published his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. While aimed at exposing Nazi brutalities in occupied territories, Lemkin paid special attention to those without a voice - dedicating an entire chapter to the issue of genocide and a world response.

When the United Nations is founded following the Second World War, Lemkin worked tirelessly to create a legal binding definition of genocide. In December of 1948, after years of work, the United Nations ratified a convention to identify and punish genocide. One man’s dream of bringing justice to the voiceless millions who suffered under the actions of their own governments was finally being realized.

Now, the responsibility falls on the shoulders of all of us. One man acted to define a crime. Now it is on us to see it through and demand action from our governments when we see it. The next time your students ask what one person can do, tell them the story of Raphael Lemkin .