Acts of Remembrance: Reflecting on How the Holocaust Is Taught

A student group listening to an audio tour of the museum.Sally Ryan for The New York Times A student group listening to an audio tour of the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center. Go to related review »
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Global History

Teaching ideas based on New York Times content.

Overview | Does the abundance of Holocaust analogies in contemporary society affect the way that we remember the Holocaust? How can we both foster understanding of the Holocaust and encourage young people to draw personal connections? In this lesson, students take a critical look at the ways in which the Holocaust is both referred to in popular culture and taught in school, and consider how teachers and museums can help students understand the Holocaust for the atrocity that it was.

Materials | Computer with Internet access and projector, student journals

Warm-Up | Tell the students that they will view examples of people or organizations using analogies to the Holocaust to make a statement of some sort, either directly or humorously. Explain that you will pause after they have viewed each one so that they can jot down in their journals their answers to the following questions:

  • How is the Holocaust, Hitler or Nazis being used here? Describe the analogy.
  • Why is the Holocaust, Hitler or Nazis being used here? Why do you think the creators of this piece chose this particular analogy?
  • What is your reaction to this Holocaust analogy?

Suggested resources include these (please preview them to determine appropriateness for your class):

Images from PETA’s 2003 “Holocaust On Your Plate” campaign

A gun-rights organization’s newsletter feature called “Madigan’s List” (and accompanying graphic; PDF)

Fox News: news item on a billboard comparing President Obama with Hitler

“The Daily Show” “24 Hour Nazi Party People” (starting about 1:38)

CollegeHumor: “Grammar Nazis”

Afterward, invite students to share their responses. Then ask: Can you think of other examples that could have been shown here? Where have you seen them? Why do you think so many people and organizations invoke Hitler, Nazism and the Holocaust? What do you think about the meaning, appropriateness and impact of such comparisons? Does the widespread use of Holocaust analogies affect the way that we remember and think about the Holocaust?

Related | In his review of the Holocaust Museum & Education Center in Skokie, Ill., “The Memory of the Holocaust, Fortified,” Edward Rothstein comments on how the museum has sought to resonate with young people:

The museum also presents a special exhibition for children, which, its literature explains, “provides a safe space where they can brainstorm strategies on how to speak up for those experiencing hatred, prejudice and discrimination through bullying and acts of intolerance within their local and global communities.”

Participatory videos urge children to “take a stand against intolerance and inequality.” One such video, which dramatizes schoolyard bullying, challenges the child to select a course of action: “Say something now to the bully,” “Show my support to the person,” “Go tell the adult nearby” or “Something else.”

This approach is also used to justify the inclusion of the Holocaust in school curriculums. And it is strange. We wouldn’t expect a museum about World War II to end with lessons about the evils of all wars. We wouldn’t expect an examination of American slavery to end with platitudes about the many despicable ways people treat others as objects. Why then here? Why the reluctance to study history in its context instead of diluting it with generalities and vague analogies? This path also ends up encouraging those always ready to invoke wild comparisons to Nazism and the Holocaust.

Read the entire article with your class, using the questions below.

Questions | For discussion and reading comprehension:

  1. What does it mean that, in the author’s view, the participation of Holocaust survivors is both a strength and a weakness of the Illinois museum?
  2. What does the review say about the museum’s call for viewers to stand up against injustice in all forms and the connections the museum makes to acts of intolerance like bullying? Do you agree or disagree?
  3. Do you agree or disagree that the Holocaust is often treated differently than other historical atrocities like slavery?
  4. Do you agree or disagree with the argument that the Holocaust is often not studied in context, but instead “diluted with generalities and vague analogies”?
  5. Have you ever visited a Holocaust museum, either in person or online? If so, what was the experience like? How did it differ from studying the Holocaust in school? If not, would you ever want to visit a Holocaust museum? Why or why not?

Activity | Tell the class that they will be using a “fishbowl” format for discussion about how the Holocaust is taught in school, and explain how the format works. Tell students to take notes, which they will need to use for the homework assignment.

(Note: This activity requires that students have learned about the Holocaust previously. If you would like to teach this lesson to conclude a longer unit, you might want to consult our resources collection to find other lesson plans and teaching materials to use leading up to this activity.)

Once the students are seated in the initial configuration, ask the first question, and proceed from there, using some or all of the following questions, among others (you may also wish to ask for thoughts on the specific activities and reading materials your students have experienced):

  1. Many curricular materials on the Holocaust involve drawing connections between the genocide and other acts of intolerance and hatred, like incidences of bullying and harassment. Do you think that this dilutes the Holocaust or helps us to understand the history by connecting it to our own experiences?
  2. What kinds of resources – photographs, artifacts, survivor testimony, documentary films, written accounts, novels, newspaper articles, textbook chapters – have been used to teach you about the Holocaust? Which had the most impact on you and why?
  3. Do you think that textbooks and teachers address the Holocaust differently than they address other historical atrocities? Should they?
  4. How would you advise teachers about how to get young people to comprehend and appreciate the systemic and large-scale way in which the Holocaust was carried out?
  5. How do you think the Holocaust should be taught to younger students?
  6. What role, if any, can and should Holocaust museums (and their Web sites) play in teaching and learning about the Holocaust?

Going Further | Individually, students draw on the class discussion to write letters to their textbook publisher, recommending revisions to the Holocaust section in future editions that would help students appreciate the Holocaust for the genocide that it was. They might, if they wish, comment on how multimedia might be included in an interactive version for, say, the Internet or tablet device.

Alternatively or additionally, they might write letters to a Holocaust museum in their state or region with suggestions for how to engage teenagers.

To go even further, have the class curate their own museum-style exhibit on the Holocaust for the school community, as we explain in this lesson.

Standards | This lesson is correlated to McREL’s national standards (it can also be aligned to the new Common Core State Standards):

World History
41. Understands the causes and global consequences of World War II.
43. Understands how post-World War II reconstruction occurred, new international power relations took shape, and colonial empires broke up.

Historical Understanding
2. Understands the historical perspective.

Language Arts
7. Demonstrates competence in the general skills and strategies for reading a variety of informational texts.
8. Demonstrates competence in speaking and listening as tools for learning.

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I’d like to share a link to my Canadian teacher friend Shelley Wright’s thoughtful descriptions of the “amazing” results in her classroom when she gave her 10th graders the lead in developing a Holocaust exhibit as part of their study unit this year. There are four blog posts – all linked from this one:

//bit.ly/ey6muX

Her account was highlighted recently at the KQED (San Francisco) MindShift blog:

//bit.ly/kq5VbN

holocaust is a world wide devistation i am only 10 years old and so far i met a survivor named mr. Zoli Zamier. I met him at the holocaust meuseum in houston,Tx. I hate what Hitler did to all these innocent people i wish Hitler could suffer as they did give him a taste of his own medicine