Materials

• Teacher-generated worksheet (See step 3 below.)

Instructional Activities

NOTE: To prepare students for the sensitive and complex nature of the Holocaust history, be careful to use lessons and materials that are age appropriate. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Web site has information about teaching about the Holocaust at <http://www.ushmm.org/education/foreducators/>. The Web site also offers a helpful online workshop for teachers and sample lessons.

1. Before discussion of the Holocaust, review definitions of terms that are most commonly used with this topic:
   • the Holocaust: the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Other victims of the Holocaust were Gypsies, the handicapped, and those who disagreed with Hitler’s politics. The Hebrew word for Holocaust is Shoah, which means “destruction by fire.”
   • genocide: the systematic killing of a nation or race of people.
   • Final Solution: the Nazi term for their plan to murder every Jew in Europe.
   • concentration camp: a prison in which “enemies of the German nation” were concentrated. Before the end of WWII, more than 100 such camps had been set up.
   • ghetto: the part of a city in which Jews were forced to live.
   • anti-Semitism: prejudice against Jews.
   
   
2. Students can readily understand the physical effects that the Holocaust had on people, but the purpose of this session is to help them understand the gradual emotional and psychological effects that occurred through the Nazi dehumanization of individuals during the Holocaust. This lesson is adapted from an Educator’s Reference Desk lesson: “Human Needs Analysis: An Introductory Activity to the Holocaust” at <http://www.eduref.org/cgi-bin/printlessons.cgi/Virtual/Lessons/Social_Studies/World_History/Holocaust/HOL0200.html>. Have students write brief personal responses to the following questions:
   • What do you need to live?
   • What do you need to live happily?
   
   Ask for student responses, and write them on the board in order to make a master list of the essentials for all people. Have students rank these needs, starting with the most important or most basic to survive, and continue from there.
   
   
3. Distribute a handout to students asking them to consider their rights and freedoms. A copy of this handout can be found at the Web site listed above. You may chose to update the handout with more contemporary examples, such as the right to own a Playstation 2, DVD player, or cell phone. After students have completed their handouts, have them share their answers with the class, discussing their reasons for their choices.
   
   
4. Display and discuss with students the laws passed by the Nazis that revoked many of the rights of individuals. A chronology is included with the online lesson mentioned above. A more detailed chronology, published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, can be found online at <http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10007653>. Discuss with students how these laws slowly dehumanized Jews and others over time. Expand this discussion by considering how concentration camps furthered this process of dehumanization.