Bringing the Holocaust Unit to Closure: Implications for the Future
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Dr. Joyce Witt, Highland Park High School, Highland Park, Illinois
GOALS FOR STUDENT UNDERSTANDING
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Ultimately, I want students to walk away from this lesson with three things in mind.
- Remembrance: The Holocaust is not just about the six million. It is also about the loss of future generations. What future doctors, scientists, artists, writers, philosophers were never allowed to develop? As the Jews were killed, their progeny, our future leaders and our human potential were also lost.
- Relevance: Students must understand that the lessons of the Holocaust are present in our daily lives and directly connected to world events. The names and places may change, but the lessons are still applicable.
- Responsibility: Students need to recognize their own responsibility in making sure that genocide does not happen again. We must all take action and respond whenever we see hatred, prejudice, and antisemitism.
WHAT STUDENTS WILL DO TO BUILD THEIR UNDERSTANDING: LESSON OBJECTIVES
- Students recognize the impact of the Holocaust on postwar and future generations.
- Students begin to understand the importance of moral decision making in both their individual and public lives.
- Students delineate and learn to appreciate their role and importance as a citizen of their own communities and the larger global community.
STATE STANDARDS
This lesson is designed to meet the standards set by the Bradley Commission on History in Schools (1987–88.) It comports with the following guidelines:
- Habits of Mind: Understand the significance of the past to their own lives, both private and public, and to their society
- Vital Themes and Narratives: Values, beliefs, political ideas, and institutions
