Welcome and Introduction
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“Welcome to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Online Workshop. My name is Warren Marcus. As a member of the Education Division, I have presented workshops at the Museum in Washington D.C. and around the United States.
Before I came to the Museum in 1994, I was a classroom teacher for 17 years in middle and high school. I began thinking about teaching the history of the Holocaust when my school decided to offer senior history electives.
The Museum’s mandate is not to tell you exactly how to teach this difficult history, but to support you in this difficult endeavor, providing resources and guidance as well as help in finding additional resources in your area.
Whether you have been teaching this history for a long time or if you have just begun to plan and do research, the teaching of the history of the Holocaust in middle school or high school, is a daunting and difficult task. In order to teach others, we look for answers from publications, museums, colleagues, the World Wide Web, and other sources. Even though I have taught the history of the Holocaust to students and to teachers, the more I know, the more I realize how much more there is to learn. The complexity, the contradictions, and the surprises of the history continue to challenge me to this day. Given the difficulty of this task, how should one approach it? Where should one start?
The first part of this online workshop, Before you start teaching, will ask you to consider your rationale for teaching the history of the Holocaust. Then, reflect on our Guidelines for Teaching about the Holocaust. A list of Topics to Teach for the study of the Holocaust follows the Guidelines. Next, two guest speakers continue the workshop: Nesse Godin, a Holocaust survivor from Lithuania, shares her memories, and Dr. William Meinecke then discusses Nazi ideology and why the Nazis targeted the Jews and other groups. Finally, several sample lessons suggest ways to respond to frequently asked questions. And, please return to this workshop periodically. The Museum will be adding more segments and sample lessons.
Now, to get started, click on Agenda below to review the workshop lessons or click next to jump right in....”
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- Welcome and Introduction
- Before you start teaching
- 1. Define the term ‘Holocaust’
- 2. Contextualize the history you are teaching
- 3. Translate statistics into people
- 4. Strive for precision of language
- 5. Avoid simple answers to complex history
- 6. Just because it happened does not mean it was inevitable
- 7. Try to avoid stereotypical descriptions
- 8. Strive for balance in establishing whose perspective informs your study of the Holocaust
- 9. Make careful distinctions about sources of information
- 10. Do not romanticize history to engage students’ interest
- 11. Be sensitive to appropriate written and audiovisual content
- 12. Select appropriate learning activities
- 13. Reinforce the objectives of your lesson plan
- 14. Avoid comparisons of pain
- Topics to Teach
- Sample Lessons
- Conclusion
