This lesson explores the online exhibition Some Were Neighbors. In this lesson, students will examine examples of choices of ordinary people during the Holocaust and think critically about the fears, pressures, and motivations that might have shaped their behaviors.
By examining true personal stories, told through short animations, students learn about unique individual experiences within the historical context of the Holocaust. This activity contains an extension to examine the role of artifacts in understanding history.
Students learn the various forms of resistance during the Holocaust and explore examples from 1933–45.
This lesson focuses on the role that everyday objects play in our understanding of historical events.
Join Holocaust survivors for live First Person conversations as they share their experiences in their own words. This guide provides scaffolding to integrate the First Person conversations into your classroom. By viewing First Person testimony, students are exposed to the diversity of experiences of Holocaust survivors.
Students study examples of diaries written by young people during the Holocaust, particularly examining the ways in which Anne Frank, the most famous diarist of the Holocaust, thought about her audience while writing.
Although different in many ways, antisemitism in Nazi Germany during the 1930s and anti-Black racism in Jim Crow-era America deeply affected communities in these countries. While individual experiences and context are unique and it is important to avoid comparisons of suffering, looking at these two places in the same historical period raises critical questions about the impact of antisemitism and racism in the past and present.
In this 39-minute tour, Dr. Daniel Greene, US Holocaust Memorial Museum historian and exhibition curator, walks through the Americans and the Holocaust exhibition and provides an overview of the history, themes, and artifacts presented throughout. The viewing guide includes reflection questions to consider while watching the tour and concluding writing prompts.
Organized around a Museum-produced 38-minute Documentary, The Path to Nazi Genocide, these discussion questions provide students with an introduction to the history of the Holocaust.
This one-day lesson provides an introduction to the Holocaust by defining the term and highlighting the story of one Holocaust survivor, Gerda Weissmann.
