US Holocaust Memorial Museum educators and historians created these lesson plans for use in secondary classrooms. Click on a lesson plan to see its recommended grade level, subjects covered, and time required to complete. To explore lessons organized by theme, visit Teaching Materials by Topic.
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.
After viewing archival film footage documenting Jewish life in Nasielsk, a small town in Poland, before the German invasion in September 1939, students explore how the community changed during the Nazi occupation that followed.
This guide works with all types of Holocaust literature and pairs with any book. A universal guide designed to support the reading of any genre of Holocaust literature, it complements existing English lesson plans for any book or functions as a stand-alone framework. The guide to Holocaust literature places texts in historical context, encouraging students to understand how and why the Holocaust happened.
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.
This lesson explores the online exhibition State of Deception. Students will dialogue and reflect on the ways in which propaganda affected society during the Holocaust and how it continues to affect people today.
This lesson focuses on the role that everyday objects play in our understanding of historical events.
Students will examine photographs taken in and around the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and killing center in 1944 and engage in photo analysis techniques to deconstruct the photographs.
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.
Students will examine Anne Frank’s diary as both a historical and a deliberately-created literary text, and will understand how the Holocaust affected the lives of the Frank family.
Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, has become a standard text used in many classes to both teach about the history and human impact of the Holocaust. This lesson will help teachers and students understand the fuller historical context of the events described in Wiesel’s writing.
Explore lesson plans and training materials organized by theme to use in your classroom.