High School Lesson Plan
Suggested Five Day Curriculum
Day 1 - Judaism and Antisemitism
- Judaism and Jewry
- Prejudice/Antisemitism: Why do people hate?
- Humanize the Jewish experience
- History of Anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism
- Films: Camera of My Family, A Class Divided
Day 2 - The Rise of the Nazis (1919-1933: Germany between the wars)
- Impact of World War I and Treaty of Versailles
- Political reality of the interwar years
- Failure of Weimar
- Nazi values/world view
- Film Clips: The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century
- Homework: Timeline: Evolution to Genocide (1933-1941)
Day 3 - Nazi Consolidation of Power and the “Jewish Question”
- Nazi Ideology: Ethnic nationalism, racism, lebensraum, anti-Bolshevism
- Laws and early stages of persecution (1933-1938)
(Use timeline as well as testimonies of victims to humanize the persecution.) - Life in Nazi Germany
- Kristallnacht
- Films: Heil Hitler: Confessions of A Hitler Youth; Europa, Europa
Day 4 - Evolution to Genocide Steps to the “Final Solution”
- Poland, 1939 - 1940
- T4 Program
- Ghettos
- Einsatzgruppen
- SS and camp system
- Film Clips: Life Unworthy of Life; The Pianist, Genocide: The World At War, Vol. 20
Day 5 - The Holocaust
- The Holocaust (1941-1945)
- Rescue and Resistance
- Testimony
- Assessing responsibility
- Films: Kitty: Return to Auschwitz; One Survivor Remembers; Courage to Care; Secret Lives: Hidden Children & their Rescuers During World War II; Telling Their Stories: NH Survivors Speak Out; Trial of Adolph Eichmann; The Pianist; Sighet, Sighet
