11th Grade American History

Mr. Dalton’s Class

Subject:

The Holocaust

Objectives:

• To promote awareness of the events, causes, and impact of the holocaust on European culture.

• The students will analyze the holocaust and its political, emotional, and humanitarian impact on the 20th century.

• The students will define ten terms of the holocaust

Objectives (continued)

• The students will connect the genocide of the holocaust to current genocide in the Balkans, Albania, Africa, and other genocide from current history.

• The students will trace the five major events leading to the internment of German “undesirables” and concentration and work camps

More Objectives:

• The students will write a personal reaction paper to the video of the holocaust.

• The students will list four personal rights denied the Jewish people during the rule of the Third Reich.

• The students will develop an understanding of the ramifications of prejudice, racism, and stereotyping in any society.

Even more objectives:

• Given a map of Eastern Europe, the students will locate the areas from which the holocaust victims came

• the students will describe their reactions to scenes form the video “Liberation of the Camps”

Activities:

• Watch the video “Liberation of the Camps” and write a reaction paragraph

• watch a clip from the movie Schlindler’s List.

• After viewing an overhead map of the concentration/death camps the students will discuss Concentration vs. Death Camps.

Activities (continued)

• After viewing an overhead chart of the Jewish population, the students will discuss how so many could not escape the injustice that they encountered.

• The students will create a timeline of the systematic dehumanization practiced by the Third Reich.

Even more activities:

• Given a map of Eastern Europe, the students will locate the areas from which the holocaust victims came.

• Watch the video form A&E Undercover Report -- Einsatgruppen

• Students are news reporters with Allied liberation forces, they will write a paragraph for their home newspaper describing the camps

The last of the activities:

• The students will discuss the differences between the holocaust and current actions in Kosovo by Serbian and NATO forces.

• The students will describe the cultural/racial groups targeted by the Nazis as “undesirable” and explain why these groups were targeted.

Websites:

• Http://www.scetv.org/HolocaustForum/images/Killcntr.gif

• http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/beyond-the-pale/eng_captions/58-2.html

• http://www.fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/resource/glossary.htm

Websites:

• Http://www.ushmm.org/education/

• http://www.fmv.ulgar.ac.be/schmitz/holocaust.html

• http://www.holocaust-history.org/

• http://www.holocaustforgotten.com

More Websites:

• Http://www.candles-museum.com/survivors

• http://www.holocaust.about.com/

• http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/cmu/user/mmbt/www/resources.html

• http://motlc.weisenthal.com.pages

• http://library.yale.edu/ testimonies/homepage.html

Timeline:

• The events of the Holocaust occurred in two main phases: 1933-1939 and 1939-1945

• 1933 -- Hitler becomes chancellor- boycotts/Aryan Laws/book burnings

• 1935 -- Nuremberg Laws

• 1939 -- Invasion of Poland (Jews must wear Star of David) Ghettos formed

Vocabulary

• Aryan

• Auschwitz

• Concentration Camp

• Dachau

• Death Marches

Vocabulary

• Euthanasia

• Genocide

• Heinrich Himmler

• Holocaust

• Kristallnacht

• S.S.

Vocabulary

• Nuremberg Laws

• Treblinka

• Final Solution

• Einsatzgruppen

• Belzec

Important information

• In 1933 approximately 9 million Jews lived in the 21 countries of Europe that would be occupied by Germany during the war.

• By 1945 2 out of every 3 European Jews had been killed

More Information:

• Although Jews were the primary victims, up to one half million Gypsies and at least 250,000 mentally or physically disabled persons were also victims of genocide.

• Nazis saw these people as a serious biological threat to the purity of the German (Aryan) Race”, what they called the “master race.”

• The methods of murder were the same in all the killing centers, which were operated by the S. S.

• the victims arrived by freight cars and passenger trains, mostly from ghettos and camps in occupied Poland.

• On arrival , men an women were seperated and forced to undress and turn over their valuables

• They were then taken to gas chambers that were disguised as showers and either carbon monoxide or Zyklon B was used to asphyxiate them.

• Resistance movements existed in all camps, but was usually put down quickly.

• In May 1945, Nazi Germany collapsed, the S.S. guards fled,and the camps ceased to exist as concentration camps and turned into displaced persons camps (DP camps)