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Teachers’ Guide
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Teaching the Holocaust:
an Interdisciplinary and Computerized Program,
through the use of Stamps, Pictures,
Text and Painting by Children in the Holocaust
This program deals with the teaching of the subject of the Holocaust - a chapter in the study of World War II - through the use of authentic stamps, drawings made by Holocaust children, pictures, and historical and literary texts.
The unit was developed for study in a computerized, virtual environment, with the use of the Internet as an optional choice. If the Internet is used, the learner is exposed to exploring and surfing through Internet sites on the topic of the Holocaust.
The aims of the program are:
Teaching the Holocaust as a complex and unique topic, while using a
critical - scientific approach to it.
Using the teaching of the Holocaust as a means of having both universal and
Jewish values ( within a pluralistic approach) internalized by the learner.
Creating empathy in the learner for both the individual and the group in the
Holocaust.
Teaching the Holocaust through an interdisciplinary program.
Teaching the Holocaust in a computerized and experiential - virtual environment.
Terrible events took place during World War II, and millions of people were killed or wounded during that time. Amongst them were six million Jewish men, women and children who were murdered only because they were Jews.
Up until World War II, the systematically planned and executed genocide of a people had never occurred .To this day, those very same events of the Holocaust raise many questions of moral and ethical import:
How did the murdering of a people because of its national identity become possible? Who were those people who carried it out? (“The Executioner”)
How did the Jews react? (“The Victim”)
How did it come about that the nations of the world saw what was happening, yet stood by and kept silent? (“The Silent Bystander”)
A very small group of people tried to resist the Executioner’s sentence. Who were these people? How did they operate? (“The Righteous”)
The following program deals with these and other questions raised by the events of the Holocaust. In the process of working through the program, we will try to find answers to them.
THE PROGRAM CONTAINS SIX TEACHING UNITS:
The Executioner
The Victim
The Silent Bystander
The Righteous
A Stamp Album
A Stamp Gallery
Each subject has a number of sub - topics:
The Executioner
1. "No! to Racism",
2. Nuremberg Laws,
3. Crystal Night Pogrom,
4. Occupied Poland
5. Willing Executioners
6. Ordinary People
7. Children in the Eyes of the Executioner
8. A Time Scale
The Victim
1 . Life in the Concentration Camps
2 . The Ghetto
3 . Children in the Holocaust
4 . Children’s Stories
5 . Consecration of Life in the Holocaust
6 . Korczak
7 . Extermination Camps
8 . Jewish Revolt
9 . Fighting in the Camps and the Ghettos
The Silent Bystander
1. The St. Louis
2 . The Hague Convention
3 . Orphans in a Silent World
4 . Auschwitz wasn't Bombed
5 . No One Spoke Out
The Righteous
1. in Memory of the Righteous
2. A Few Did Exist
3. Denmark
4. Raoul Wallenberg
A Stamp Album
from which it’s possible to learn about all the authentic stamps in the program, as one follows the instructions;
A Stamp Gallery
which includes samples of stamps drawn by pupils in schools, after they studied the program.
The individual units contain the following:
First- hand historical sources, such as authentic stamps, historical documents,
children’s drawings, poems and photos.
Secondary historical sources, such as stamps, and historical research on various
subjects.
Electronic communication with institutes dealing with the Holocaust ,
such as Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Museum in Washington,
Internet discussion groups, and others.
Instructions for working on the unit and subjects for discussion and thought.
A page for creating a new stamp.
There are two possible ways of using this material .
One can either follow the topics as they are presented in the units or pick and choose at random.
The units are suitable for junior and senior high school students and for the students of Teacher Colleges, both as learning material and as an enrichment or research program.
The program can be taught in a regular weekly lesson throughout the year, or the teacher can choose to treat the units spirally, for instance, spread out over the three years of junior high. In the case of the latter, one can teach according to a central theme for each year. We would like to recommend the following possible division:
7th grade - Children in the Holocaust
The purpose here is to create a "dialogue" between children who have experienced growing up in Israel and those who ‘grew up’ in the Holocaust. This meeting between the Holocaust children’s descriptions of their lives in that period and the reactions of the Israeli children to that experience, helps create a feeling of identification with those children. In this way, the beginnings of a ‘collective consciousness’ of the Holocaust are created in the minds of the Israeli children.
Activity pages that are relevant to this theme are:
Children in the Eyes of the Executioner
Children in the Holocaust
Children’s Stories
Orphans in a Silent World
A Few Did Exist
A Stamp Gallery
8th Grade –Education for Values
The purpose is to cultivate a moral - ethical awareness of the past, and instill humanistic values in a Jewish - Israeli consciousness.
Some of the relevant activity pages are the following:
Crystal Night Pogrom,
Ordinary People
Willing Executioners
The Consecration of Life
Yanosh Korczak
No One Spoke Out
The Hague convention
In Memory of the Righteous
Raoul Wallenberg
A Stamp Album
A Stamp Gallery
9th Grade – The Student as Researcher
The purpose of this theme-centered unit is to enable students to acquire the cognitive and empirical skills necessary for carrying out research.
A sample of relevant work pages is the following:
"No! to Racism"
The Nuremberg Laws
Occupied Poland
A Time Scale
The Ghetto
Extermination Camps
Jewish Revolt
Fighting in the Camps and in the Ghettos
The St. Louis
Auschwitz wasn't Bombed
Denmark
A Stamp Album
A Stamp Gallery
It’s possible to enlarge some of the pictures. Those that can be enlarged have a hand
rather than an arrow next to them.
Operating Instructions
Lead Page - Home Page
