“Why, what and how to teach about the Holocaust in the classroom”

“Why, what and how to teach
about the Holocaust in the
classroom”
The International Task Force
Recommendations
By Emma O’Brien
Why teach about the Holocaust?
Christer Mattson
IWM
IWM
Why teach about the Holocaust?
The Holocaust was a watershed event, not
only for the 20th century but also in the
entire history of humanity. It was an
unprecedented attempt to murder a whole
people and to extinguish its culture. The
Holocaust should be studied because it
fundamentally challenged the foundations
of civilisation.
What to teach?
The European context
The Holocaust should be examined within the context
of European history as a whole.
The study of
• antisemitism
• Jewish life in Europe before the Holocaust
• the aftermath of World War I
• the Nazi rise to power
can provide context for the events of the Holocaust.
Map of Europe showing the fullest extent of the Nazi Domination of Europe, 1942
Rail routes used for deportation, 1941-1944
Einsatzgruppen killings, ghettos and camps
IWM
The local context
Greek Jews from the provinces move into a designated ghetto area.
Salonika, Greece, between November 1942 and March 1943.
Comite International de la Croix Rouge
USHMM www.ushmm.org
Individuals in context
•
•
•
•
•
Victims
Perpetrators
Collaborators
Bystanders
Rescuers
Reinhard Heydrich
An ‘ordinary’
family man
responsible for
organising the
murder of every
Jewish man,
woman and child in
Europe.
Irma Grese
A young woman
attracted to the Nazi
movement from a
young age who went
on to exhibit a vicious
temperament as an SS
guard, first at
Ravensbrück
concentration camp
and then Auschwitz
and finally at BergenBelsen.
Moise Gani
Moise worked as a bookkeeper and
administrator at the local electric
company in Preveza, and he lived
with his parents.
In March 1944 the Jews of Preveza
were deported to Auschwitz. There,
Moise was assigned to Birkenau as
part of the Sonderkommando, a
work unit that took corpses to the
crematoria.
On October 7, 1944, the
Sonderkommando in crematorium
IV revolted, killing an overseer,
disarming SS guards and blowing
up the crematorium. Soon, others in
the Sonderkommando, including
Moise, joined in the uprising.
Moise was killed in Birkenau in
October 1944. He was 31 years old.
USHMM
www.ushmm.org
Hana Senesh
‘I have to go. And if I fail,
my death will not be in
vain. Maybe the rumour
will reach the Jews that an
emissary from Palestine
arrived and was caught
and hearts will throb in the
ghettos and in the woods:
we have to hold on, we
have not been
deserted…and maybe
salvation is near. Faith can
work miracles.’
Archbishop Damaskenos
In contrast to many Catholic
and Protestant religious leaders
in Europe, who either supported
the Nazi policy of
extermination of the Jews, or
did nothing to stop it,
Archbishop Damaskenos of
Greece protested against the
deportation of the Jews.
The Germans proceeded with
the deportations and
Damaskenos instructed Police
Chief Evert of Athens to issue
false Identification cards and
the church issued false
baptismal certificates to any
Jew who asked. Thousands of
Jews were spared and both
Police Chief Evert and
Archbishop Damaskenos are
honoured at Yad Vashem.
Jewish Museum of Greece
Proclamation signed by Mayor
Kollas, the Prefect and the Chief of
Police June 9, 1944,
proclaiming that the Jews of the
island had been rounded-up
and that the economy of the island
will rightfully revert to the
Christian citizens.
Jewish Museum of Greece
Approaches to teaching
about the Holocaust
What was the Holocaust?
Under the cover of the Second World War,
for the sake of their “new order”, the Nazis
sought to destroy all the Jews of Europe.
For the first time in history, industrial
methods were used for the mass
extermination of a whole people. Six
million were murdered, including 1,500,000
children.
Other groups
The Nazis enslaved and murdered millions
of others as well. Gypsies, people with
physical and mental disabilities, Poles,
Soviet prisoners of war, trade unionists,
political opponents, prisoners of conscience,
homosexuals, and others were killed in vast
numbers.
A Greek Jewish family gathers for a group portrait
surrounding a bar mitzvah boy clad in a tallit 1939.
USHMM Photograph #12620
www.ushmm.org
Enquiry based learning
Photograph #97284
1933
Nina Molina
prewar portrait of a Greek
Jewish Family
Sam Rouben
with friends
Photograph #33369
1935-1939
1935-1943
Photograph #33362
Photograph #42481 1930-9
Portrait of the Amarillo family
outside their home in Salonika 1930-39
Photograph #97282
USHMM www.ushmm.org
Vitalis
Family 1941-2
A group of young Greek
Jews pose in front of a
tobacco store in Salonika
IWM
IWM
USHMM www.ushmm.org
Nazi officers and female auxiliaries (Helferinnen) run down a wooden bridge in Solahutte. The man on the right carries
an accordion. Karl Hoecker is pictured in the center.
The original caption reads "rain coming from a bright sky". 1944 USHMM [Photograph #34585]
Group of Jewish friends from Lodz, on holiday at the Polish resort town of Sopot in the early 1930s.
IWM
Web Addresses
• Task Force for International Cooperation on
Holocaust Education
www.holocausttaskforce.org
• Imperial War Museum
www.iwm.org.uk
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
www.ushmm.org