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Find topics of interest and explore encyclopedia content related to those topics
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For Teachers
Recommended resources and topics if you have limited time to teach about the Holocaust
Explore the ID Cards to learn more about personal experiences during the Holocaust
Timeline of Events
Explore a timeline of events that occurred before, during, and after the Holocaust.
- Introduction to the Holocaust
- Liberation of Nazi Camps
- Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
- Boycott of Jewish Businesses
- Axis Invasion of Yugoslavia
- Antisemitism
- How Many People did the Nazis Murder?
- The Rwanda Genocide
An Overview of the Holocaust: Topics to Teach
Recommended resources and topics if you have limited time to teach about the Holocaust.
- remembrance
This content is available in the following languages
When teaching the history of the Holocaust, the complexity of the subject matter can often seem daunting or challenging for educators. Teaching the Holocaust requires contextualizing the events of the Holocaust within many different strands of history. To understand how individuals and organizations behaved at the time, students need to know a number of key concepts and information. Below are recommended resources and topics to address when planning lessons or units on the Holocaust.
The objective of teaching any subject should always be to engage the intellectual curiosity of students in order to inspire critical thought and personal growth. With this in mind, it also is helpful to structure a lesson plan on the Holocaust by considering your main goals and purposes for teaching the subject matter. Find more information on how to craft learning objectives for teaching the Holocaust .
Historical Background
The Path to Nazi Genocide provides general background information on the Holocaust for the instructor and for classroom use.
This 38-minute film examines the Nazis’ rise and consolidation of power in Germany. Using rare footage, the film explores their ideology, propaganda, and persecution of Jews and other victims. It also outlines the path by which the Nazis and their collaborators led a state to war and to the murder of millions of people. By providing a concise overview of the Holocaust and those involved, this resource is intended to provoke reflection and discussion about the role of ordinary people, institutions, and nations between 1918 and 1945.
View The Path to Nazi Genocide .
This film is intended for adult viewers, but selected segments may be appropriate for younger audiences. The final 8 minutes of the film present very graphic material.
There is a worksheet with an answer key to go along with the film. Many of these questions could be used as discussion questions in class. Additionally, there is a one-day lesson that provides an introduction to the Holocaust by defining the term and highlighting the story of one Holocaust survivor, Gerda Weissmann.
Accessibility
To make the content of the Holocaust Encyclopedia more broadly available, any materials translated into various languages. Please select your language by using the globe icon.
The Holocaust Encyclopedia also includes provides a glossary for students.
The following key articles in the Holocaust Encyclopedia now have audio versions for greater accessibility and to match different learning styles.
- Anne Frank Biography: Who was Anne Frank?
- Anne Frank: Diary
- The "Final Solution"
- "Final Solution": Overview
- History of the Swastika
- Hitler Comes to Power
- Josef Mengele
- Kristallnacht
- Martin Niemöller: "First they came for the Socialists..."
- Nazi Medical Experiments
- Nazi Propaganda
- Nazi Racism
- The "Night of Broken Glass"
- The Nuremberg Race Laws
- World War II Dates and Timeline
Context for Understanding the Holocaust
The encyclopedia articles below provide background and more context on the Holocaust.
- Jewish life in Europe before the Holocaust
- World War I
- Nazi Rise to Power
- Dictatorship under the Third Reich
- Early Stages of Persecution
- The First Concentration Camps
- World War II in Europe
- Murder of the Disabled (Euthanasia Program)
- Persecution and Murder of Jews
- Mobile Killing Squads ( Einsatzgruppen )
- Expansion of the Concentration Camp System
- Killing Centers
- Additional Victims of Nazi Persecution
- Jewish Resistance
- Non-Jewish Resistance
- United States
- Death Marches
- Postwar Trials
- Displaced Persons Camps
If You Have One Class Period
Provide a historical overview of the history through use of the Path to Nazi Genocide film or other materials. Or refer to the one-day lesso n , which provides an introduction to the Holocaust by defining the term and highlighting the story of one Holocaust survivor, Gerda Weissmann.
Based on your rationale, choose one or more topics to highlight. Include personal testimonies from the Museum's ID Cards or oral history excerpts as appropriate.
Critical Thinking Questions
The most visited articles in the Holocaust Encyclopedia include critical thinking questions to encourage reflection on connections to contemporary events and genocide prevention, analysis of the range of motivations and behaviors, and further research on key topics.
The following are examples of articles with critical thinking questions. You'll find these questions at the foot of each page:
Discussion Questions
A set of Discussion Questions aim to provide a framework for understanding how and why the Holocaust was possible.
What made it possible?
- What conditions and ideas made the Holocaust possible?
- How and why did ordinary people across Europe contribute to the persecution of their Jewish neighbors?
- How did German professionals and civil leaders contribute to the persecution of Jews and other groups?
- How did the Nazis and their collaborators implement the Holocaust?
- What does war make possible?
- How did the United States government and American people respond to Nazism?
- How did leaders, diplomats, and citizens around the world respond to the events of the Holocaust?
- Which organizations and individuals aided and protected Jews from persecution between 1933 and 1945?
After the war
- How did postwar trials shape approaches to international justice?
- What have we learned about the risk factors and warning signs of genocide?
Other topics
- How did the shared foundational element of eugenics contribute to the growth of racism in Europe and the United States?
- What were some similarities between racism in Nazi Germany and in the United States, 1920s-1940s?
- How did different goals and political systems shape racism in Nazi Germany and the United States?
Thank you for supporting our work
We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia. View the list of all donors .
Introduction to the Holocaust (One-Day Lesson)
This one-day lesson provides an introduction to the Holocaust by defining the term and highlighting the story of one Holocaust survivor, Gerda Weissmann.
Grade level: Adaptable for grades 7–12 Subject: Multidisciplinary Time required: Approximately 60 minutes Languages: English, Spanish
Lesson Plan and Teaching Materials
Lesson Plan (PDF)
Pre-modified Lesson to Accommodate Multiple Student Needs
Modified Lesson Plan (PDF)
Lesson for Students with Low-Incidence and Intellectual Disabilities
For learning management systems.
This online lesson plan is compatible with learning management systems or web browsers for students to complete individually or as a class. You can use the PDF of the original lesson plan above as a guide. To use with your LMS, download the files below and follow your system’s instructions for importing files .
Online lesson link (for web browsers)
SCORM 1.2 (ZIP)
SCORM 2004 (ZIP)
xAPI (Tin Can) (ZIP)
This lesson is also available in Spanish.
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Explore lesson plans and training materials organized by theme to use in your classroom.
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Thematic and Chronological Narrative
About the Holocaust explores the history of the Holocaust thematically and chronologically. Each chapter in the narrative is divided into subchapters with explanatory texts. Useful related resources accompany the texts and may include photos, video testimonies, documentary footage, documents, artifacts and art. More...
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The digital brings great opportunities to Holocaust memory, but also particular challenges as we move from an era dominated by face-to-face survivor testimony to what James Young has defined as an age characterised by mediated memory. As digital culture evolves as increasingly participatory networks, how do memory institutions find their place in this ever-expanding space?
Digital Holocaust Memory has three aims:
- To map the digital Holocaust memoryscape , including institutional and amateur projects
- To interrogate the ‘newness’ of digital Holocaust memory and understand it in relation to media, museum and memory histories as well as within contemporary digital logics and cultures
- To establish a network of heritage and archive professionals, academics, amateur and professional media producers, and digital audiences/users to explore potential digital futures for Holocaust memory together.
New book publication (free downloadable pdf):
The Memorial Museum in the Digital Age, edited by Dr Victoria Grace Walden. ISBN: 978-1-7395820-0-5 (PDF). Falmer: REFRAME Books, 2022. This is the first comprehensive review of thinking and practice related to the effects and affects of the digital for memorial museums. Download HERE .
Find out more from the Project Director Dr Victoria Grace Walden and her team at: https://reframe.sussex.ac.uk/digitalholocaustmemory
Twitter: @Holocaust_digi and @MediastudiesD
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Overview of the Holocaust. This Holocaust lesson plan for middle school and high school students is designed as both a two-day and four-day unit. In both versions, students analyze how and why the Nazis and their collaborators persecuted and murdered Jews as well as other people targeted in the era of the Holocaust between 1933 and 1945.
Holocaust and its aftermath. This is a simple tool to help fill in context for the narrative presented in . The Path to Nazi Genocide. For teachers and students seeking a more concise overview of the Holocaust than that presented in The Path to Nazi Genocide, consider the animated map, "World War II and the Holocaust." It is one of
Organized by theme, this learning site presents an overview of the Holocaust through historical photographs, maps, images of artifacts, and testimony clips. It is a resource for middle and secondary level students and teachers, with content that reflects the history as it is presented in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Permanent ...
much more. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum conducted a research project that totaled the various sites of the Shoah. The results revealed that the Germans established 980 concentration camps, 30,000 slave labor camps, 1,150 Jewish ghettos, 1,000 prisoner of war camps, and 500 brothels with sex slaves.
The Path to Nazi Genocide provides general background information on the Holocaust for the instructor and for classroom use. This 38-minute film examines the Nazis' rise and consolidation of power in Germany. Using rare footage, the film explores their ideology, propaganda, and persecution of Jews and other victims.
Her current research is on Holocaust memory in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa, and includes a book project based on the ... Vashem International Institute for Holocaust Research, her book project is entitled, "Escaping Traumatic Circularity: Testimonies and the Novel of Formation." She teaches courses on literature at the Eötvös
Microsoft Word - Holocaust History is Relevant to Our Lives Today by Sara J. Bloomfield.docx. This paper is based on remarks delivered by Ms. Sara J. Bloomfield at the at United Nations ...
The International Institute for Holocaust Research is a leading center for the study and dissemination of the history and legacy of the Holocaust. The institute supports and promotes research projects, publications, conferences, and educational materials on various aspects of the Holocaust, such as survivor testimonies, mass murder sites, illegal immigration, and Nazi ideology. The institute ...
The Holocaust as Historical Understanding Alon ConÞno seeks to rethink dominant interpretations of the Holo-caust by examining it as a problem in cultural history. As the main research interests of Holocaust scholars are frequently covered terrain Ð the anti-Semitic ideological campaign, the machinery of killing, the
The Mandel Center makes significant contributions to Holocaust studies through the publication of some of the most important works in the field: Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos - This groundbreaking reference work documents the vast Nazi camp and ghetto system. Holocaust and Genocide Studies - This scholarly journal features research articles ...
Holocaust Education - Research - Remembrance in Germany Break-out Session: Overview of the Importance of Holocaust ... It is worth mentioning in that context the research project of Munich's Institute for Contemporary History ("Dimensions of Genocide," published in 1991), aimed at establishing the number of Jews ...
Holocaust education enables exploration of human rights literacy in different social contexts from cognitive, social and practical perspectives. It acknowledges the need to develop a new ...
In particular, my research highlights how these individuals used religious dogmas and 6 Friedrich M., HW 1708 as cited in Browning, Ordinary Men, 73. 7 David M. Crowe, The Holocaust: Roots, History, and Aftermath (Boulder: Westview Press, 2008), 150. 8 Throughout this research, the primary focus will be on those Nazis who planned and organized the
Holocaust studies. Holocaust studies, or sometimes Holocaust research, is a scholarly discipline that encompasses the historical research and study of the Holocaust. Institutions dedicated to Holocaust research investigate the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary aspects of Holocaust methodology, demography, sociology, and psychology.
The European funded Holocaust project EHRI has developed various digital tools and methods that facilitate Holocaust research. This paper will describe a number of them and discuss how they affect scholarship into the annihilation of European Jews. Index Terms—Holocaust, digital humanities, semantic enrich-ment, VRE, Neo4j, blog posts.
One of the key findings and issues in teaching and learning about the Holocaust is rooted in the preparation of teachers like Zelimoski and O'Reilly. Continued commitment to improving Holocaust education requires an investment by stakeholders and policy makers, and this volume buttresses this point. The subtitle of this book is "A Dialogue ...
This one-day lesson provides an introduction to the Holocaust by defining the term and highlighting the story of one Holocaust survivor, Gerda Weissmann. Grade level: Adaptable for grades 7-12 Subject: Multidisciplinary Time required: Approximately 60 minutes Languages: English, Spanish.
brance Alliance (IHRA), 4 which give a brief overview of the developmental status of dealing with the Holocaust in research, memorial culture, and education (cf. Task Force, 2006, IHRA, 2012). 1 In the context of this research, the term "Holocaust" is used to denote the murder and extermination of European Jews and other victim groups un-
World War in Europe as well as for the Holocaust, was born out of the immediate aftermath of the end of the First World War. The Kristallnacht was a significant step in the 'cumulative radicalization' process that eventually led to the full-scale continent-wide mass murder of the Jews in the Holocaust, perpetrated by Nazi Germany and its
The Holocaust fuels the Israeli conviction that deterring Iran might be impossible. This con-viction makes it very likely that Israel will be willing to use whatever means necessary to try and stop the Iranian nuclear project, including, if all else fails, a preemptive military strike. Nili: The Nuclear (and the) Holocaust
Thematic and Chronological Narrative. About the Holocaust explores the history of the Holocaust thematically and chronologically. Each chapter in the narrative is divided into subchapters with explanatory texts. Useful related resources accompany the texts and may include photos, video testimonies, documentary footage, documents, artifacts and ...
The Digital Holocaust Memory Project; The Business of Women's Words: Purpose and Profit in Feminist Publishing; ... An Oral History research project; Ivy Benson and Her All Girls Band - Dr Jenna Bailey Project; ... 978-1-7395820-0-5 (PDF). Falmer: REFRAME Books, 2022.
The European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) is an international digital infrastructure and community. It is a joint undertaking of Holocaust historians, archivists, and specialists in digital humanities. Through the development of heritage archives into research infrastructures and by connecting the knowledge of heritage archives and making that knowledge relevant for research, EHRI ...