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V. How to Use This Curriculum
This unit has been developed to support teachers’ use of the resource book 
Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior 
. It includes seventeen lessons. We expectthat the implementation of these lessons will vary by schools and by classrooms, depend-ing on students’ interests, prior knowledge, skill level, and misconceptions. Therefore, weexpect teachers to diverge from our lesson plans as needed. Each lesson plan is dividedinto three main sections — the Why, the What, and the How — which are explainedbelow.
Part I.
Why
teach this material?
This section includes the rationale for the lesson and the lesson’s learning goals, framed interms of what students should understand (guiding questions), know (key terms), and beable to do (skills). You can draw from these learning goals when creating assignments(e.g., tests, essays, projects, etc.) to evaluate student learning.
Introduction
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Introduction
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Part II:
What
is this lesson about?
This section provides a summary of key concepts and events from relevant chapters of theresource book 
Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior 
. In additionto reading Part II of each lesson, we strongly recommend that you read the relevant chap-ters in the resource book as well. While most of the information in this section is drawnfrom
Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior 
, it also includes infor-mation from other sources, especially the Facing History publication
Elements of Time.
This book can be downloaded from the Facing History website (
www.facinghistory.org 
)free of charge.To supplement your understanding of the events leading up to the Holocaust, we encour-age you to watch one of the many films made about this critical event in history. Thefilms recommended below, among many others, can be borrowed from the FacingHistory library. Because they were not produced for a middle-school audience, we havenot included these films in this unit. After viewing them, however, you will be able todecide if particular excerpts are appropriate for your students. (For more informationon resources available from Facing History’s lending library, refer to our website:
www.facinghistory.org 
. The lending library search engine can be found under EducatorResources.)
For more background on the history of the Holocaust:Recommended films for teachersGenocide (52 minutes, Social Studies School Service)
This is part of the British
World at War 
television series, narrated by Sir Laurence Olivier. It isa chronological account of the methodical extermination of Jews under Hitler, from the begin-ning of his years in power until his death. Scenes of personal testimony from victims, perpetra-tors, and bystanders intersperse the historical overview. This video offers a fairly completeoverview of the Holocaust.
Note: This film is not recommended for younger audiences.
The Nazis: A Warning from History (6 episodes, A&E Home Video)
This 6-part series from The History Channel explores the history of the Third Reich, usingrecently discovered documents and archival footage from former Soviet bloc nations. The sec-ond episode, “Chaos and Consent,” is particularly relevant to the material in this unit. Itbegins in 1933 with the Nazi ascent to power and concludes on the eve of the Second World War.
Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransports(118 minutes, Movies Unlimited)
In the nine months prior to World War II, Britain conducted a rescue mission unmatched by any other country at the time. It opened its doors to 10,000 children at risk from the Naziregime in Germany, Austria, and what was later Czechoslovakia. These children were takeninto foster homes and hostels in Britain, expecting eventually to be reunited with their parents.The majority of the children never saw their families again. This feature-length documentary recounts the remarkable rescue operation, known as the Kindertransport, and its dramaticimpact on the lives of the children who were saved.
 
Part III:
How
can we help students engage with this material?
This section provides ideas about how to organize the lesson to help students achieve thelearning goals described in Part I. It is divided into the following sub-sections:
Duration:
Most lessons can be implemented in one 45-minute class period. Lessons 7, 12,13, 14, and 15 have been designed to cover two class periods, or approximately 90 min-utes. If you provide class time for students to construct their own memorials, the finallesson in the unit, Lesson 17, might take three class periods. These are only suggestedguidelines. Based on your own classroom context and your students’ needs, lessons mightrun longer or shorter. If you need to shorten the lesson, you might assign the follow-through activity for homework. The extension section provides ideas for how to deepenstudents’ experience with the material addressed in the lesson.
Materials:
In this unit, students explore documents, memoirs, film, images, and otherresources in order to gain a deeper understanding of the Holocaust and human behavior.Most of the lessons in this unit incorporate readings from
Facing History and Ourselves: Holocaust and Human Behavior 
. Often we have provided excerpts of these readings ashandouts. Graphic organizers, historical documents, and other materials have also beenincluded as handouts. All handouts can be found at the end of the lesson plan.The following four films are included as part of the main activities of Lessons 13, 14, and16:
Childhood Memories (57 minutes, Facing History and Ourselves)
Through interviews of eleven Holocaust survivors and witnesses, this montageexamines what conditions were like for Jewish and non-Jewish children living inNazi-occupied Europe before and during World War II.
I’m Still Here: Diaries of Young People Who Lived During the Holocaust(48 minutes, MTV Video)
This film presents the diaries of young people who experienced first-hand the ter-ror of daily life during the Holocaust. Through an emotional montage of archivalfootage, personal photos, and text from the diaries themselves, the film tells thestory of a group of young writers who refused to quietly disappear.
Remembering the Past: Sonia Weitz’s History (24 minutes, Facing History andOurselves)
Sonia Weitz was born in Krakow, Poland, in 1928. She describes her life as rela-tively peaceful until 1939. By 1941, Sonia and her family were forced to enter theKrakow Ghetto. After her mother was murdered, Sonia, along with her sister andfather, were sent to the slave labor camp of Plaszow in 1943. For more than a yearshe and her sister labored there. They were sent to Auschwitz in 1944. They hadspent only a few days in Auschwitz when they were forced to take part in the“Death March.” The March led them to Bergen-Belsen for a brief time, and thento the small German labor camp of Venusberg. Their final destination wasMauthausen where they were liberated by the Americans. After being liberated,Sonia lived in various displaced persons camps in Austria. She eventually moved tothe United States with her sister and brother-in-law. As she recounts these experi-ences, Sonia shares poems she wrote describing pivotal moments in her past.
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