World History Name: ________________________________________

Understanding the Holocaust

In an attempt to understand the full story of the Holocaust, you will be exploring the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum’s website. This site offers in-depth information about the Holocaust, as well
as multiple perspectives and narratives from the event itself. Follow the directions step-by-step to
complete the activity.

1. Go to www.ushmm.org and click on “Introduction to the Holocaust.” Read through the information
provided and answer the following below:
a. Define The Holocaust.
It was the destruction or slaughter on a mass scale, especially caused by fire or nuclear war.

b. What was the driving ideology behind The Holocaust?

Germans were “racially superior” and that the Jews, deemed “inferior,” were an
alien threat to the so-called German racial community.

c. What was The Final Solution?

It was where hundreds of thousands of Jews died from the horrendous conditions in the
ghettos in Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe.

d. How did the Holocaust end?

The holocaust ended by marches known as “death marches” which was the attempt to
prevent Allied liberations of a larger number of prisoners.

2. Go to this page:
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/victims-of-the-nazi-era-nazi-racial-ideology
a. Read about one of the (non-Jewish) groups affected by the Holocaust. Give an explanation
of their situation during the genocide.
Blacks during the holocaust was that persecution of blacks occurred despite their relatively
small presence in Germany. Roughly around 20,000 black people were out of an overall
population of 65 million by 1933. Children of African soldiers serving with French troops
and German women were viewed as a threat to the purity of the Germanic race. Blacks
from other areas of Europe and America were also victimized by the Nazi regime after they
were caught in German-occupied Europe during WWII or held as a prisoner of war.

3. Go to this page: https://www.ushmm.org/remember/the-holocaust-survivors-and-victims-

resource-center/benjamin-and-vladka-meed-registry-of-holocaust-survivors/behind-every-
name-a-story.
a. Pick any one of the stories provided. Read through, and explain how the Holocaust affected
that person specifically.
She remembered Kristallnacht. An embassy official who was German and in Paris had been
assassinated by a Polish Jew. Nazis' were coming in trucks to her village from other towns.
They would storm into the homes of the Jewish people in the night. A lady who fled out the
back door with her youngest boy when she heard the nazis breaking into her home and she
hid in the bushes and died of pneumonia.
4. Respond to this question: What is the purpose of learning about the Holocaust? Why do you think
you discuss it in so many of your history classes?
The purpose of learning about the Holocaust is that students should know how good they have life.
We don't have to experience what the Jews had to go through back in the day. We don't have to
move to ghettos, we are living in nice houses and not being kicked out. None of us are in camps
like they were. We are not being killed just for being what we are.