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NJ Holocaust Grades 9-12 Curriculum: Unit 5
Unit Topic: Resistance and Liberation
Grade(s): 9-12
Unit Goal: Students will develop an understanding of the many forms of resistance, intervention, rescue, and liberation that occurred during the Holocaust.
Objectives:
- Students will define resistance.
- Students will examine the many forms of resistance, both unarmed and armed, that occurred against the Nazi oppression.
- Students will examine the major obstacles to resisting Nazi authority.
- Students will identify events of Jewish armed resistance during the Holocaust.
- Students will identify non-Jewish rescuers who risked their lives and their families to save Jews.
- Students will investigate countries that offered refuge to Holocaust victims.
- Students will interpret primary source materials—including clips of visual history testimony—that represent a range of resistance efforts against the Nazi regime in Europe.
- Students will analyze the motivations of non-Jewish rescuers in their efforts to help Jews survive during the Holocaust.
- Students will evaluate the moral and ethical choices individuals and groups made when deciding whether or not to help Jews.
- Students will identify the risks involved when non-Jews helped Jews hide or escape.
- Students will examine a timeline of when liberation occurred in various camps and countries.
- Students will investigate the complexities of survival following liberation.
- How does one resist oppression?
- What choices did individuals, groups, and nations make in response to the events of the Holocaust?
- What factors influenced their choices to act as perpetrators, bystanders, upstanders, or rescuers?
- What does it mean to be liberated?
- Resistance takes many forms, both physical and spiritual.
- Both Jews and non-Jews engaged in resistance and rescue during the Holocaust.
- Despite constraints, some upstanders and rescuers still chose to take action and help people targeted by the Nazis.
- To be liberated means more than to be physically free.
Non-fiction:
- The Light of Days: the Untold Story of Women Resistance Fighters in Hitler’s Ghettos by Judith Batalion
Fiction:
- Mila 18 by Leon Uris
Choose one of the following lesson options for a single day on resistance, rescue, intervention, or liberation during the Holocaust:
Lesson Intro - Slide Show - start with pictures, types of resistance, and obstacles to resistance.
Lesson 1 - Spiritual and Cultural Resistance (from Echoes and Reflections)
Lesson Plan: Spiritual and Cultural Resistance
Lesson 2 - Partisans and Armed Resistance (from Echoes and Reflections)
Lesson Plan: Partisans and Armed Resistance
Lesson 3 - Music as a Survival Tool (from Facing History & Ourselves)
Lesson Plan: Music as a Survival Tool | Facing History
Lesson 4 - Righteous Among the Nations (from Echoes and Reflections)
Lesson Plan: Righteous Among the Nations
Lesson 5 - Liberation and the Aftermath (from Yad Vashem)
End of Unit Assessment: Monument, Artwork, Songs, or Poems to Honor the Resistance and/or Rescuers and Liberators.
Example of topics from which students can choose:
- Raoul Wallenberg
- The town of Le Chambon
- Unarmed/Spiritual resistance in the ghettos
- The White Rose
- The Bielski Otriad
- Rosenstrasse protest
- The dutch resistance and rescue
- Danish rescue
- Armed resistance in the camps
- Jewish partisans in the Soviet Union
- Irena Sendler
- Vilna Ghetto fighters
- Spiritual resistance in the camps
- The Oneg Shabbat in the Warsaw Ghetto
- The kindertransport
- MArtha & Waitstill Sharp
- Chiune Sugihara
- Oskar Schindler
- Besa - Albanian Muslim rescuers
- Art/Music/poetry/diary as resistance
- Hannah Senesh (Szenes)
- Treblinka Uprising
- Vladka Meed
- Art/Music from Terezen
- The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
- Liberation of Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, or other Camps
There are several excellent organizations relating to the Holocaust and Holocaust education. Here are the educational websites for those entities:
Echoes and Reflections (Yad Vashem, USC Shoah Foundation, and the ADL): Echoes and Reflections
Facing History and Ourselves: Facing History and Ourselves
The Jewish Partisans: Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation
6.1.12.CivicsHR.11.a: Assess the responses of the United States and other nations to the violation of human rights that occurred during the Holocaust and other genocides.
6.1.12.HistoryCC.11.d: Compare the varying perspectives of victims, survivors, bystanders, rescuers, and perpetrators during the Holocaust.
6.2.12.HistoryCC.4.g: Use a variety of resources from different perspectives to analyze the role of racial bias, nationalism, and propaganda in mobilizing civilian populations in support of “total war.”
6.2.12.HistoryUP.4.c: Compare and contrast the actions of individuals as perpetrators, bystanders, and rescuers during events of persecution or genocide, and describe the long-term consequences of genocide for all involved.
6.2.12.CivicsHR.4.a: Analyze the motivations, causes, and consequences of the genocides of Armenians, Ukrainians, Jews in the Holocaust and assess the responses by individuals, groups, and governments and analyze large-scale atrocities including 20th century massacres in China.
6.2.12.CivicsPI.4.b: Assess government responses to incidents of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
6.2.12.CivicsHR.6.a: Evaluate the effectiveness of responses by governments and international organizations to tensions resulting from ethnic, territorial, religious, and/or nationalist differences.