Require students to obtain knowledge of key vocabulary. Have students pick out words from the Holocaust literature they are reading and find the definition. Intricately knowing the definitions of such terms as "anti-Semitism," "Aryan," "dehumanization," "ghetto" and "genocide" is vital to discussing Holocaust literature in any genera.
Discuss the context of WWII. Lecture students not only on the rise of the Nazi regime and Adolf Hitler, but on Auschwitz, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dachau, Gestapo, Judaism, Kapo, Nuremberg Trials, Third Reich, Warsaw ghetto, and the difference between a concentration camp, extermination camp, and a labor camp.
Show students, geographically, why the concentration camps in WWII developed the way they did. Show students a map with the railways used to transport Jews across occupied Europe to show that Auschwitz-Birkenau was the most severe and devastating extermination camp during The Holocaust because it happened to be at an intersection of Europe's main railways.
Require students to read Holocaust literature written by survivors, liberators, or anyone with heightened involvement rather than history books alone. Literature of the period can act as a companion to Holocaust history books as it provides an accurate looking glass into what the victims and survivors really saw, felt, endured, and lost.