The Holocaust was the culmination of the long rise to power of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Help your students get a feel for the era by having them research key events and people of the period and reporting on them in the form of a 1930s newspaper. The newspaper should include a lead story, editorial and pictures relating the main events that lead to the rise of Hitler, the resurgence of German militarism and the Holocaust.
Under the Nazi Party, the German government classified millions of people as unworthy of life and set about exterminating them. Besides Jews, so-called undesirables included homosexuals, gypsies, disabled people, Poles and Russians. These people were identified by symbols sewn on their clothes, such as the yellow Star of David that identified Jews. Help your students understand the stigma of being undesirable by having them wear Stars of David made from construction paper, while listening to Nazi-era anti-Semitic remarks. Have your students research the other undesirables and the symbols the Nazis used to identify them. Your students should then research the life of a specific non-Jewish individual from the undesirables list who suffered in one of the concentration camps, then write a letter to a contemporary adolescent about that person's life. Have your students put their research and letters together as booklets about the Holocaust.
Found poems are created from words found in previously existing texts. Have your students read descriptions of the concentration camps and keep records of interesting words or phrases from those descriptions. Divide your students into groups. Each group uses the words and phrases the students found in the descriptions of the concentration camps to compose a found poem about the Holocaust or concentration camps. Have the groups present their poems in the form of a poster.
The United States Army liberated Buchenwald concentration camp on April 11, 1945. Divide your students into groups and have them research what has happened to author Elie Wiesel since the end of World War II. Each group then prepares a brochure documenting Wiesel's life and a poster illustrating the brochure and a timeline of Wiesel's life. How did the Holocaust affect his personal life and career? What are some of his other books? What are some of his humanitarian activities?