Going to a concentration camp or a Holocaust museum is a powerful experience that some teachers are able to give their students, though budgets do not allow it for most. However, the Internet now makes a virtual visit to some of the most poignant spots in Holocaust history a reality. Ask students to research the Holocaust using the Web and design a virtual tour that will help their fellow students learn about the event. They should choose websites, photos and videos as stops along their tour. At the end of the project, have students take their classmates on the tour, serving as guides as they explain each resource and what their classmates can expect to learn from it.
Prepare a list of children and teens from the Holocaust whose biographies, pictures and/or letters are available. Next, assign each student a child and give them the information about that child. Tell students that they will be pretending to be the children assigned during the week's or month's Holocaust lessons. After each lesson, whether it is about government policies during the Holocaust, major figures or how victims were treated in the concentration camps, ask children to write a journal entry reflecting on that, even as their assigned children. Next, have students discuss their entries.
Have students use the California Jewish Family and Children's Services Oral History Project archives and oral narratives on the Web to listen to individuals' stories of the Holocaust. Ask students to choose a few of the stories that they feel are most poignant and to record their own oral reflections on these stories. In the reflections, as them to consider why the stories are so poignant and to explain how the stories made them feel. Gather each student's reflection and, as a class, create a DVD, complete with pictures and videos that play during the oral history projects. Give a copy to each student as a reminder of each class's reaction to the Holocaust.
When students think about the Holocaust, most readily agree that it could not happen again. However, students typically have not taken the time to consider the events leading to the Holocaust and how similar events could easily take place again. Ask students to research the events leading up to the Holocaust and prepare a written, video or slide show presentation report. Next, have students create a "Handbook for the U.S. Government" describing at least four conditions that would have to exist in the United States in order for a Holocaust-like event to occur in our country.