2024 Social Science Standards Alignment

This section is aligned with the following standards:

6/7.H.CP.11 - Investigate the historical origins and modern manifestations of anti-Judaism.
6/7.H.CP.12 - Identify the motivations and methods governments and other institutions use to create, reinforce, or address injustice and divisions in society.
HS.US.CP.14 - Examine the perspectives of survivors of Indigenous genocide, Black communities destroyed by violence, and other human rights violations utilizing primary sources from multiple perspectives including written and recorded survivor testimonies.
HS.WR.CP.15 - Explain the significant events, public policies, and experiences of the Holocaust.
HS.WR.CP.16 - Analyze primary documents to examine the role individual bystanders, collaborators, and perpetrators played in the implementation of Nazi policies against Jewish people and other targeted groups, as well as the role of resisters in opposing the Nazis and their policies within German-occupied territory.

Essential Disciplinary Practice Alignment

This section models activities related to the following Essential Disciplinary Practices (EDPs):

EDP 1: Develop questions for social science inquiry.
EDP 3: Collect, interpret, evaluate and apply information from primary and secondary sources to better understand and create historical narratives, distinguishing between fact and opinion.
EDP 4: Seek and analyze diverse perspectives to develop a more complete understanding of past and current events.
EDP 5: Evaluate and assess how discrimination, racism and inequality shape historical narratives, individual perspectives, intersecting identities and diverse understandings of the past and present.

In the next two sections, you will explore developmentally appropriate research-based pedagogical approaches to teaching about genocides thoughtfully and sensitively. You will delve deeper into the history of antisemitism in Europe while you practice one of these pedagogical approaches.

Step 1: Read

Read the document, Pedagogical Approaches to Teaching the Holocaust and Other Genocides, to deepen your understanding of how to develop effective questions for social science inquiry and guide students through primary source document analysis.

PDF - Pedagogical Approaches to Teaching the Holocaust and Other Genocides

Then, deepen your context about antisemitism in Europe to expand your understanding of the historical foundation for the Holocaust:

Antisemitism in Europe has deep roots, originating in early Christian teachings that portrayed Jews as enemies of Christianity, accused of rejecting Jesus and blamed for his crucifixion. These religious falsehoods fueled widespread hostility and were reinforced by myths like the "blood libel,” the fabricated claim that Jews ritually murdered Christian children. During the Middle Ages and into the early modern period, these religious biases merged with secular stereotypes. Jews were frequently scapegoated for societal problems, such as plagues and economic hardships, and pushed into roles in commerce and moneylending, which led to stereotypes of them as greedy and manipulative.

By the 19th century, nationalist and racial ideologies intensified antisemitism, depicting Jews as an undesirable "foreign" group within European societies. Racial theories popularized by the rise of eugenics and Social Darwinism took this exclusion further and labeled Jews as biologically inferior. This racialized form of antisemitism became central to Nazi ideology, which portrayed Jews as a dangerous and corrupting force. The Nazis exploited long-standing myths and conspiracy theories, such as those found in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion LaTeX: - a fake document that falsely claimed to reveal a secret plan by Jewish people to take over the worldto stir up hatred and justify the systematic persecution and genocide of Jews during the Holocaust.

For more information about the history of antisemitism in Europe and how to teach this history, review the lesson plan below from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

PDF - History of Antisemitism and the Holocaust

Step 2: Reflect

Review a primary source: propaganda produced by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. Created in 1943, this poster reveals how Jewish people were scapegoated for the social and economic problems facing Germany. In English, the poster’s words roughly translate to “He is to blame for the war!”

Nazi Propaganda image of large hand pointing at a man in a tuxedo with a star of david on it.

After viewing the poster, answer the following reflection questions in your Journal Space. To address these questions, recall the vocabulary terms shared in the previous section: perpetrators, collaborators, bystanders, resisters and rescuers.

What made this visual an effective tool to justify Nazi policies? What antisemitic stereotypes are evoked in this poster? How does its message reflect the history of antisemitism in Europe?
Who was the intended audience for this poster? How might different individuals and groups have interpreted the poster’s message differently?
How might propaganda like this poster have informed the actions taken and not taken by perpetrators, collaborators, bystanders, resisters and rescuers during the Holocaust?

These questions are one example of how to incorporate primary sources into a unit on the Holocaust or other genocides, a skill you will practice in the next section.