The Holocaust as Seen through the Eyes of Young Persons

U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
100 Raoul Wallenberg Place SW
Washington, D.C. 20024-2150
(202) 488-0400

Instructional Unit:
The focus for this visit will be the Holocaust as seen through the eyes of young persons.

Curriculum Unit:
Grade 7
Social Studies

The premise for this museum visit is built on a 7th grade GT English unit utilizing Holocaust literature to explore the epic of human history and nature.

Objectives:
Broad: Students will develop a deeper respect for human decency, a deeper commitment to reject indifference to human suffering, and will hopefully be inspired by the spiritual resistance evidenced in the stories of those who actually experienced the Holocaust.
Specific: Students will demonstrate an understanding of the plight of young people in the Holocaust by successfully producing a written journal entry and artistic rendering on a HyperCard stack.

Pre-Visit Activities:
In the weeks prior to the visit, the English teacher will be working with the class in reading a selection of Holocaust literature for young people, most likely The Diary of Anne Frank , as that is available in class sets. For supplementary reading, the librarian would have book talked to the students suggestions from the following list:
I Am a Star: Child of the Holocaust by Inge Auerbacher
The Boys Who Saved the Children by Margaret Baldwin
Kindertransport by Olga Drucher
Anne Frank Remembered: the Story of the Woman who Helped to Hide the Frank Family by Miep Gies
Clara's Story by Clara Isaacman
Mischling, Second Degree: My Childhood in Nazi Germany by Ilse Koehn
Fragments of Isabella: a Memoir of Auschwitz by Isabella Leitner
The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank by Willy Lindwer
The Lost Childhood by Yehuda Nir
The Upstairs Room by Johanna Reiss
Touch Wood: a Girlhood in Occupied France by Renee Roth-Hano
The Cage by Ruth Sender
Night by Elie Wiesel
In the Mouth of the Wolf by Rose Zar
Most likely, students by this time also would have viewed the movie version of the Diary of Anne Frank , and hopefully the timing of this visit can be coordinated with the team's history teacher during the study of World War ll in order to satisfy background knowledge objectives.

On-Site Activities:
The day before the visit students will receive a complete explanation as to the rules and regulations of the museum and will be told the planned itinerary, expectations for their conduct, and objectives to be accomplished. On the day of the visit, students will have packed a bag lunch and will snack before departure.
The group of thirty, with English teacher, librarian, and two parent chaperones will arrive by bus at 10 AM when the museum opens, and will meet with an on-site person in a classroom in order to orient the students shortly after checking in at the front desk.
Students will divide into two groups, and half will go into the exhibit "Remember the Children: Daniel's Story." Daniel is a composite figure whose experiences are based on actual children, and he provides an excellent parallel to Anne Frank, but in the end survives (which may help in counteracting any "hopeless" feelings some students may have experienced while reading about Anne). The exhibit is set up to show the evolution of his lot in life, from his cozy home in Frankfurt to the stark barbed wire at Auschwitz, and there are many special touches such as being able to see what he saw out of his windows, thus bringing an aura of reality to the experience.
The second half of the group will go to the Wexner Learning Center where, in pairs, they will take the ID cards provided by the museum (each card gives the name and background of actual children who lived during the Holocaust) and research the person's story and outcome using the touch screen computer databases. The ID cards can serve as a launching point to explore other events and terms.
Students will spend approximately 30 minutes at these tasks and then the groups will switch places. If possible, a few extra minutes can be spent in a follow-up question period with a museum staff worker. Before leaving, the students will be taken through the hallway where the Children's Wall of Remembrance can be viewed (includes over 3000 tiles drawn to commemorate the children who perished). Hopefully, the group can be back on the bus before noon, and lunch will be eaten either on the bus or back at school.

Follow-Up Activities:
At school the next day, students would go through the debriefing process, expressing their feelings on what they had witnessed. Then they would begin the project to write a short journal-style entry concerning an aspect of the Holocaust which particularly affected them. Together with a drawing created in the style of the Wall of Remembrance tiles, the class would create a HyperCard stack which could be enjoyed by other students in the school.
Evaluation of the experience would be based on each student's successful completion of the HyperCard stack according to the grading standards of the English teacher, as well as consultation and feedback with museum personnel as to their impressions of student comprehension and behavior.

Appendices: none

Bibliography:
References used for the design were included in the packet available from the Museum's Educational Resource Center: "Guidelines for Teaching About the Holocaust," "Annotated Bibliography," and a number of general informational handouts.

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