TEACHING THE HOLOCAUST

How do we teach the Holocaust in a meaningful way? In a sense, it depends on the question we are asking about it. Some years, I focus on the question of causation: Why did the Holocaust happen, when it did, beginning in Germany? Other years, on the Facing History type issue of the choices that individuals made to be perpetrators, bystanders, or upstanders. Teaching a genocide requires cultivating empathy along with understanding and historical thinking. Thus, we should always use some "story" such as a movie or my grandfather's Holocaust Testimony.

Of course, one way to tackle both of these questions is through my Weimar and Nazi Germany role-play, which I outline in The Classes They Remember. That approach, however, won't work for everyone, especially if you are short on time. This year I had my students write an essay or create a video explanation of why the Holocaust happened. Here are sources I use to grapple with the historical debate over the causes of the Holocaust:

Background Sources: These are helpful for students to understand the historiography. They describe essentially five different arguments about the causes: Social psychological, Structuralist, Goldhagen's anti-Semitism thesis, the Intentionalists, and the Functionalists.

Obedience and Conformity
Rethinking the Holocaust, an article by Yehuda Bauer
The War against the Jews -- The Intentionalist approach that the Holocaust was about Hitler and his aims. NY Times review here.
Hans Mommsen, historian who argues the Nazis were a weak regime. Here is an interview with him. Here is another Functionalist approach by Gotz Aly. A second article about him is here.
Excerpts from chapters 1, 2, and 8 of Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men. A fascinating story of soldiers being given a clear choice whether to kill Jews.
Excerpts from Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners.
Raul Hilberg's critique of Goldhagen, pages 722-723.
A new approach by Ulrich Herbert.

Primary Sources: I use primary sources to "tell the story. " This includes excerpts from Frederic Zeller's When Time Ran Out as well as these primary sources below. I have students attempt to "match" the primary sources to the above historical explanations. For example, do Kristallnacht descriptions and photographs show obedience or anti-Antisemitism as motivations?

Jewish and non-Jewish Resistance

1) Choose one story of the Righteous among the Nations, those honored by the Holocaust Museum in Israel. Be prepared to discuss: What did s/he do? Why did s/he do it? What are your reactions? What should everyone know?

2) Read an overall account of Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust. Then, choose three documents to look at from different categories on the Jewish Resistance page. What did you learn? What surprised you? What would you like to know more?

Deportations

Source A: Viennese Jews are Forced to Scour the Streets (March/April 1938)

Source C: Josef Meisinger on "Combating Homosexuality as a Political Task" (April 5-6, 1937)

Document D-Deportation of Stuttgart Jews to Riga, Latvia – Waiting in a Detention Camp on Killesberg Hill, Stuttgart (November 1941)

Source E: A Resident of the Lodz Ghetto is Abused and Humiliated (1942)

Source F: Hungarian Jews Wait in a Clearing before being led to the Gas Chambers at Auschwitz II-Birkenau (May/June, 1944)

Source G: Mass Execution of Lithuanian Jews by Members of the Wehrmacht and the Lithuanian Self-Protection Unit [Selbstschutz] (1942)

Kristalnacht

Source A: Message from SS-Grupenführer Heydrich to all State Police Main Offices and Field Offices:

Source B: The Morning after the Night of Broken Glass [Kristallnacht] in Kassel: The Looted and Destroyed Jewish Community House (November 10, 1938)

Source C: The Morning after the Night of Broken Glass [Kristallnacht] in Berlin: Shattered Shop Windows (November 10, 1938)

Source D: American Consul Samuel Honaker's Description of Anti-Semitic Persecution and Kristallnacht and its Aftereffects in the Stuttgart Region (November 12 and November 15, 1938)