North Attleborough Public Schools

Thematic Links Unit

The Holocaust:
An Internet
Research Project

  Created by Scott Holster, English, North Attleboro High School

Directions         Questions     Terms to Define
Biographical Information    Timelines       General Web Sites
Teacher Resources

Step One: Students will be placed in groups, preferably four groups of 5-6 students. Each group will have a set number of tasks to complete in the computer lab using the web sites listed below.

Step Two: Each group will need to use Internet web sites to complete the following work. All of the answers can be found on the web sites listed. Each member of the group will have a specific assignment to complete for their group. Either the group members may decide who does what, or the teacher can assign tasks to individuals. Regardless, plan research time in expectation of three days of class time in the computer lab. This time could also be broken up over a span of a unit (like with Wiesel's Night), with one piece of the project for each class period.

Work to Complete: The unit is designed to allow for each of the groups to each complete each of these tasks.  However, each of these tasks can be broken down and used individually.

1. Each group will be assigned a set of questions dealing with background concerning the Holocaust. The group must find the answers to those questions, be able to discuss the answers in class, and be able to point out where others may find these answers on the Internet (what web site, what location).
2. Each group will be given a set of vocabulary words to define. They must find the definitions and be able to provide these definitions to the remainder of the class.
3. Each group will be required to find the biography of at least one Jewish person caught in the tragedy of the Holocaust. The group will be required to identify the main points of their life, including their birth/death dates, a brief overview of what happened to them during the Holocaust, and a brief statement of what occurred to them after the Liberation. This summary will be at least one page in length (2 paragraphs).
4. Each group will be assigned a group of years of World War II during which important events occurred concerning the Holocaust. The group must create a timeline of at least 10 events from that specific set of years.

Step Three: Once research time is complete, students will be required to present their information to the rest of the class. The manner in which they present is up to them. It can be done as a multimedia presentation, a lecture with handouts, etc. A rubric for the grading of this presentation can be created and handed out during the course of the project, or teachers can grade each person individually.

Students can be given class time to work with their group to set up their presentation once research is complete.

Step Four: Since students are researching, and using other persons' works, they must provide a works cited page. Plagiarism is unacceptable and will be met with strict punishment, as per school guidelines. One member of each group is responsible for writing a works cited page of all materials used.

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Questions

The following is the list of web sites that students must use to find their information. Any other web sites that students would like to investigate must be done on their own during studies or at home. Brief descriptions of the web sites accompany the address so those students do not have to waste time going to inappropriate web sites.

http://www.yad-vashem.org.il/holocaust/index.html

FAQs about the Holocaust
Basic information about the history of the Holocaust in a question and answer format.

http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/resources/questions/index.html#1

36 Questions About the Holocaust

http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/resources/courage/index.html

A series of timelines of important events created for the Simon Wiesenthal Museum.

The Holocaust 1933-1945

With nearly 200 original photographs, many never before seen by the general public, The Courage to Remember poster series offers compelling, new insights into the Holocaust. The story unfolds through four major themes.

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Terms to Define

The following is the list of web sites that students must use to find their information. Brief descriptions of the web sites accompany the address.

http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/resources/glossary/index.html

A glossary of the Holocaust.

http://library.advanced.org/12663/timeline/

The Holocaust has added enormously to our contemporary lexicon. The names of camps, slogans, terms coined by Hitler, words to describe terrifying to new events - many of these are instantly recognizable, even if the specific details are not known.

http://www.mtsu.edu/~baustin/glossary.html

The Holocaust: A Glossary of Terms

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Biographical Information

The following is the list of web sites that students must use to find their information. Brief descriptions of the web sites accompany the address.

 http://www.library.yale.edu/testimonies.html

These brief excerpts from testimonies provide a glimpse into the nature and content of the Archive's collection. Each page contains transcripts of several excerpts from a witness' testimony, with a summary of that person's experiences as context.

http://www.yad-vashem.org.il/remembrance/index.html

Pages of testimony contain biographic details of the Holocaust victims and serve as symbolic tombstones.
The pages are submitted in memory of the victim by a family member or a close friend.

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Timelines

The following is the list of web sites that students must use to find their information. Brief descriptions of the web sites accompany the address.

http://www.ushmm.org/education/history.html

A detailed description of the history of the Holocaust broken down into two main phases.

http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/resources/courage/index.html

A Series of timelines of important events created for the Simon Wiesenthal Museum.

http://library.advanced.org/12663/timeline/

A timeline of important events during the years 1933-1945.  Each year has a brief synopsis of events.

http://www.mtsu.edu/~baustin/holokron.html

Chronology of the Holocaust 1930-1945

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General Web Sites

These two sites are provided in case students find any problems in accessing any of the other web sites listed under the headings above. They both provide a number of appropriate links to sites that will provide information necessary to the completion of the project. They are intended as last resorts, or for free research time after the group has completed their other work.

http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/resource/website.htm#teaching

Many of the following Web sites will be of interest to Holocaust educators.  The sites provide quite a bit of biographical information.

The Holocaust of World War II 

An award winning Holocaust reference site coveing all aspects of the Holocaust including: concentration camps, Nazi programs like breeding, eugenics and euthanasia, resistance, propaganda and more!


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Teacher Resources

The following teacher resources include a list of questions, a set of vocabulary words (one each for four groups, alphabetized, and roughly the same number of words), short instructions for the biography, and a set of years for the timelines.  The web sites listed above acted as the resources for these questions, vocabulary lists, and the years for the timelines.   Therefore, students should easily find the answers. Credit for the questions must go to the Yad-Vashem Museum and the Simon Wiesenthal Museum web sites.  The vocabulary words were chosen primarily because they are a general list, but some have direct application to the novel Night by Elie Wiesel. Please feel free to pick and choose amongst those terms. The timeline years were chosen because of the organization of the timeline at the Simon Wiesenthal Museum site and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum site. The plan is for the class to be broken down into four groups, hence four sets of vocabulary, and four sets of timelines. Each piece, of course, can be done individually and separate from anything else.  Change the assignments as needed!

Questions to be answered by the group (can be broken down into two sets of 20, for two people, sets of 10, whatever):

1. What was the Holocaust?
2. When referring to the Holocaust, what time period does that cover?
3. How many Jewish people were murdered in the Holocaust? How do we know, and how do we
   know who the victims were?
4. Who were the other victims of the Nazis? How many were murdered? How was their fate similar    to and different from the fate of the Jews?
5.   How many Jewish people were murdered in each country?
6.   Which Jewish communities suffered losses during the Holocaust?
7.   What is a death camp? How many were there? Where (in general) were they located?
8.   When and How did the Nazis come to power?
9.   What was Hitler's "Final Solution"?
10.   When did the "Final Solution" begin?
11.   How did the Nazis define those who were Jewish?
12.   What were some of the first measures taken by the Nazis against the Jews?
13.   Why didn't more Jewish people leave Europe before the war?
14.   Who were some famous Jews who managed to leave?
15.   Which countries allowed Jewish refugees to enter? How many entered each country?
16.   What were the largest ghettos, how many Jewish people lived in them, and when were the
      ghettos eliminated?
17.   What were the conditions in the ghettos like?
18.   How did the Jews cope with conditions in the ghettos?
19.   What did people in Germany know about the persecution of the Jews? Were they aware of the
      camps?
20.   Did all Germans support Hitler's plan for the extermination of the Jewish people?
21.   Did the people of occupied Europe know about the Nazi plans for the Jewish people?
      What was their attitude? Did they cooperate with the Nazis in any way?
22.   Did the Allies and the people in the free world know about the events going on in Europe?
      What was the response of the Allies to the persecution of the Jews? Could they have
      done anything to help?
23.   Were Jews in the free world aware of the persecution and destruction of European Jews, and,
       if so, what was their response?
24.   Did the Jews in Europe know what was going to happen to them?
25.   What was Hitler's ultimate goal in launching World War II?
26.   Was there any opposition to the Nazis within Germany?
27.   Did the Jewish people attempt to fight the Nazis? To what extent were those efforts successful or
      unsuccessful?
28.   What was the Judenrat/Judenraete?
29.   Who are some of the best-known Jewish leaders during the Holocaust, and what did they
      accomplish?
30.   Which German units took part in the murder of the Jews?
31.   Who built the gas chambers? What kind of gas was used to kill Jews there, and who
      provided it?
32.   What was the first concentration camp? When was it established? Who was its commander?
      When were the first Jewish people murdered there?
33.   When did the world learn about the Holocaust? How did information reach the free world?
34.   Why didn't the Allies bomb or destroy the various concentration camps like Auschwitz?
35.   How did the Nazis try to hide their atrocities?
36.   Who are the Righteous Among the Nations?
37.   Who bestows the title and why?
38.   What are the criteria for the title?
39.   How many Nazi criminals were there? How many were brought to justice?
40.   What were the Nuremberg trials?

Vocabulary List:  Define the following terms, or identify the following people:

Group One:  Terms A-D-Achtung, Allies, Anielewicz, Mordecai, Anschluss, Anti-Semitism, Appelplatz, Aryan, Auschwitz, Axis, Beer Hall Putsch, Bergen-Belsen, Birkenau, Blockaelteste, Buchenwald, Buna, Cabala, Churchill, Winston, Collaborator, Concentration Camp, Dachau, Deportation, Dysentary--23 terms

Group Two:  Terms E-L-Eichmann, Adolf, Eugenics, Euthanasia, Extermination Camp, Fascism, Frank, Anne, Fuehrer, Gas Chamber (Gaskammer), Genocide, Gestapo, Ghetto, Gliewitz, Hasidic, Himmler, Heinrich, Hitler, Adolf, Holocaust, Jewish Badge, Judenrait, Judenrein, Kaddish, Kapo, Kristallnacht-22 terms

Group Three:  Terms M-S-Maimondes, Master Race, Mauthausen, Mein Kampf, Mengele, Josef, Nazis/Nazism, Night and Fog Decree, Nuremberg Laws, Nuremberg Trials, Pentecost, Phylacteries, Pink Triangle, Pipel, Ration, Ravensbruck, Red Army, Roosevelt, Franklin D., Rosh Hashanah, SA, SS, Selection-21 terms

Group Four:  Terms S-Z-Semitic, Shoah, Sobibor, Sonderkommando, Stalin, Josef, Swastika, Synagogue, Talmud, Terezin, Third Reich, Treblinka, Truncheon, Wannsee Conference, Warsaw Ghetto, Weimar Republic, Wiesel, Elie, Wiesenthal, Simon, Yiddish, Zionism, Zohar, Zyklon B-21 terms

Biography:  Use the directions listed on page one in the instructions to create a biography of one of the survivors of the Holocaust.  For full credit, include:

1. Basic biographical information, like birth date.
2. Give information about each person's life prior to the Holocaust, during the Holocaust, and after the Holocaust.
3. Write about your own personal sense of the person, and what the Holocaust must have been like judging from their own descriptions.

Timeline:  Use the directions listed on page one in the instructions to create a timeline of the year groupings provided:

1. 1933-1938-Create a list of ten important historical events during the years 1933-1938.
2. 1939-1941-Create a list of ten important events as the Nazis began to move towards the Final Solution.
3. 1941-1945-Create a list of important events in the history of the camps and the War.
4. 1945-Modern Era-Create a list of important events from the time of the Liberation of the camps, through to the Millennium.

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