Accountability and Responsibility: America and the Holocaust Lesson
I created this lesson because I wanted to make sure that the Holocaust was covered as part of my U.S. History World War II Unit. I was told that students had already thoroughly studied the Holocaust the year before in World History and that it was not necessary to cover the content of the Holocaust in U.S. History. Nevertheless, I felt uncomfortable leaving it out of my WWII Unit plan and decided to address the Holocaust from the perspective of the United States, which was certainly not done in World History.
Essential questions of the lesson: Should the United States have done more to help the Jews during the period leading up to and during the Holocaust?— Does the United States have the moral responsibility to intervene in foreign affairs?
Please see my lesson plan outline and powerpoint presentation below for more details about this lesson.
I created this lesson because I wanted to make sure that the Holocaust was covered as part of my U.S. History World War II Unit. I was told that students had already thoroughly studied the Holocaust the year before in World History and that it was not necessary to cover the content of the Holocaust in U.S. History. Nevertheless, I felt uncomfortable leaving it out of my WWII Unit plan and decided to address the Holocaust from the perspective of the United States, which was certainly not done in World History.
Essential questions of the lesson: Should the United States have done more to help the Jews during the period leading up to and during the Holocaust?— Does the United States have the moral responsibility to intervene in foreign affairs?
- In order to make this lesson work well, students were not made aware that we would be discussing the Holocaust.
- At the beginning of the lesson, I had students create a list of 5 categories about what the U.S. needs to consider before intervening in foreign affairs from most important to least important. Most students came up with a list that included items such as economic repercussions, political issues, military considerations, etc. Only two or three groups came up with morality as a category. I told them that they would need to use these categories to make decisions about U.S. involvement in foreign affairs throughout the lesson and that they would not be able to change their categories until the end of the lesson.
- Through a power point presentation and reading material, I then introduced the students to U.S. decisions about involvement related to Jewish immigration in the 1930's and the events of the Holocaust. At several points during the presentation, students had to decide what the U.S should do next based on their criteria. I then told them what the U.S. really did. ( For example, when the St. Louis ship, which was carrying Jewish refugees, was refused entry into Cuban in 1939, the U.S. had the opportunity to allow the refugees sanctuary in America. Based on their categories, students had to decide what the U.S. should do). Many students were frustrated with the categories they had chosen, because they couldn't make the decisions that they wanted to make.
- I then did a case study with them about the genocide in Rwanda. At this point they could change their categories.
Please see my lesson plan outline and powerpoint presentation below for more details about this lesson.
accountability_and_responsibility.pptx |
bystanders_and_upstanders_hand_out.pdf |