|
View in browser
|
|
Dear Educators,
I hope you had a restful and restorative winter break. As we welcome a New Year and our students back into the classroom, we invite you to consider how to incorporate lessons of the Holocaust into your classrooms.
January 27th marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day, established by the United Nations in 2005 to commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau on that date in 1945. Last year, as I walked the grounds of the infamous death camp, I was met with the weight of the catastrophe that happened there as well as the rising antisemitism that is plaguing our schools, communities, country, and world.
Jewish values teach us that each person is a universe unto himself. Teaching the human story of the Holocaust is a crucial component to understanding the dangers of antisemitism and the tragedy of the murder of six million Jews, each a universe unto himself.
This January, educators have the opportunity to enhance their understanding and teaching of the Holocaust with a new online course, Confronting the "Final Solution": Teaching the Holocaust with Care and Courage, at no cost to them. This new course opens on January 5th and you can register any time this week.
I encourage you to take action this January in recognition of International Holocaust Remembrance Day and in memory of the precious lives lost. By learning and supporting our students in exploring topics like the Holocaust, we can ensure never again is now.
In Partnership,
Jesse Tannetta
Director, Holocaust Content and Pedagogy, Echoes & Reflections | |
Additional Recommendations for International Holocaust Remembrance Day |
It is essential to teach not only how the Holocaust was carried out, but what happened when the camps were opened and the war ended—and why “liberation” was not a clean conclusion for those who survived. This Unit helps students understand liberation as a complicated, often painful transition marked by extreme physical and emotional challenges.
The lessons also examine the role of liberators and the humanitarian crises they encountered, while tracing how the postwar world began to grapple with mass atrocity—leading to efforts to recognize, define, and respond to genocide. |
Ideal for a day centered on learning, reflection and commemoration, Explore the Past, Shape the Future are 15 student-directed, inquiry-driven learning pathways that build student knowledge of the Holocaust while prompting critical thinking and reflection about the Holocaust and its ongoing meaning. These lessons support remembrance that is active and purposeful. |
January 27th at 1 PM ET/10 AM PT |
Commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day with the webinar Behind Each Name is a Life
, which invites teachers to bring students into a meaningful act of remembrance: helping recover the identities and memory of those the Nazis sought to erase. This webinar shows how Yad Vashem’s Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names and Pages of Testimony can be used to tell the stories behind individual names—moving students beyond statistics to recognize each victim as a person with a life, family, and community—and it connects to ongoing efforts to document victims of the Holocaust. |
Support Jewish Students After Incidents |
|
ADL’s new Supporting Jewish Students After Incidents webpage offers practical, school-ready guidance for responding in the wake of antisemitic violence and was created to help Jewish communities and Jewish students feel safe, seen, and supported. Organized into sections to help adults learn, support and advocate, this webpage outlines concrete steps educators and caregivers can take right away with resources on antisemitism, mental health supports, partner resources, and action pathways.
| |
Quantitative evaluation of contemporary antisemitism lesson shows promise |
|
As part of our ongoing effort to assess efficacy and impact of educational interventions, ADL’s Center for Antisemitism Research recently completed a classroom evaluation of lesson 2 of Echoes & Reflections Gringlas Unit on Contemporary Antisemitism in a large public school system in North Carolina. Roughly 400 students and 9 schools participated in the study. Among the most important findings was that students who received the lesson were significantly less likely to endorse conspiratorial antisemitic beliefs after the lesson than were those who did not. And although not all findings were statistically significant, it was generally the case that students who were taught the
lesson answered more favorably on questions related to antisemitic attitudes and allyship than did those who did not receive the lesson. These findings build upon a growing body of evidence related to the efficacy of Holocaust and antisemitism education and will be used to further inform both the development and continuous improvement of K-12 resources and our research agenda. | |
|
Disclaimer: Any resources are offered as general guidance only. Please review the materials and inquire with your own legal counsel as to the appropriateness of a resource, to ensure compliance with state or local laws. | |
|
|
|
|
|
