CUrricular

Resources

This lesson uses Holocaust survivor biographies, images, and reflection questions to deepen students’ understanding of the Holocaust through personal narratives. The lesson combines visual literacy, historical inquiry, and personal connection, helping students humanize history while building empathy and critical thinking skills.

In this interactive lesson students will be introduced to the Jewish people and explore historical and contemporary examples of antisemitism. Students will analyze testimony from local survivors, visual imagery, and examine sources relating to laws and propaganda to understand antisemitism in all its forms through history.  This resource can be used to build relevant background knowledge prior to a visit to HHC, as an introduction to any Holocaust unit, or as a catalyst for discussing current-day antisemitism with students. 

Using primary sources from the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center’s permanent collection, this inquiry lesson focuses on a common student question, “Why didn’t Jews just leave Europe when Hitler rose to power?” The lesson asks students to evaluate the complexity of 1930s immigration policy and grapple with the human toll of the Holocaust. In an optional second lesson, students will explore the lasting emotional, historical, and personal impact of the Holocaust through primary source documents about the Tuttmann family, drawing connections between memory, loss, and why this history still matters today.

Debunking the myth that Jews did not resist, the lesson asks students to identify and examine various types of resistance during the Holocaust through the testimony of local Holocaust survivors. In addition, a letter from Warsaw ghetto resistance fighter Mordechai Anielewicz challenges students to consider the tenacity of the human spirit and the power of historical Jewish resistance to inspire action today.

Echoing Voices: Unpacking History invites students to investigate the Holocaust through the lived experiences of individuals connected to Cincinnati. Using curated primary sources, students analyze evidence from before, during, and after the war to better understand how history unfolds on a human level. At the center of the experience is the inquiry question: “What do individual stories teach us about the Holocaust that history textbooks don’t?”