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How to Teach about Auschwitz and the Holocaust. Classroom Materials for Teachers
The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum has published (in Polish) an extensive set of classroom materials for teachers under the title How to Teach about Auschwitz and the Holocaust.
The book shows how to get students involved in the active, independent exploration of the past, and how to teach them to listen to and understand narratives by living eyewitnesses to history. The publication includes lesson plans for classes in history, Polish, social studies, ethics, and religion, in which experienced teachers present educational material that makes use of a wide range of historical sources and literary texts.
The lesson plans deal not only with the history of Auschwitz, but also with anti-Semitism, the mechanisms that led to genocide, and Polish-Jewish relations after the Second World War. The section on lessons in Polish includes proposals for activities based on Roberto Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful, Polish attitudes towards Jews on the basis of Jerzy Andrzejewski’s Holy Week, and literary workshops based on eyewitness Holocaust testimony.
The lesson plans are supplemented by two custom curriculum plans and a selection of varied literary and historical essays that are helpful in preparing lessons, including “The War Seen through the Eyes of a Child,” “Nelly Sachs and the Crisis of Poetic Language after the Holocaust,” “History and Memory: A Sketch about Man in the Midst of Raging Evil,” and “Halina Birenbaum and Manfred Deselaers—Two Paths to Reconciliation.”
The texts were chosen and edited by Dr. Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs of the Jagiellonian University, a specialist in educational programs to counteract racism and discrimination; Krystyna Oleksy, director of the International Center for Education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust; and Piotr Trojański, co-author of the first Polish textbook for teaching the Holocaust.
