The current study investigates the impact of using an Instructional Model of Historical Empathy to teach the Holocaust on students' ability to contextualize historical events, recognize perspectives, and affectively connect to victims of the Holocaust. A three-day instructional unit was designed that incorporates primary sources from a variety of…

Teaching about the Holocaust as an atrocity of the 1940s misleads students into thinking that it is a genocide occurred, that the world agreed "Never Again," and that the United Nations would prevent future genocides. With genocides in Rwanda, Srebrenica, and Syria occurring in the years since the Holocaust, teachers need to use the…

Understanding history involves being able to construct knowledge about the past from historical traces left behind. In this article, the author describes a five-step strategy using historical obituaries to recreate the social landscapes of the past and raise critical consciousness regarding power relations in different contexts. The strategy is…

Holocaust education in the United States began as a grassroots movement during the 1970s. Today, more than 30 states mandate the teaching of the Holocaust; however, far less attention is given in schools to other 20th-century instances of genocide. Totten has suggested that by neglecting "other" genocides (e.g., Darfur, Rwanda, and…

Students often bring considerable prior information about the Holocaust to their study of the event, with much of that knowledge being inaccurate or incomplete. In addition, the Shoah's complexity necessitates that teachers establish a well-defined framework as they introduce the topic to their students. This article outlines an opening lesson for…

This article addresses how far educational institutions have come in designing authentic and meaningful curricula for teaching the Holocaust at the secondary level. Examined in this article are the historical development of Holocaust education in the United States, with a focus on the state of Illinois as a case study, what contributes to the…

This article responds to the curricular challenges teachers face with Holocaust education, including cursory treatments and a lack of focus on individual experiences. First, the author argues for a case-study approach to help students reengage concrete and complex features of the Holocaust as a point of departure for subsequent inquiry. In…

Teaching students about the former Yugoslavia can be difficult--so much diversity, so much conflict, so much culture. Yet, teaching students about the country matters for two reasons: (1) because the former Yugoslavia is an essential part of understanding World War I and the reemergence of nationalism in a postwar era, and (2) because a study of…

Teaching about the Holocaust is an emotional process that can be extremely difficult, especially without the proper resources. Most teachers spend one or two class periods on the Holocaust and usually cram the lesson into a unit on World War II. As a teacher, the author understands that time is short and that it is impossible to spend the…