Start of Main Content
Responding to Genocide

Press Conference Activity

This activity will help students learn about responding to genocide. Students will divide into groups and research one interviewee in the Museum’s Voices on Antisemitism series. While the rest of the class serves as journalists and reporters at a press conference, each group will present what they have learned about their individual and the work that he or she has carried out. The journalists and reporters will then ask questions.

Christopher Browning

Historian Christopher Browning has written extensively about how ordinary Germans became murderers during the Holocaust. Listen to Browning explain why examining the perpetrators' history matters. Learn more

Father Patrick Desbois

In 2004, Father Patrick Desbois set out across Ukraine to locate the sites of mass killings of Jews during the Holocaust. He is motivated in part by the memory of his own grandfather, a French soldier who was deported to Ukraine by the Nazis. Learn more 

Gregory S. Gordon

Gregory Gordon helped to prosecute the landmark "media" cases in Rwanda–where hate speech, broadcast over the radio, was directly linked to the genocide of the Tutsi people. Gordon believes that the lessons learned in Rwanda could be applied in Iran and elsewhere, to prevent these incitement tactics from taking hold. Learn more

John Mann

Although there is not a single Jewish person living in the area British Member of Parliament John Mann represents, he believes it absolutely proper that he serves as chair of the British Parliamentary Committee Against Antisemitism. Learn more 

Sayana Ser

Sayana Ser was born in Cambodia in 1981, two years after the fall of dictator Pol Pot. Today, Ser works to help her country heal from that genocide. As part of that effort, Ser decided to translate The Diary of Anne Frank into her native language of Khmer. Learn more

Methodology

  • Divide students into five groups.

  • Assign a podcast episode to each group.

  • Have the groups research the person assigned to them, paying close attention to what he or she is doing in a contemporary sense in response to genocide.

  • Students should consider who the individual is, where he or she lives, what his or her motivation is in responding to genocide and what methods this person uses to carry out his or her work.

  • After completing their research, students should write a 3-5 minute speech in which they present what they have learned about the person assigned to them.

  • While each group presents, the rest of the class should be developing questions to ask in their role as journalists and reporters.

  • After each presentation, the audience should be given a chance to ask their questions and the group presenting should use the resources they have to best answer each question.

Museum Resources

Genocide Prevention (A website where you can watch eyewitness testimony, find out who is at risk today, write your own pledge to take action, and much more.)

Holocaust Encyclopedia articles:

This Section

Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial
What is Antisemitism?

Learn more about the different types of antisemitism and how to identify them.