Lesson: Nazi Racism
Racism fueled Nazi ideology and politics. To critically analyze actions taken by Nazi Germany and its collaborators requires an understanding of the concept of racism in general and Nazi racial antisemitism in particular.
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US Holocaust Memorial Museum educators and historians created these lesson plans for use in secondary classrooms. Click on a lesson plan to see its recommended grade level, subjects covered, and time required to complete. To explore lessons organized by theme, visit Teaching Materials by Topic.
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Understanding Nazi Symbols
By focusing on the history and meaning of the swastika, the lesson provides a model for teachers to use when examining the origins of symbols, terms, and ideology from Nazi Germany and Holocaust-era fascist movements that students are seeing in contemporary American culture, promoting critical historical thinking and analysis.
Black Press Newspaper Coverage of the Holocaust (History Unfolded)
By completing this lesson, students will gain a better understanding of the Black Press and the conditions in the United States that shaped opinion and reporting in the Black press related to Americans’ responses to the Holocaust. Students will analyze primary sources and identify concerns Black Americans had in the 1930s and 1940s.
Spanish-Language Newspaper Coverage of the Holocaust (History Unfolded)
By focusing on how Spanish-language newspapers in Texas, California, and Puerto Rico reported on the voyage of the St. Louis, students will connect Holocaust history to American history and develop primary and secondary source reading and analysis skills in Spanish.
Black Americans and the Nazi Olympics
Although different in many ways, antisemitism in Nazi Germany during the 1930s and anti-Black racism in Jim Crow-era America deeply affected communities in these countries. While individual experiences and context are unique and it is important to avoid comparisons of suffering, looking at these two places in the same historical period raises critical questions about the impact of antisemitism and racism in the past and present.
Challenges of Escape, 1938–1941
Students will understand the complex factors that led German Jews to seek to emigrate from Nazi Germany and the complex factors that impeded their immigration to the United States in the 1930s and 1940s.
Teaching with Holocaust Survivor Testimony
Students will examine Holocaust survivor testimonies as both personal memories and as deliberately-created historical records, and will evaluate how the Holocaust affected the lives of individuals, as well as the role of memory in our understanding of history.
Exploring Pre-World War II Jewish Life
In order to better understand what Jewish cultural and communal life was like in Europe before World War II, students search the Museum’s digital archive collections, select photographs depicting pre-war Jewish life in Europe, analyze them, and research the town(s) where the photos were taken.
Introduction to the Holocaust (One-Day Lesson)
This one-day lesson provides an introduction to the Holocaust by defining the term and highlighting the story of one Holocaust survivor, Gerda Weissmann.
Overview of the Holocaust (Two- and Four-Day Lessons)
This lesson is designed as both a two-day and four-day unit. In both versions, students analyze how and why the Nazis and their collaborators persecuted and murdered Jews as well as other people targeted in the era of the Holocaust between 1933 and 1945.
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Teaching Materials by Topic
Explore lesson plans and training materials organized by theme to use in your classroom.