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.
After viewing archival film footage documenting Jewish life in Nasielsk, a small town in Poland, before the German invasion in September 1939, students explore how the community changed during the Nazi occupation that followed.
This guide works with all types of Holocaust literature and pairs with any book. A universal guide designed to support the reading of any genre of Holocaust literature, it complements existing English lesson plans for any book or functions as a stand-alone framework.
This lesson provides an opportunity for students to dialogue and reflect on the ways in which propaganda affected society during the Holocaust and how it continues to affect people today. They will synthesize and understand how and why Nazi propaganda worked through an opportunity to practice critical analysis of messages.
Students learn the various forms of resistance during the Holocaust and explore examples from 1933–45.
This lesson focuses on the role that everyday objects play in our understanding of historical events.
Students study examples of diaries written by young people during the Holocaust, particularly examining the ways in which Anne Frank, the most famous diarist of the Holocaust, thought about her audience while writing.
Students will examine Holocaust-era diaries as both historical and as deliberately-created literary texts, and will understand how the Holocaust affected the lives of the individuals.
Students will examine Anne Frank’s diary as both a historical and a deliberately-created literary text, and will understand how the Holocaust affected the lives of the Frank family.
Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, has become a standard text used in many classes to both teach about the history and human impact of the Holocaust. This lesson will help teachers and students understand the fuller historical context of the events described in Wiesel’s writing.
This lesson is a case study examining Nazi Germany and the United States during the 1930s, at a time when racism and eugenics were enshrined in law and practice. Students will examine the national and historical contexts in which racism manifested in the two countries, and explore how the pseudoscience of eugenics as well as concerns about "racial purity" found its way into the laws of the United States and Nazi Germany.
Explore lesson plans and training materials organized by theme to use in your classroom.