The following videos, produced by US Holocaust Memorial Museum educators and historians, provide guidance on how to teach about the Holocaust. The videos explain Museum-created resources for educators and how to use them with students. Those resources include classroom-ready lessons and digital learning tools. The videos also cover guidelines for teaching about the Holocaust, appropriate pedagogy, and classroom strategies. The Museum recommends all educators begin with the Getting Started Teaching about the Holocaust Collection.
Video length: 5 minutes
Whether you’re new to teaching about the Holocaust or need a refresher, this is the place to learn about accessing the Museum’s lessons and resources for your classroom.
Video length: 12 minutes
This video presents the foundations of effective Holocaust education. It covers guidelines for teaching about the Holocaust, essential Museum resources for educators, appropriate pedagogy, and classroom strategies.
Video length: 11 minutes
Structured around a multi-layered wall timeline, the timeline activity encourages critical thinking about the relationship between Nazi policy, World War II, historical events, and individual experiences during the Holocaust.
Video length: 11 minutes
Antisemitism is the prejudice against or hatred of Jews. By incorporating the long history of antisemitism into your study of the Holocaust, students learn the Holocaust didn’t occur within a vacuum but it was the culmination of centuries of anti-Jewish actions and prejudices. Learning about antisemitism helps students recognize that European Jews in the 1930s and 1940s did not do anything to deserve being targeted and also helps students identify and reject antisemitic stereotypes today.
Video length: 29 minutes
Ideology is a set of beliefs about how the world operates. Learning about Nazi ideology helps reveal the interconnected nature of Nazi antisemitic racism and territorial aggression.
Video length: 12 minutes
Society and culture, including social media, impact student perceptions of the Holocaust and current events. This video covers how teachers can help students make appropriate connections to the past.
Video length: 6 minutes
This video presents how to find lesson plans, teacher training materials, classroom videos, and more.
Video length: 10 minutes
The Museum has a vast offering of resources to help you customize a curriculum sequence for your students. Start with your students: think about their needs and interests. Then add your curriculum requirements to create a rationale that guides your selection of Museum lessons and resources, creating a unit that’s as unique as your classroom.
Video length: 7 minutes
Educators want all of their students to succeed. The Museum works with teachers, students, and special education experts to ensure lessons and resources have accommodations and modifications, removing barriers to learning and providing inclusion for all students.
Video length: 13 minutes
One of the most powerful ways of remembering the Holocaust and honoring its victims is to bring the voices of survivors to your students. These voices are important to fulfilling one of the Museum’s guidelines for teaching about the Holocaust–translating statistics into people. By incorporating survivor testimony in your classroom, students become witnesses and honor both the memory of survivors and victims of the Holocaust.
Video length: 19 minutes
Each person who lived during the Holocaust had a unique experience and the context they were in mattered. There is no “one” Holocaust story, but millions of unique experiences. Learning about these experiences helps us understand the complexity of the Holocaust and the impact that war and the Holocaust had on so many lives. This video can be used in a classroom with students.
Video length: 10 minutes
The Holocaust is taught in English classrooms with as much, if not more, frequency than history classrooms, presenting a unique opportunity for English educators to balance best practices in English instruction with historical accuracy and context, which is critical for understanding the Holocaust.
Video length: 8 minutes
Using the Museum’s Holocaust literature guide to frame the books your class reads ensures your students have access to accurate historical content that contextualizes the story, empowering them to see the strengths and potential weaknesses of the books they read.
Video length: 13 minutes
This video demonstrates how to incorporate historical artifacts in the English classroom.
Video length: 11 minutes
Teachers often pair art assignments with Holocaust lessons because they can be unsure how to assess student learning. Learn frameworks for art assignments that ensure respect for the victims and survivors while avoiding unintentionally glorifying Nazi imagery.
Video length: 8 minutes
This video demonstrates how to choose films for the classroom and lessons that provide historical context for films and support students’ critical thinking.
Video length: 9 minutes
13.5% of US residents speak Spanish at home, and Spanish is the most prevalent home language for student English learners. The Museum has translated essential educational resources into Spanish to meet the needs of this growing student population.
Video length: 11 minutes
This video presents two timeline extension lessons that place classic Holocaust literature in historical context: Elie Wiesel’s memoir, Night, and Anne Frank’s diary. The lessons promote understanding of how the Holocaust and World War II affected the lives of the Wiesel and Frank families.
Video length: 13 minutes
Items that belonged to those victims and survivors—as well as other materials that relate to their stories, experiences, and histories form the heart of the Museum’s collections. This comprehensive collection contains millions of artifacts including documents, photos and films, art and music, personal effects, and testimonies. Primary sources anchor Museum classroom resources.
Video length: 12 minutes
During the 1930s, hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees tried to escape Europe and immigrate to the United States, but not everyone was successful. As the German government started to restrict the ability of Jews to earn a living, to own property, and to go to school it became difficult to leave, and challenging to find a country willing to accept them. This video can be used in a classroom with students.
Video length: 35 minutes
Holocaust historian Dr. Doris Bergen discusses how to introduce students to the history of the Holocaust, including how the Nazis came to power, what ideas guided their actions, and the role of WWII in making the Holocaust possible.
Video length: 11 minutes
This video provides strategies to help students and teachers move beyond describing people as bystanders, perpetrators, and rescuers and toward understanding the complexity of human choices and the importance of historical context.
Video length: 11 minutes
Studying Nazi propaganda helps students understand the role of antisemitism in the Holocaust, and incorporating media literacy skills into this study encourages students to think critically about information encountered every day.
Video length: 9 minutes
This video shows how to use the Museum’s collection of survivor testimonies and artifacts to incorporate personal stories into classrooms.
Video length: 9 minutes
Placing acts of resistance in a historical context helps students reexamine the common question: Why didn’t people fight back?
Video length: 9 minutes
How did the United States government and the American people respond to Nazism? Learn how to bring the Americans and the Holocaust online exhibition and lesson plans into the classroom.
Video length: 40 minutes
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum collects evidence of the Holocaust, the most well-documented crime in history. This video shows how the Museum preserves and shares the collection and how teachers can incorporate these primary sources into their classrooms.
Video length: 15 minutes
This timeline extension lesson is a case study examining Nazi Germany and the United States during the 1930s, a time when racism and eugenics were enshrined in law and practice.
Video length: 19 minutes
Teaching about the Holocaust can be integrated into a variety of courses, rather than being viewed as an “add on” to the regular curriculum or as a unit in isolation. This video explores the opportunities that teaching about the Holocaust provides for teachers to meet standards requirements and curricular needs.
Video length: 12 minutes
This video includes a discussion of the 38-minute film The Path to Nazi Genocide. The film provides a concise overview of the Holocaust and those involved. It is intended to provoke reflection and discussion about the role of ordinary people, institutions, and nations between 1918 and 1945.
This Section
Explore lesson plans and training materials organized by theme to use in your classroom.