This five-lesson module guides students through a sequential, humanizing approach to Holocaust education beginning with who Jewish people were before the Holocaust and ending with the human faces at its center. Rather than leading with atrocity, the module builds historical context, empathy, and moral literacy across five interconnected lessons.
ConnectED’s approach centers Jewish identity before persecution, examines the mechanisms of genocide with clarity and rigor, and invites students to consider their own responsibility as inheritors of this history.
Module Big Ideas
- Identity Before History
Jewish life in Europe was rich, diverse, and deeply rooted; understanding who Jewish people were before the Holocaust is essential to understanding what was destroyed. - Escalation and Complicity
The Holocaust did not happen overnight. It unfolded through deliberate stages, enabled by bystanders, collaborators, closed borders, and the weaponization of law. - Humanity at the Center
Behind every statistic is a person. The Holocaust must be studied through individual stories of victims, perpetrators, upstanders, and bystanders.
Essential Questions
- EQ1: What was Jewish life like in Europe before the Holocaust, and why does that foundation matter for how we study what followed?
- EQ2: How did the Holocaust escalate from discrimination to genocide and what role did ordinary people, institutions, and governments play in making each step possible?
- EQ3: What is our responsibility when we study the Holocaust today as students, as citizens, and as human beings who inherit this history?