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Permalink Reply by John Welch on April 20, 2012 at 9:43pm

Hello Jim - I teach a lesson geared to the particular class I'm teaching during this week each year. In my AP European History class I use excerpts from the documentary The Longest Hatred, a clip from the documentary Eyewitness to the Holocaust, an analysis of Maurice Ogden's The Hangman and then a breakdown of the Wannsee Protocols. In my Military History class, I begin with a clip from the Nuremburg Trials and then we jigsaw an article about the creation, application and significance of the Nuremburg Laws as applied to genocides that have occurred since 1945.

Permalink Reply by Eric Walters on April 21, 2012 at 1:24am

My favorite text is THE CUNNING OF HISTORY: THE HOLOCAUST AND THE AMERICAN FUTURE by Richard L.  Rubenstein.  Thin book but extremely insightful and concise.  I thought I knew a lot about this subject but after this book, I realized I didn't.  Worth a slow, thoughtful read--because it's relatively short, it won't take long to finish.

Permalink Reply by Jim Werbaneth on April 21, 2012 at 8:20am

I've definitely got to look up The Cunning of History, thanks.

One big reason why I taught something about it was that the week before, in a basic American history class, I talked about the anti-Semitic sentiments caught on the Watergate tapes--Nixon said some terrible things about Jews.  A couple of my students responded by saying that Jews really did control the media and financial systems, and that all were rich.  Especially with Holocaust Remembrance Day coinciding, I decided that there was a need for corrective instruction, so I spent about fifteen minutes talking about anti-Semitism.  And I kept this picture on the Smart board, from my last trip to Sittard, Netherlands: