Resources

Students learn to discuss the topic of Holocaust by comparing pictures of women Holocaust survivors, and talking about their stories. The idea of this exercise is to make Holocaust stories personal and visual (while at the same time not too graphic or violent), in order to let students relate better and gain a concrete idea about what people went through. In this exercise, students will discover particular faces and life stories. 

Students learn about Holocaust history through individual women’s stories, and apply their knowledge through creating their own poster. By making informative posters, students learn how to sort out important information and remember it through active learning. Students “educate themselves” by becoming creators of their own learning material. 

This exercise is divided into seven practical parts. Its aim is to help students imagine stories from the Holocaust, and contrast them with realities learned from women’s biographies. The idea is to let students work with their imagination, story-telling, map-reading, picture interpretation and text analysis. Elements such as music, live art and personal map creation should help students be personally engaged with some Holocaust stories, while keeping the learning atmosphere playful. 

This exercise

• Extends students' spatial and temporal awareness of the Holocaust;
• Adds depth and nuance to understanding of the evolution and development of the Holocaust;
• Raises awareness about women who survived the Holocaust and the ways in which they communicated their experiences;
• Helps students improve their research skills;
• Challenges the understanding of the Nazi concentration camps (often limited and Auschwitz-centric), through a comparative analysis of two camp experiences . 
• Highlights the diversity of experiences and responses

After hearing about Lisa Pinhas' life and seeing photos of her, students will create a poster about her that reflects her experiences. The tool for this task is Google Jamboard.  This exercise aims at developing historical knowledge of camp life in Auschwitz-Birkenau, at adding depth and nuance to understanding the woman’s perspective and at practicing analytical competencies, as well as familiarising them with multimodal texts. This exercise helps students to reflect on the ethical responsibility for narrating the past.

The exercise promotes collaboration among the students and historical contextualising of one’s individual perspective. It also helps students better understand the history of the Holocaust. 

This exercise is meant to encourage students to look beyond the image. Students should develop values such as empathy by relating to the people in the photo.

The activity includes a discussion about the significance of photos in which students are asked to explain why photos are important in general and why specifically photos shared by Holocaust survivors are a unique historical source.

During the workshop, we worked on Katarína Löfflerová's life story in groups, using the digital platform Padlet and the Centropa archive.

In this 45/90-minute lesson, students work in groups to explore the life story of Rosa Rosenstein. The tasks can be completed online or offline, depending on the preparedness of the group and the technical conditions. As the film about Rosa is in English and German, it can also be used in language classes (language level A2-B1).

Using excerpts from Katarina Löfflerova's life story, we examine a brief but important phase in the lives of those who returned home from the camps: the search for their relatives. The teaching material is designed for German or English classes, with an expected language level of A2-B1.

Through the exercises, we introduce students to elements of bourgeois lifestyle and mentality in the interwar period through the story of Katarína Löfflerová. The exercises include both paper-based and digital activities.

Using an adapted version of the Mystery Method, students work in groups to learn about the life of Irena Wygodzka and multicultural Central Europe before World War II, and seek answers to the question of where a person whose fate was determined by European history could feel at home.

Group and individual tasks exploring the concept of home based on the memoirs of Greek Holocaust survivor Lisza Pinhasz. The exercises can also be used as part of a single lesson.

The lesson plan explores the themes of survival and new beginnings through group and individual tasks based on the memoirs of Greek Holocaust survivor Lisza Pinhasz.

Adaptation of the story of Greek Holocaust survivor Lisza Pinhasz based on her memoirs, in the form of group work.

Using the women's stories found on https://www.her-stories.eu/hu, we have designed an interdisciplinary project that is suitable for commemorating the Holocaust. Parts of the project can be used in a variety of lessons or as part of a larger project.