Possible Application of a Unit on the Holocaust to the Alabama Social Studies Course of Study
A Color Key: Blue:  A link to the USHMM teacher’s guide web page. Black: Directly quoting a state’s social studies standard. Red:  The correlation of studying the Holocaust to the standards. Brown:  Other information.		If a secondary teacher would decide to teach a unit on the Holocaust, it would be highly recommended to first read "Guidelines for Teaching about the Holocaust" created by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum which can be found at <http://www.ushmm.org/education/foreducators/>

The Alabama Course of Study: Social Studies is heavily content based. First, application of Holocaust education to the Program Goals will be given. Then Holocaust education is applied to specific courses at the 9-12 level.
 

Program Goals

Historic literacy proceeds from the development of historic thinking skills and historic understanding.
Historic thinking students:
•Understand the relationships of time, continuity, and change;
•Evaluate evidence;
•Analyze and interpret the historical record;
•Interpret cause and effect; and
•Construct sound historic arguments and perspectives.
Historic understandings include students':
•Knowledge about local, state, national, and world history;
•Comprehension of the roles of individuals, groups, and institutions in history; and
•Appreciation of the interaction between the geographical and cultural foundations of the state, the nation, and other regions of the world.
 
 

In Holocaust studies, a complete understanding of the chronology of events is an absolute must. One must take the student back to the origins of anti-Semitism, the development of racial theories in all corners of the world including the United States. The time line of events in the 1930s and 1940s is to be completely understood.
   If a teacher centers in on an individual's story in the Holocaust, the context of that story in time is a must. If a teacher assigns research to a specific person or event, the context of the time is to be understood. The Holocaust is one of the major events of the modern period that has had its effects on the world and the United States. The event must be fully analyzed to comprehend that effect from what it did to the culture of the Jewish peoples, to the culture of Europe, to the impact on the United States.
   In the study of the Holocaust, multiple sources are available that the teacher can make available for the student. Questions of how and why, questions of interpretation such as who did what, who knew what when, questions of reactions of victims, etc. all can be formulated with the vast availability of primary sources and secondary sources that range from personal testimony of survivors, to photographic archives, to diaries and memoirs, to the records of the period, to the arts and literature, to historians interpretations.

Geographic literacy represents the students' ability to recognize the integrative nature of geography.
Geographically informed students:
•Use maps and other geographic tools to identify human and physical characteristics of regions;
•Understand the processes that shape the world;
•Understand how the physical environment has been modified by human activities;
•Appreciate how human activities have been influenced by Earth's physical features and processes; and
•Comprehend how geography can be used in the analysis of historical events and in planning for the future.

 
Holocaust studies require the knowledge of and use of maps: the chronology of war fronts, the location of the various types of camps, the transportation systems, etc. The maps of camps are needed to understand how they operated and for what purpose. The maps of ghettos are needed to understand the events that occurred in the ghettos. The Holocaust created unnatural environments. Students will become aware of how humans modified and responded to the horrors they faced: racial laws, ghettos, camps.
   A look at the anti-Semitism within this nation and in Europe before 1939 is to be compared and studied. The actions of a government and society that carried out genocide is to be studied. The consequences of the mass murders in the post 1945 world is to be realized: from the founding of the United Nations, to the Declaration of Human Rights, to the center of Jewish culture no longer in East Europe, but now in Israel and the United States.
   In a study of the Holocaust the basic tenets of Christianity and Judaism should be understood. These both are part of the history of the Holocaust as a student studies the issue of anti-Semitism.
   Music and the arts of the perpetrators and victims can help students understand the cultures of the people of Europe at the time of the Holocaust.
   Analysis of Nazi racial doctrine and how it moved from racial laws to the "final solution" is to be made. The shift of the center of Jewish culture from eastern Europe to Israel and the United States as a result of the Holocaust is to be understood.

Economic literacy includes understanding basic economic concepts and the ability to reason logically about key economic issues that effect the lives of individuals as workers, consumers, and citizens.
Economically literate students;
•Understand the free market system and the American economy;
•Understand the international marketplace;
•Identify economic problems and alternatives;
•Appreciate the differing views held by economists on economic issues; and
•Recognize the areas of consensus among economists on issues and methods of analysis.
 

Some examples in studying the Holocaust and Europe of World War II: Students are faced with the economics of the Nazi regime and their wartime production. This included mass use of slave labor. Questions of transportation of war supplies and human transportations to death camps are to be faced. The economics of the ghettos and the death camps themselves serves as an example of what happens when civilized morals become warped. The policies of governments in the post World War I, Versailles Treaty era can show students how the economy in Germany led to the rise of Hitler .

Political literacy is reflected in understanding what governments are and what they do.
Political literate students:
•Appreciate the foundations of the American political system;
•Understand the organization and responsibilities of local, state, and federal governments;
•Comprehend the relationship of the United States to other nations and world affairs; and
•Understand the rights and responsibilities of citizens in American democracy.

   The Holocaust can be incorporated into a study of government in order to demonstrate how the development of public policy can become directed to genocidal ends when dissent and debate are silenced. Inclusion of Holocaust studies in a government or a history course helps students compare governmental systems, study the process of how a state can degenerate from a democracy into a totalitarian state, examine how the development of public policy can lead to genocidal ends, examine the role of Nazi bureaucracy in implementing policies of murder and annihilation, examine the role of various individuals in the rise and fall of a totalitarian government, and recognize that among the legacies of the Holocaust have been the creation of Human Rights organizations and declarations.
   Inclusion of a study of the Holocaust into a U.S. history or a U.S. government course can encourage students to:
•examine the dilemmas that arise when foreign policy goals are narrowly defined, as solely in terms of the national interest, denying the validity of universal moral and human priorities.
•understand what happens when parliamentary democratic institutions fail.
•examine the responses of governmental and non-governmental organizations in the United States to the plight of Holocaust victims.
•explore the role of American soldiers in liberating victims from Nazi concentration camps and killing centers.
•examine the key role played by the U.S. in bringing Nazi perpetrators to trial at Nuremberg and in other war crimes trials.
•understand the consequences of mass murder. Example: The attitude of the United States government to the anti-Semitism before 1939; the inaction and actions of the United States government during the war; the immigration of survivors to the United States in the post war period.

Ninth Grade: World History and Geography Since 1500

The study of the Holocaust will require studying Western and European Civilization's anti-Semitism through these ages.

Era of Global War: 1914 to 1945
Standard 15. Analyze the causes, course, and consequences of World War I.
 

An analysis of Jewish participation in the societies of Western European nations that fought in WWI can be made. Also the culture of East European Jews at the time can be studied.

Standard 16. Explain the rise of Communism

   What happens to East European Jews in Russian controlled and formerly controlled territories is to be understood.

   This would include the place of assimilated Jews in the West and the unassimilated Jews of the East.

   The rise of the Nazis and Hitler. The "ideology" of the Nazi's. These are to be fully understood.

The Holocaust is central to this standard.

The birth of Israel and the wars fought by Israel are very much a consequence of the Holocaust.

Eleventh Grade: United States History and Geography: 1900 to the Present

   The anti-Semitism in the United States in this time period is to be fully understood to help a student understand the Holocaust to come in Europe.

   The continued anti-Semitism that carries over into the State Department is to be understood. The consequences of the actions taken by the State Department and the administration upon the Jews in Germany and all of Europe are to be fully understood.

   The reaction to the Holocaust by the administration, the State Department, and the American press is to be examined. The action of the Department of the Treasury is to be understood in the creation of the War Refugee Board. The work of the WRB is to be understood as well. Ethical questions of Japanese-American internment and the use of the A-bomb can be examined as well. Post-war United States: 1945 to the Early 1970s
   The United States becoming one of the two centers of Jewish culture (the other being Israel) is to be examined.