Possible Application of a Unit on the Holocaust to the Arizona Social Studies Standards
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/>

From the Social Studies Standards Rationale:

    It is possible to spend a lifetime studying these areas without learning about every significant event. Our best hope in the years of formal schooling is that students learn to tell the important from the unimportant and to know enough about history, geography, economics, and civics and government to inform themselves about the vital connections between the present and the past.
    Our very first priority is to prepare our young people for the office of citizen. In conjunction with standards frameworks in other disciplines, these standards are designed to help all schools ensure that they promote a high level of academic rigor and provide sound opportunities for all students to learn.

    The study of the Holocaust is a good fit into this rationale. In the study of the Holocaust students must learn to tell what is important from what is not, must deal with all areas of the social studies, must connect the distant past to the event and this event to the present, do have the opportunity of academic rigor, and have an excellent opportunity to learn a history that says never again. This study will use the proficiency standards with an emphasis on the history. Economics, geography, civics and government will not be ignored.

 
Specific proficiencies will be looked at under Standard I.

ISS-P1 Apply chronological and spatial thinking to understand the meaning, implication, and import of historical and current events.

    A study of the Holocaust demands use of documentation, maps, etc. to analyze the changes that occurred in Europe between the dates of 1933 and 1945. The use of technology by the Nazis to harness factories of death is a part of this type of understanding. The use by the Nazis to use slave labor in their economic system is part of this understanding. In the current world, students could find similar situations if look at closely. (ex. the making of soccer balls, or sports shoes by "slave labor" in various parts of Asia.)

ISS-P2 Demonstrate knowledge of research sources and apply appropriate research methods, including framing open-ended questions, gathering pertinent information, and evaluation the evidence and point of view contained within primary and secondary sources.

    Here the teacher has a great influence by the sources provided to the students. Primary sources on the Holocaust are abundant. Written documentation from diaries, to testimonials of survivors--written, video taped, or if possible given in person. Other documentation includes that created by the perpetrators, and the bystanders. Point of view might include what the western Democracies knew and when and trying to understand why they reacted to information about factories of death as they did.

ISS-P3 Develop historical interpretation in terms of the complexity of cause and effect and in the context in which ideas and past events unfolded.

    Holocaust studies fit this without question. How is one to judge? How is one to interpret? The social, economic, political all come into play.

ISS-P4 Describe the democratic and scientific revolutions as they evolved throughout the Enlightenment and their enduring effects on political, economic, and cultural institutions....

    A look at Nazi pseudo science in comparison to real science in the development of the scientific revolution, what happened? A comparison to Enlightenment ideal to the ideals of Nazis....

ISS-P5 Explain the causes and effects of the Industrial Revolution....

    An extension of the Industrial Revolution is the way of doing things in mass. Mass murder in industrial fashion in the death camps of Poland must be studied. This is an effect of the Industrial Revolution.

ISS-P6 Analyze patterns of change during the nineteenth century era of imperialism from varied perspectives...

    Connection to the Holocaust: The German race for colonies that led to World War I.

ISS-P7 Trace the cause, effects and events of World War I....

    A chance to look at German Jews and their patriotism to their nation.

ISS-P8 Analyze the causes and events of World War II....

    The Nazi ideology of racism and carrying out of this ideology in the 1930s is a must of in study of the Holocaust.

ISS-P9 Analyze the international developments after World War II and during the Cold War....

    Included in this would be the study of those who survived. Where did they go. The development of the state of Israel and this state's roll in the Cold War.

ISS-P14 Analyze the major political economic, and social developments that occurred between World War I and World War II, including the causes and effects of the Great Depression....

    In this period, American anti-Semetism must be studied.

ISS-P15 Analyze the role of the United States in World War II....

    What did the U. S. government know about the death camps and when did it know? What did the U.S. government do and not do?

ISS-P17 Analyze the development of voting and civil rights in the United States....

    What impact did the Holocaust have on these developments in the United States?

ISS-D1 Analyze historical and current events as a historian using primary and secondary sources to evaluate the legitimacy of the commentaries of an event and draw conclusions....

    The teacher should have many resources at hand that include primary sources such as records and survival testimonials, and secondary sources of prominent historians. Questions and issues can be derived from these sources.

ISS-D2 Use historical knowledge to draw conclusions in an attempt to explain where specific current events will lead....

    The Holocaust is much a part of this process-- example: the Balkans in the last decade.

Standard 2: Civics/Government

Students understand the ideals, rights, and responsibilities of citizenship, and the content, sources, and history of the founding documents of the United States, with particular emphasis on the Constitution and how the government functions at the local, state national, and international levels.

    All Essential, Proficiency, and Distinction stated standards that deal with the American freedoms, rights, and responsibilities can be compared to the totalitarian system that engulfed Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. A totalitarian system that went beyond the decency of civilized society.

Standard 3: Geography

Students analyze locations, regions, and spatial connections, recognizing the natural and cultural processes that impact the way in which people and societies live and interact with each other and their environment.

    Geographic skills are an absolute must in the study of the Holocaust. Map skills, topographic knowledge and climatic knowledge, geographic cultural knowledge all are needed to understand the events of the Holocaust. For example in map skills alone: The ebbs and flows of Nazi deportations to the death camps, reasoning behind the location of the death camps, the ebb and flows of front lines, the maps of the death camps and logic behind structures' locations in death camps. Location of labor camps with regard to transportation and resources.

Standard 4: Economics

Students develop economic reasoning skills to apply basic economic concepts, assess problems, make choices and evaluate the choices of others as consumers, workers, and citizens participating in local, national, and global economics.

    The study of economics, the understanding of economic concepts are necessary in the study of the rise of the Nazi party. The war economics of the Nazi regime must be studied and the place slave labor that was a part of this. The impact on the economics of the war time Nazi regime of the murder of millions is a must in Holocaust education.