Possible Applications of a Unit on the Holocaust to the Kansas Curricular Standards for Civics-Government, Economics, Geography and History for Grade 11(12) Exit Level.
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/>

Civics-Government Standard: The student uses a working knowledge and understanding of governmental systems of the United States and other nations with an emphasis on the U.S. Constitution, the necessity for the rule of law, the civic values of the American republican government, and the rights, privileges, and responsibilities to become active participants in the democratic process.

    Study of the Holocaust in grades 9-12 is the study of the antithesis of this standard in civics and government. Students need to realize what can happen when the people of a nation are not free. Holocaust studies can motivate a student to realize the importance of understanding the principles and ideals of the American government; the responsibilities, rights and privileges of citizenship. Holocaust studies can motivate a student to participate fully as a citizen of a free society. 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 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.

Economics Standard: The student uses a working knowledge and understanding of major economic concepts, issues, and systems of the United States and other nations; and applies decision making skills as a consumer, producer, saver, investor and citizen in an interdependent world.

    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 death camps themselves serves 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.

Geography Standard: The student uses a working knowledge and understanding of the spatial organization of Earth's surface and relationships among people, places, and physical and human environments in order to explain the interactions that occur in our interconnected world.

    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.

History Standard:  The student demonstrates a working knowledge and understanding of significant individuals,groups, ideas, events ,eras and developments in the history of Kansas, the United States, and the world utilizing essential analytical and research skills.

In the study of the Holocaust, multiple sources are available for the teacher to direct students toward. 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 historians' interpretations.

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 its effects on world, United States, and Kansas. 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 and the state of Kansas.

The study of the Holocaust includes complete understanding of the geography of Europe, of the chronology of events from the first racial laws of the Nazi regime to the implementation of the death camps; a chronology of events from racial attitudes in the United States as the war broke out, to the inaction of the United States Government, to the immigration of survivors to the United States including Kansas.

In a study of the Holocaust the basic tenants of Christianity and Judaism should be understood. These both come into the story 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 to the "final solution" is to be made.

Analysis of Nazi economic practices and its use of slave labor is to be understood. The technological, industrial mind set of the Nazis is to be viewed by the student as it led to the industrialized murder factories located in eastern Europe. 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. (Also see: United States History, Benchmark 5: Indicator 5.)