Possible Applications of a Unit on the Holocaust to the Minnesota High School Social Studies Content 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/>

Content Standard United States Citizenship.
A student shall demonstrate understanding of the foundations, rights, and responsibilities of United States citizenship including how the United States government, as established by the Constitution, embodies the principles and ideal of a democratic republic; the rights and responsibilities of Untied States citizens, non citizens, and dual citizens; and the formal and informal structures within which interest groups exercise power, by:
A. examining the foundational documents, including the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights relating to citizen rights and responsibilities;
B. examining persisting issues involving rights, roles, and status of individuals in relation to the general welfare of society;
C. analyzing how citizens can affect public policy; and
D. observing, analyzing, and interacting with an actual or simulated governmental process.

   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; recognize that among the legacies of the Holocaust have been the creation of Human Rights organizations and declarations.

Inclusion 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.

Content Standard Diverse Perspectives
A student shall evaluate events and actions from diverse United States and world perspectives by identifying:
A. how race, culture, gender, and disability may influence beliefs, actions, and world view;
To help fulfill this standard with a study of the Holocaust, students could study the cultures that were targeted for extermination: The simulated Jews of West Europe, the Jewish culture of East Europe, the Roma, etc.
B. how data and experiences may be interpreted differently; and
C. issues, topics, or concepts around which disagreement or ambiguity exists, including describing points of view concerning the issue, investigating reasons for identified points of view, investigating reasons for alternate viewpoints, and analyzing how the interpretation of an issue is affected by omitted viewpoints.

   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 the arts and literature, to historians interpretations.

Content Standard Human Geography
A student shall demonstrate understanding of human geography by:
A. identifying the location of major places and geographic features and the surface of the earth, the physical and cultural characteristics of places, the physical processes that shape patterns on the earth's surface, how movement of culture characteristics interconnects various places, and how the physical environment is modified by and modifies human activities;
B. interpreting and communicating geographic information through maps and other forms of graphic tools and geographic information systems;
C. analyzing the effects of alterations on cultural landscapes, physical landscapes, or both;
D. analyzing the relationship between geography and a dispute about land use versus ownership or political control; and
E. analyzing the relationship between geography and culture.

   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.

   The study of the Holocaust is closely connected to this standard. A look at the anti-Semetism 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.

Content Standard Community interaction
A student shall demonstrate an understanding of the relationships between organizations and the communities the organizations serve through direct service or by:
A. assessing and evaluating the impact of an issue, event, or service on a target population ; and
B. suggesting, applying and evaluating strategies designed to improve the community through direct service or other authentic experience.

   A study of the Holocaust would be an introduction the goals of this standard in the sense that this is what can happen when not getting involved or when gets involved with hate. It could also be a positive example by looking at the few who got involved to save the victims.

Content Standard Themes of United States History
A student shall:
A. (Here the period themes of U.S. history are listed including: The Great Depression and World War II.)
B. illustrate the influence of diverse ideals or beliefs on a theme or an event in the historical development of the United States.

   The Holocaust is a story that grows out of the Great Depression, and it is central in the story of World War II. Examples: The chronology of American connections to the depression that hit Europe. The chronology of the events from 1039 to 1945 that led to the murder of millions. The chronology of American reaction and action to the Holocaust.

The Holocaust is a major era, a defining era, in world and American history. Narratives of perpetrators and victims on an individual basis can be studied to help the student understand the the overall picture of the Holocaust.

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 the arts and literature, to historians interpretations.