Possible Application of a Unit on the Holocaust to the Proposed Academic Standards for Economics, Geography, and Civics and Government in Pennsylvania
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 proposed standards in Pennsylvania for the social studies at the time of this writing include economics, geography, and civics and government. History is to be finished in the future. The application of study of the Holocaust to standards in social science fits mostly with history. However, of those proposed standards completed in Pennsylvania, applications are made. Specific standards will be cited by the code number of the standard at Grade 12.
 

Economics:

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 .

Geography:

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.

Civics and Government:

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.