Possible Application of a Unit on the Holocaust to the South Dakota 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/>

Content Standards that directly apply to Holocaust studies:

9-12 History Standards

Students will:

4. demonstrate an understanding of the origins and effects of World War II with emphasis on the rise of totalitarian regimes and the response the the United States and other European nations prior to the outbreak of war such as isolationism, appeasement, and debates; the impact of mobilization for war home and abroad; major battles, military turning points, and key strategic and foreign policy decisions; the Holocaust and its impact.
 

As indicated, the Holocaust is a major point of this content standard.
 

9-12 Government Standards

Students will:

11. compare the United States political system with those of major democratic and authoritarian nations in terms of the structures and powers of political institutions, the rights and powers of the governed including grass roots citizen movements, economic goals and institutions and the role of government in the economy, the relationships between economic freedom and political freedom, and the allocation of resources and impact on productivity.
 

Studying the Holocaust can easily touch on each item stated in this standard. The Holocaust is the antithesis in each item of the ideals of the United States.
 

Again, the antithesis.
 

9-12 Civic Standards
 

What was stated for Government standards 11 and 12 apply equally to Civic Standards 1 and 3.

9-12 World Geography Standards

Students will:

1. Use maps, globes, and other geographic tools to acquire, process, and report information from a spatial perspective by selecting appropriate maps, pap projections, and other graphic representations to analyze geographic problems' constructing maps using fundamental cartographic principles including translating narratives about places and events into graphic representations; interpreting maps and other geographic tools through the analysis of case studies and using data; and using geographic tools to represent and interpret the earth's physical and human systems.
 

An entire unit on the Holocaust could easily have this standard as its goal and guide. Use of geographic skills need to be taught to grasp the Holocaust. Movements of peoples and armies, situations in ghettos and camps, etc. all need geographic skills.

8. know the characteristic, location, distribution, and migration of human populations by analyzing reasons for variation in population distribution, analyzing the causes and types of human migration and its effects ....

 
The Holocaust was forced mass migrations and extermination of people.

11. know...the effects of urbanization....
 

Life in Ghettos needs to be studied.

16. know how to apply geography to understand the past....
 

A study of the Holocaust is a good topic to fulfill this standard.

THE GOALS IN SOUTH DAKOTA'S SOCIAL STUDIES STANDARDS

Goal 1: History
Students will understand and emergence and development of civilizations over time and place.

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.
 
 

The study of the Holocaust is closely connected to these standards. 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 Holocausts 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. 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.

Goal 3: Civics (Government)
Students will understand the historical development and contemporary role of governmental power and authority.

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..

Goal 4: Economics
Students will understand the impact of economics on the development of societies and on current and emerging national and international situations.

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 .