Possible Applications of a Unit on the Holocaust to the Wisconsin Model Academic Standards for Social Studies
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/>

A. GEOGRAPHY
PEOPLE, PLACES, AND ENVIRONMENTS
Content Standard
Students in Wisconsin will learn about geography through the study of the relationships among people, places, and environments.

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.
 
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.

B. HISTORY: TIME, CONTINUITY, AND CHANGE
Content Standard:
Students in Wisconsin will learn about the history of Wisconsin, the United States, and the world, examining change and continuity over time in order to develop historical perspective, explain historical relationships, and analyze issues that affect the present and future.

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 teacher who teaches a unit on the Holocaust has an opportunity to make the period of that time come alive with the real stories of people who survived, who did not survive, who were victims, who were rescuers, who were bystanders. The resources are readily available and multiple. The best is a survivor to speak with students if one willing to present to students is available. Both written and video sources are plentiful.

The horror of the Holocaust is an example of science and technology gone wrong. This is to be compared to the hopes for science, and technology. Example: 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.

C. POLITICAL SCIENCE AND CITIZENSHIP:
POWER, AUTHORITY, GOVERNANCE, AND RESPONSIBILITY
Content Standard
Students in Wisconsin will learn about political science and acquire the knowledge of political systems necessary for developing individual civic responsibility by studying the history and contemporary uses of power, authority, and governance.

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.

D. ECONOMICS:
PRODUCTION, DISTRIBUTION, EXCHANGE, CONSUMPTION
Content Standard
Students in Wisconsin will learn about production, distribution exchange, and consumption so that they can make informed economic decisions.

   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 .

E. THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES:
INDIVIDUALS, INSTITUTIONS, AND SOCIETY
Content Standard
Students in Wisconsin will learn about the behavioral sciences by exploring concepts from the discipline of sociology, the study of the interactions among individuals, groups, and institutions; the disciple of psychology, the study of factors that influence individual identity and learning; and discipline of anthropology, the study of cultures in various times and settings.

   The study of the Holocaust offers opportunity to any all all of the above. Possibilities as way of example would be the study of an individual (Raoul Wallenberg) or a society (Denmark) that rescued Jews from certain death. Sociology, psychology would apply in these cases. Anthropology could be applied into the study of artifacts left by the victims in a museum or by use of photographs.