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History

10 March 2010


Activity page

"Heroes of the Holocaust"

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Secondary activity

Rights and responsibilities

We all have rights - and in this country, because we live in a democracy our rights are protected and considered to be extremely important.

But for the Jews in Hitler's Germany life was very different.

Using the internet and books create a timeline of the Second World War but the dates you focus on will not be battles that have been won or lost but key events in the Holocaust. To understand the Holocaust fully you may need to start your timeline some time before the start of the war.

What happened to the Jews? How were their freedoms and privileges gradually worn away?

Detail what rights a Jew could have enjoyed in Germany before the election of Hitler's Nazi party and again at the end of the war.

How does this make you feel? How would you have felt to have been a Jew persecuted in such a way? Discuss these issues in groups.

Do you think the world did enough to prevent this from happening?

Finally, in class discuss the following statement "He who does not learn from history is doomed to repeat it." Do you think we have learnt from what happened to the Jews or not?

jewish star

Jews were hunted down and transported to Nazi concentration camps, where they were told they would work, but ultimately many would die there

Picture: Guardian/David Levene

Find out more

Holocaust Education Trust

www.het.org.uk/

Denis Avey's experiences

www.bbc.co.uk

Anne Frank Trust

www.annefrank.org.uk

Auschwitz Museum

www.en.auschwitz.org.pl

Holocaust Memorial Day

www.learnnewsdesk.co.uk

Teachers' notes

Secondary lesson objectives

  • that democracies have ways of safeguarding an individual's rights and responsibilities
  • that people's access to human rights can be removed by, for example, the actions of a totalitarian regime

Secondary curriculum links

History at key stage 3    (Year 9)
Unit 19: How and why did the Holocaust happen?
Section 1: Rights and responsibilities?

Glossary

Concentration camp a type of prison, often consisting of a number of buildings inside a fence, where political prisoners are kept in extremely bad conditions

Convent where nuns live and worship

Holocaust the killing of millions of Jews by the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s

Humanity people in general

Kindertransport the rescue mission that took place nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 Jewish children from Nazi Germany and placed them in British foster homes, hostels, and farms.

Lobbied trying to influence people such as politicians

Nazi member of the National Socialist party which controlled Germany from 1933 to 1945

Persecuted to treat somebody in a cruel and unfair way, especially because of their race, religion or political beliefs

Physiotherapist someone who treats injuries or diseases by the use of massage and exercise

Plight a difficult and sad situation

Posthumously when something is done after someone's death

Prisoner of war someone who is captured in war and held as a prisoner until the war has ended

Quaker a Christian religious group that meets without any formal ceremony and is strongly opposed to violence and war

Visas documents which allow someone from another country to enter a different country legally

© Guardian News and Media 2010