TITLE: THE HOLOCAUST, NEVER AGAIN
GRADE: First year of high school
SCHOOL YEAR: 2023-2024
TERM: Second
SCHEDULED HOURS: 19 hours
SUBJECT/SCOPE: Foreign languages – English

THE HOLOCAUST, NEVER AGAIN

The Holocaust was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe, around two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population. The murders were carried out primarily through mass shootings and poison gas in extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, and Chelmno in occupied Poland.

The Nazis developed their ideology based on racism and pursuit of living space, and seized power in early 1933. In an attempt to force all German Jews to emigrate, the regime passed anti-Jewish laws and orchestrated a nationwide pogrom in November 1938. After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, occupation authorities began to establish ghettos to segregate Jews. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, 1.5 to 2 million Jews were shot by German forces and local collaborators.

Later in 1941 or early 1942, the highest levels of the German government decided to murder all Jews in Europe. Victims were deported by rail to extermination camps where, if they survived the journey, most were killed with poison gas. Other Jews continued to be employed in forced labor camps where many died from starvation, abuse or exhaustion or used as test subjects in deadly medical experiments. Although many Jews tried to escape, surviving in hiding was difficult due to factors such as the lack of money to pay helpers and the risk of denunciation. The property, homes, and jobs belonging to murdered Jews were redistributed to the German occupiers and other non-Jews. Although the majority of Holocaust victims died in 1942, the killing continued at a lower rate until the end of the war in May 1945. Not all victims were Jews, however, with millions killed for ethnic and ideological associations.

Many Jewish survivors emigrated outside of Europe after the war. A few Holocaust perpetrators faced criminal trials. Billions of dollars in reparations have been paid, although falling short of the Jews’ losses. The Holocaust has also been commemorated in museums, memorials and culture. It has become central to Western historical consciousness as a symbol of the ultimate human evil.

This learning scenario intends to develop SDG 4 (Quality Education) of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Students will need to determine whether this goal can be reached given the students’ knowledge of the matter. To do this they will need to find information on the way holocaust is taught at schools (since the mid 20th century up to the beginning of the 21st century, particularly in Europe), and develop critical thinking to see if things have changed, remain the same or have worsened, as well as to infer what should be done.

The development of this LS includes two initial activities (a brainstorming and a discussion), two development activities (with listening, speaking and reading comprehension), one consolidation activity (a book club) and two implementation activities (a booktuber video and a discussion essay), one of which is used for summative assessment. This will also allow them to work on narrative essays, connectors, past tenses and -ed & -ing adjectives.

CHALLENGE: Holocaust happened during World War II, eight decades years ago. Unbelievable as it may seem, nowadays racism is growing all over Europe. Consequently, extreme-right wing governments are taking over. How can we all help to stop this ideology which goes against human dignity and killed so many people durting the first half of last century?