Oklahoma Academic Standard 4. The student will evaluate the global transformation created by the World Wars (1900-1945 CE).

Objective 4.8  Examine the causes, series of events and effects of the Holocaust through eyewitnesses such as inmates, survivors, liberators, and perpetrators.

In a Nutshell

This objective asks students to examine the series of events known as the Holocaust, its causal roots in religious and ethnic persecution, its policies and practices of discrimination, and the ultimate result in mass genocide. Students should also analyze the viewpoints of historical groups and individuals who experienced these events firsthand in order to understand how such atrocities could occur in modern society.

Teacher Action 

Student Action 

• Provide opportunities to analyze historical, contemporary, and emerging means to promote the common good and protect individual rights. 

• Assist students to actively listen, evaluate, and ask questions while engaged in collaborative discussions and debates about the root causes of antisemitism that led to the Holocaust.

• Assess the significance and impact of individuals and groups throughout world history, tracing the continuity of past events to the present.

• Evaluate the impact of perspectives, civic virtues, democratic principles, constitutional rights, and human rights on addressing issues and problems.

Key Concepts 

Misconceptions 

• anti-Semitism, scaepgoating, enslavement and forced labor at concentration camps, mass execution, genocide

• Nazi application of Darwinist theories, policy of eugenics and Aryanism

• growth and spread of ultranationalism, Hitler’s book Mein Kampf

• Warsaw ghetto, Treblinka, Auschwitz-Birkenau

•  initial restrictions on land ownership, citizenship, movement, Kristallnacht, deportation

• Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels

• liberation of concentration camps eyewitnessed by by U.S. Army and Russian forces 

• Some students may not realize that the Holocaust was part of a larger genocide targeting a variety of populations in Nazi-controlled Europe. 

Instructional Resources