Humanizing History: Teaching the Holocaust through Diaries and Memoirs

Diaries and memoirs provide unique lenses into individuals’ experiences during the Holocaust, recounting experiences either in the moment or with the benefit of hindsight. Such texts can help students understand the events of the Holocaust on a human scale. In this interactive workshop, participants will examine diaries written by young people during the Holocaust and memoirs written after it by people who survived as children.

Educators will learn techniques to engage with these texts and strategies to use them to illuminate aspects of Holocaust history including life in pre-war Nazi Germany, ghettoization, family separation, and hiding. In addition to primary source texts, participants will receive resources to engage more deeply with individual stories and increase student understanding of their historical context.

Workshop Includes:

• 1.5 CPDU Hours
• Ready to Use Classroom Resources