Virtual field trips educate young people on the history and lessons of the Holocaust and genocide, as well as broader topics of social justice and civic engagement. Pre and post-visit activity aid educators in extending students’ learning and fostering meaningful learning experiences.
Group size: Limited only by your technology capacity.
Times Offered: Asynchronous tours available at any time. Synchronous tours are available, based on docent availability. Synchronous tours require a three-week notice.
Tour Length: Virtual tours are approximately 45 minutes with an optional live Q&A with a docent for 15 minutes.
All field trips listed below support Common Core State Standards in English/Language Arts and Literacy in History Social Studies, Illinois Social Science Standards, and the C3 Framework for Social Studies.
Students will build social awareness and skills to demonstrate positive decision-making and responsible behaviors, allowing for a deeper understanding of how core values of respect, compassion, and citizenship can lead to success in school and in life.
Interactive activities empower students to take a personal stand for themselves and on behalf of others. Students will be motivated to take positive action in school, at home, in their neighborhood, and around the world.
This field trip helps students in the following areas:
- Social awareness
- Positive decision-making skills
- Responsible behaviors
- Core values of respect, compassion, and citizenship
This field trip allows flexibility for use within traditional, remote, and hybrid learning environments.
This field trip supports Illinois Priority Learning Standards for Social/Emotional Learning.
Experiential technology, online interactives, and compelling stories of Holocaust Survivors encourage to students to explore their role in empowering and creating community through the lens of universal human and civil rights. Online activities may be completed individually, as a class, or a combination of the two. Options available within the field trip allow educators to focus on specific themes, including:
- Social justice
- Social/emotional learning
- Contemporary upstanders
- Age-appropriate introductory Holocaust education
This field trip allows flexibility for use within traditional, remote, and hybrid learning environments.
This field trip supports Illinois Priority Learning Standards for Social/Emotional Learning and the Illinois Civics Mandate for Middle School.
This virtual field trip is available in English or Spanish!
In Our Voices transforms history into lessons for today, inviting students to consider the power of choice, responsibility, citizenship, and human rights, with the goal of discovering what influences our decisions to act as bystanders or Upstanders.
Through guided exploration, students investigate the history of the Holocaust as told through the personal belongings, photographs, historical records, and stories of Chicagoland Survivors and eyewitnesses. Students are encouraged to use this knowledge to make connections to their world today. The field trip includes suggested pre and post-visit activities.
Virtual field trips include:
- Pre-recorded exploration of the history of the Holocaust through artifacts and stories in the Zev & Shifra Karkomi Holocaust Exhibition
- Tour divided into four segments, each with discussion prompts, reflection questions, and supplemental activities
- Flexibility for use within in-person, remote, and hybrid learning environments
- Optional virtual presentation by a member of the Speakers’ Bureau and/or a Q&A session with a Museum docent
A new updated version will be available as of 3/3/2022! Watch the trailer here
Empower students to connect with human and civil rights history and challenges today, gathering tools for civic engagement and positive action in their community and world. Explore Upstanders working to champion areas of economic opportunity, equal rights, safe communities, education and health, and the environment. Students will learn how to take action on issues that matter to them while exploring art as a form of activism, and will come away with tools and strategies to create positive change.
This field trip allows flexibility for use within traditional, remote, and hybrid learning environments.
This field trip supports the Illinois Civics Mandates for Middle and High Schools.
When World War II began, approximately 1.6 million Jewish children lived in Nazi-occupied Europe and the Soviet Union; by war’s end few had survived. Through the personal belongings, photographs, diaries, and eyewitness account of Survivors, explore the lives of Jewish children and adolescents – from the years leading up to the war, to the roundups and deportations, to hidden life and death in ghettos and concentration camps, and to liberation and coping following the war.
This is a live virtual experience, facilitated by a Museum docent.
Through the personal belongings, photographs, historical records, and stories of local Survivors and eyewitnesses, explore life behind ghetto walls in occupied-Europe and the Soviet Union. Students will discover how even in the darkness of the ghettos, with the most limited resources, many Jewish people maintained their dignity, education, culture, and hope in humanity.
This is a live virtual experience, facilitated by a Museum docent.
This tour introduces students to the basic tools and techniques propagandists used in shaping their message. Through the historical lens of the Holocaust, viewed through primary sources, the tour illuminates how Nazi propaganda molded public opinion and indoctrinated German society with an ideology that fueled racism and hate; leading to the creation of government-sanctioned violence, and ultimately to the murder of an estimated 6 million Jews.
Join us as we explore the ways Jewish people maintained their humanity and dignity by using their spirituality to lift themselves above the dehumanization of the Holocaust.
This virtual thematic tour is a docent-facilitated presentation that highlights artifacts and stories from the Museum’s Karkomi Holocaust Exhibition through the lens of Jewish spiritual resistance. Hear the stories of those who found strength from their faith or drew resilience from within, to resist and combat their dire situation, risking their lives to maintain traditions, educate their children, celebrate sabbath and holidays, and sustain their inner beliefs and soul by transcending the physical in the face of Nazi tyranny.
“Spiritual Resistance During the Holocaust” tour is a project of the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center and YU Torah Mitzion Kollel of Chicago. Created by Laurie Hasten and Miki Jona Schreiber.
More than a place to get a meal, the Jewish deli is a community forged in food. “I’ll Have What She’s Having”: The Jewish Deli explores how Jewish immigrants, mostly from Central and Eastern Europe, imported and adapted traditions to create a uniquely American restaurant. In this virtual field trip, students will learn how Jewish delicatessens became a cornerstone of American food culture, and how delis served as a lifeline for many Holocaust survivors and refugees who came to the United States and acclimated to a new country. Jewish delis provided a livelihood and purpose for the immigrants who became owners, waiters, cooks, and customers. During the virtual tour students will gain a taste of deli history through authentic artifacts such as menus, advertisements, uniforms, photographs, and explore how Jewish American culture is created, maintained, and reborn across generations.
Photo credits: Scott Edwards