David Schaecter was born in Slovakia and raised in a large, close-knit Jewish family. When the Holocaust reached his community, he was just 11 years old. He and his brother Jacob were deported to Auschwitz, where they faced forced labor, starvation, and the murder of their entire family. Jacob protected David for 18 months until his death. David later escaped during a bombing, survived eight days in hiding, and was rescued by a Czech soldier. At 15, David had lost 105 family members. His story is one of immense loss, brotherhood, survival, and the responsibility of memory.

In this course you will learn to:

• Define the Holocaust as the planned and systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. 
• Define antisemitism as prejudice against or hatred of Jewish people.
• Recognize the Holocaust as history’s most extreme example of antisemitism. 
• Understand the roles of rescuers, bystanders, and upstanders during the Holocaust.

• Guidelines for Teaching About the Holocaust — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (ushmm.org):

  https://www.ushmm.org/teach/fundamentals/age-appropriateness

• Horrors of Auschwitz: The Numbers Behind WWII’s Deadliest Concentration Camp:
  https://www.history.com/news/auschwitz-concentration-camp-numbers

• Timeline of major events that occurred before, during, and immediately after the Holocaust:
  https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/resource-center/timeline.html

• Horrors of Auschwitz: The Numbers Behind WWII’s Deadliest Concentration Camp:
  https://www.history.com/news/auschwitz-concentration-camp-numbers