Judith Sherman’s testimony gives students a powerful and intimate glimpse into the experiences of a young girl during the Holocaust.

Born in 1930 in a small village in Czechoslovakia, Judith grew up in a warm, close-knit family before being thrust into a world of antisemitism, deportation, and life in concentration camps. Her story includes memories of being stripped of her identity, witnessing betrayal and fear, and struggling with silence for decades after the war.

For many years, Judith could not speak about what she endured—not even to her husband. It was through poetry and writing that she found her voice and began to heal. Her testimony helps students understand not only the brutality of the Holocaust but the emotional cost of survival and the power of memory. Judith’s voice is both a record of pain and a testament to the human spirit’s ability to endure, remember, and speak out.

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.
• Draw parallels between the past and the present to understand why we must study history.
• Arm themselves with facts so that when they are confronted with Holocaust denial, they can speak out.

• 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