Nissen Mengel came from a wealthy and loving religious Jewish family. He was just
ten years old when the Nazi’s invaded Hungary. A gestapo agent banged on their
door at 7:00 am with a list containing the names of the residents in the building.
Despite the early hour, his mother was at the market. They sent his sister to find her
and Nissen insisted on going with her. Nissen recalled being very surprised that his
mother decided to return home rather than escape with her children; she knew that
their father would be deported to Auschwitz, and she did not want him to go without
her….

By the end of this lesson, students will be able 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

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