Toby was born in 1933 in Poland. When the Germans arrived in her village in 1941, Tobi vividly remembers the Nazis screaming orders. For example, anyone not wearing the required armband with a star of David on it would be shot. Her vivid memories include a German soldier cutting off the beard of an elderly man and brutally pushing him to the ground on all fours while keeping a knee on his back. Engraved in her memory is recalled another guard shooting a little girl as if she was an animal at point blank range for crying. These experiences her traumatized. After that, her father ordered that his children did not look out the window.

At the completion of this lesson, the student 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.
• Understand the roles of rescuers, bystanders, and upstanders during the Holocaust.
• Apply the lessons of the Holocaust to modern-day antisemitism and other forms of hatred that you are aware of.

Before You Begin Teaching about the Holocaust:

Please refer to this guide from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum for important pedagogical information for all teachers of Holocaust education:

• Guidelines for Teaching About the Holocaust — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (ushmm.org)
• https://www.ushmm.org/teach/fundamentals/age-appropriateness 

For The Teacher: the information included here will help you inform your students and answer questions that may arise: 

• 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