United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
"Guidelines for Teaching About the Holocaust"

Illustrated for Study & Presentation

         This website is designed to illustrate the "Guidelines for Teaching About the Holocaust" which are published by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. This project is funded by a grant through the USHMM Mandel Teacher Fellowship Program and is based on materials from the museum. The purpose is to aid teachers who want to learn about the guidelines and to provide materials for teachers who would like to do presentations that include discussion of the teacher guidelines. These guidelines apply foremost to the study of the Holocaust but can also be useful in any study of history.  Teachers are encouraged to consider carefully their rationale for teaching the Holocaust and to utilize the guidelines when developing their lessons.

                The following site restates each of the USHMM guidelines, and the viewer is then able to connect to images that help illustrate the key points of that guideline. After clicking on a photograph, the viewer finds a photo description that includes information about the image provided by the USHMM Photo Archives. There is also a paragraph explaining the way in which the photograph helps reinforce each of the guidelines. These photographs were chosen specifically for this web site because of their public domain status, but the general ideas connecting the images to the guidelines reflect the work of many individuals who have been presenting the "USHMM Guidelines for Teaching About the Holocaust" to audiences over the last several years.

Guidelines:

  1. Define Holocaust.
  2. Avoid comparisons of pain.
  3. Avoid simple answers to complex history.
  4. Just because it happened, doesn’t mean it was inevitable.
  5. Strive for precision of language.
  6. Make careful distinctions about sources of information.
  7. Try to avoid stereotypical descriptions.
  8. Do not romanticize history to engage students' interest.
  9. Contextualize the history you are teaching.
  10. Translate statistics into people.
  11. Be sensitive to appropriate written and audio-visual content.
  12. Strive for balance in establishing whose perspective informs your study of the Holocaust.
  13. Select appropriate learning activities.
  14. Reinforce the objectives of your lesson plan.