Contextualize the history you are teaching

A Jewish policeman and a German soldier direct pedestrian traffic across the main street dividing the two parts of the Lodz ghetto.  Later, a wooden footbridge was built over the street to allow the streetcar route to remain in the Aryan sector.  The German sign at the entrance to the ghetto reads, “Jewish residential area, entrance is forbidden.”

Relationship to guideline

This photograph illustrates the value of using photographs to provide information about the historical context of events students are studying.  The people crossing the street appear to still have clothes in fairly good condition and the ghetto is not yet completely sealed off.  Teachers should frame their approach to specific events and acts of complicity or defiance by considering when and where an act took place.  Individuals and groups often behaved differently depending upon changing events and circumstances.  The same person who might have stood by and remained uninvolved while witnessing the street crossing of these people in 1941, may have been moved to act differently one or two years later.