Our Teacher Advisory Group designed the following exemplar companion guides to enhance and supplement your Holocaust and genocide instruction. Each companion guide is designed to provide you, the teacher, with well-researched and easy to understand historical and cultural context. Further, the primary sources and recommended lessons selected help students help students can think critically and compassionately about the events of the Holocaust.
We hope you will be inspired to create your own companion guides, and invite you to submit them for our review. Approved proposals will be added to our website for other Michigan teachers to use.
"You Onlookers"
By: Nelly Sachs | A poem that examines a Jewish refugee’s feelings about bystanders.
"I Am a Jew"
By: Franta Bass | A poem from a child in the Theresienstadt “camp-ghetto” that expresses resistance and resilience.
Hanukkah Menorah
A photograph showing a simple but powerful expression of resistance during the early rise of Nazi Germany.
"The Brick Factory"
An excerpt from Agi Rubin’s memoir Reflections which is an example of dehumanization through forced labor.
"To the Little Polish Boy..."
By: Peter Fischl | A poem that describes one of the most well-known photographs of the Warsaw Ghetto, the largest of the ghettos.
The Liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau
By: Paula Lebovics | A Holocaust survivor’s video testimony describing the emotions of being liberated.
Children After Liberation
Photograph: Children after Liberation | Liberated by the Red Army, January 1945