teacher's guides

Broken Threads: The Destruction of the Jewish Fashion Industry in Germany and Austria         

Broken Threads: A Teacher's Guide explores the period of the Holocaust beginning in 1933 and concluding with the concentration camps. Concerned with issues of cultural and human loss, the Teacher's Guide deals with themes of propaganda, boycotts, intimidation and humiliation, nationalism, Aryanization, Nuremberg Laws, Kristallnacht, deportations and emigration. The guide includes archival photographs, fashion drawings and newspaper clippings, as well as suggestions for classroom activities and discussion.

($5)

Download the Teacher’s Guide

Canada and The Holocaust: Social Responsibility and Global Citizenship

Canada and The Holocaust: Social Responsibility and Global Citizenship is a resource guide developed by the VHEC, Canadian Jewish Congress and the BC Ministry of Education for Social Studies 11. It is designed to provide support for approximately seven hours of classroom instruction with resources including: timeline, glossary, handouts, bibliography, instructional procedures and background information on the Holocaust. The guide focuses on the impact of Canada’s immigration policies, which directly affected Jews during the Holocaust. Divided into a three-part examination of the pre-war period, the period during the war and post-war immigration policies, resources include newspaper clippings, letters, diary entries, and speeches. A guide for Social Studies 11 Teachers.

($6)
Available in French for $12.50

The Holocaust:
Social Responsibility and Global Citizenship

The Holocaust: Social Responsibility and Global Citizenship is a resource guide developed by the VHEC, Canadian Jewish Congress and the BC Ministry of Education for Social Studies 6. It is designed to provide support for approximately eight hours of classroom instruction with resources including: charts, reading materials, case studies, a glossary and a time line, touching upon themes of discrimination, human rights, and global citizenship in order for students to gain an understanding of social responsibility. A guide for Social Studies 6 Teachers.

($6)
Available in French for $8

Korczak and the Children
of the Warsaw Ghetto

Janusz Korczak was one of the world’s first advocates of children’s rights. On August 6, 1942 he became a heroic figure. On that day, this famous and beloved doctor, writer and educator was forced by the Nazis to gather together the two hundred orphans under his care in the Warsaw ghetto and report for deportation. Refusing all offers for his own rescue, he led the children with quiet dignity to the tram that would take them to their deportation to Treblinka, an extermination camp where they were murdered. Janusz Korczak & The Children of the Warsaw Ghetto examines the life of Janusz Korczak, the experiences and tragic fate of the children in the Warsaw ghetto and looks at how the violation of children’s rights during the Holocaust is reflected in the global fight for children’s rights in the world today.

($5)

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Life Unworthy of Life:
Nazi Euthanasia Crimes at Hadamar

Life Unworthy of Life Nazi Euthanasia Crimes at Hadamar: A Teacher's Guide , deals with the issues of ethics and social justice involved in the history of Operation T-4, the plan to kill mentally and physically disabled German citizens, as well as those deemed "undesirable" by the Third Reich. The Teacher's Guide addresses themes of eugenics, euthanasia, propaganda and dehumanization.   It also touches upon how Nazi medicine has cast a shadow on genetic research and contemporary policies through student readings, discussion questions, a glossary, a timeline and a list of books and videos.

($5)

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Light One Candle:
A Child's Diary of the Holocaust

Light One Candle A Child's Diary of the Holocaust: A Teacher's Guide, is based on the lost secret diary of a young boy, Solly Ganor, who survived internment in the Kovno Ghetto, the slave labour camp of Landsberg-Kaufering and the Dachau death march. The Teacher's Guide presents excerpts from Solly Ganor's writings as well as discussion questions, suggestions for multi-disciplinary classroom activities with opportunities for individual study and small group work.

($5)

Download the Teacher’s Guide

Maus: A Memoir of the Holocaust

MAUS: A Memoir of the Holocaust: A Teacher's Guide deals with the two-volume Pulitzer Prize winning book by graphic artist Art Spiegelman that tells the story of the Holocaust as seen through the eyes of the artist's father, Vladek. Maus serves as an example of how the artistic process can become a form of social justice by exploring the Holocaust through Vladek's experiences of segregation, hiding, deportation, the working of Auschwitz, resistance, liberation and the aftermath of the war.

($5)

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Open Hearts - Closed Doors

Open Hearts Closed Doors: A Teacher's Guide tells the story of the 1,123 Jewish war orphans who came to Canada from the devastation of Europe between 1947-1949. The material also presents a snapshot of Canada's treatment of other immigrant groups. The Teacher's Guide provides historical background materials in the form of summaries, timelines, glossaries, bibliographies, videographies and classroom activities. Hands-on documentary evidence includes: photos, orphan identification cards, correspondence from Canadian politicians concerning the immigration of Jews and other ethnic groups, steam ship tickets, a Chinese head tax, and a Japanese internment card is also included.

($5)

Download the Teacher’s Guide

RavensbrÜck:
The Forgotten Women of the Holocaust 

Ravensbrück Forgotten Women of the Holocaust: A Teacher's Guide, explores the treatment, experiences and responses of the women from diverse backgrounds and nationalities interned at Ravensbrück (a concentration camp built specifically for women). The Teacher's Guide contains lesson ideas, discussion questions, and supporting resources including primary documents such as poems and drawings made in secret by the women of Ravensbrück and staged photographs produced by the Nazis in an effort to deceive a Red Cross delegation about the true conditions of the camp.

($5)

Schindler & Vancouver's Schindler Jews

The story of Schindler, a Sudeten-German industrialist and rescuer of 1,100 Jews, lends itself to key issues in the history of the Holocaust, most notably the theme of rescue. This Teacher’s Guide presents strategies for integrating the topic of rescue during the Holocaust into the classroom and, by extension, for encouraging students to consider the individual and collective responsibilities of citizens today in responding to contemporary issues of injustice and racism.

The Teacher’s Guide includes five classroom lessons, each with a student reading and documents, as well as activities and discussion questions. Although the lessons can be used in conjunction with school tours of the Schindler & Vancouver’s Schindler Jews exhibits, the accompanying texts and visual support material are designed to ensure that they can be carried out in classes without direct access to the Centre.

($10)

Download the entire Teacher’s Guide

Download individual activities:

Identity and Rescue
This activity, which includes pre and post-visit activities and discussion questions, introduces the topic of altruism during the Holocaust. By examining the cases of individuals who risked their lives to help Jews, students begin to consider the possibility for action in the face of social injustice.

Lists: The Difference Between Life and Death
Students examine various documentary lists from the Holocaust, including Schindler’s list, in order to gain a broader understanding of the events and nature of the Final Solution.

Vancouver’s Schindler Jews:
Learning from Testimony and Artefacts
Students interact with survivor testimonies and artefacts in order to consider the humanity of the victims, as well as the significance of eyewitness testimony and archival materials.

Representing Schindler: The Story of the Story
Designed for Senior Secondary students, this activity facilitates a more complex engagement with the sources of historical knowledge of Schindler, and the motivations for Schindler’s act of rescue.

Rwandan Genocide: Acts of Rescue
This activity encourages students to link their learning about rescue during the Holocaust to the Rwandan genocide.

To request a hard copy of the Teacher’s Guide, please contact info@vhec.org or 604.264.0499.

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Shoes of Memory: Holocaust Ceramic Work
by Jenny Stolzenberg

The seventy pairs of ceramic shoes that make up the exhibition, echo the piles of shoes, clothing, hair, glasses and suitcases found in the warehouses of Auschwitz at liberation and evoke the memory those who perished. Meticulously researched and rendered in clay, Stolzenberg’s shoes return a sense of identity to the victims of the Holocaust by rescuing the shoes from their anonymity in the piles at Auschwitz. The accompanying teachers' guides link the artworks tot he Social Studies and Fine Arts curricula.

Download the Social Studies Teacher's Guide
Download the Social Studies Workshop
Download the Fine Arts Teachers' Guide

Too Close to Home: Anti-Semitism and Fascism
in Canada, 1930s-40s: An Artefact Folio

Too Close to Home: Anti Semitism & Fascism in Canada 1930's & 1940's: A Teacher's Guide draws attention to a shameful part of Canadian history; a time when Nazi ideology and anti-Semitism permeated Canada's cultural and political landscape and was reflected in Canada's restrictive immigration policies.

Too Close to Home , an artefact folio, provides secondary school students and teachers with primary source materials from Canada in the 1930s and 1940s. These materials paint a picture of the times and address the issues of anti-Semitism, Fascism, Nazism and immigration in Canada during the Holocaust.

These artefacts have the power to engage students' interest and understanding. They help students appreciate how Canada's present diversity and multicultural identity evolved out of a more exclusionary past.

($20)

Teacher's Guide

• 5 thematic sections - Anti-Semitism, Fascism and Nazism, the Ku Klux Klan, Canadian Immigration and Propaganda
• Strategy for working with primary source materials
• Student information sheets, discussion - extension questions & glossary

Download the Teacher's Guide

40 Artefacts

• 20 folio cards - 8.5" X 11"
• Newspaper articles, letters, diary entries, photographs, cartoons and propaganda materials from the 1930s & 1940s

Download the Artefacts