Inquiry design model contest winner
11thGrade Holocaust Inquiry
Are Bystanders Guilty Too?
UniformedGestapoofficials supervise thedeportationof local Jews. Lörrach, Germany, October 22, 1940.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Credit: Stadtarchiv Lörrach
Supporting Questions
1.In what ways did perpetrators persecute the victims of the Holocaust?
2.How did ordinary people act as rescuers for the persecuted groups?
3.What responsibilities do bystanders have?
Inquiry design model contest winner
11th Grade Holocaust Inquiry
Are Bystanders Guilty Too?North Carolina Essential Standards
C3 Framework Indicator / WH.H.7 - Understand how national, regional, and ethnic interests have contributed to conflict among groups and nations in the modern era.
D2.His.5.9-12 - Analyze how historical contexts shaped and continue to shape people’s perspectives.
Staging the Question / Read the Martin Niemöller poem, “First they came…” and discuss the possible consequences for individuals who stand up to bullies.
Supporting Question 1 / Supporting Question 2 / Supporting Question 3
In what ways did perpetrators persecute the victims of the Holocaust? / How did ordinary people act as rescuers for the persecuted groups? / What responsibilities do bystanders have?
Formative
Performance Task / Formative
Performance Task / Formative
Performance Task
Create a graphic organizer that lists and describes perpetrator groups and their actions towardHolocaust victims. / Write a summary that describes the actions of different types of people who rescued persecuted groups. / Write a claim and counter-claim, supported by evidence, about the responsibility of bystanders.
Featured Sources / Featured Sources / Featured Sources
Source A: “Some Were Neighbors,” Timeline
Source B: “Some Were Neighbors” Online Exhibit / Sources from SQ 1
Source A: “Rescue: Holocaust,” Database
Source B: “Righteous Among the Nations” Database / Sources from SQs 1 and 2
Source A: Excerpt from Primo Levi’s The Reawakening
Source B: Excerpt from The Altruistic Personality
Source C: “When There are No Bystanders”
Summative Performance Task / ARGUMENTAre Bystanders Guilty Too? Construct an argument (e.g., detailed outline, poster, essay) that discusses the compelling question using specific claims and relevant evidence from historical sources while acknowledging competing views.
EXTENSIONCreate a “Crash Course” style video that addresses the experiences of these four groups: perpetrators, rescuers, bystanders, and victims.
Taking Informed Action / UNDERSTANDIdentify and research a modern ethnic or religious persecution campaign (i.e., the genocide of the Yazidis by ISIL).
ASSESS Evaluate the policies taken by the international community and ordinary citizens to address the persecution.
ACTCreate an educational video addressing the persecution that considers the role of ordinary citizens.
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Inquiry design model contest winner
Overview
Inquiry Description
This inquiry leads students through an investigation of the actions made by ordinary people during the Holocaust: to participate, to help, or to stand by. By investigating the compelling question “Are bystanders guilty too?” students evaluate the different routes of action/inaction, as well as the associated risks. The formative performance tasks build on knowledge and skills through the course of the inquiry and help students recognize different perspectives in order to better understand the ways in which everyday people had choices to either help or be complicit in persecution. Students create an evidence-based argument about whether bystanders should be seen as guilty after considering the actions of persecutors andrescuers, and assessing viewpoints concerning bystander responsibility in a totalitarian regime.
In addition to the Key Idea listed previously, this inquiry highlights the following Conceptual Understanding:
D2.His.5.9-12 - Analyze how historical contexts shaped and continue to shape people’s perspectives.
It is important to note that this inquiry requires prerequisite knowledge of historical events and ideas. Thus, students should have already studied the rise of Nazi Germany and the path towards the Holocaust to ensure that they have an understanding of the issues prevalent in the era. For instance, students should understand the use of propaganda, particularly imagery aimed at perceived enemies of the Reich (e.g., Jews, socialists), the Holocaust’s progression from persecution into genocide, and the role of the war in this evolution.
Note: This inquiry is expected to take three to five 40-minute class periods. The inquiry time frame could expand if teachers think their students need additional instructional experiences (i.e., supporting questions, formative performance tasks, and featured sources). Teachers are encouraged to adapt the inquiries in order to meet the needs and interests of their particular students. Resourcescan alsobe modified as necessary to meet individualized education programs (IEPs) or Section 504 Plans for students with disabilities.
Structure of the Inquiry
In addressing the compelling question “Are bystanders guilty too?” students work through a series of supporting questions, formative performance tasks, and featured sources in order to construct an argument supported by evidence while acknowledging competing perspectives.
Staging the Compelling Question
In staging the compelling question, “Are bystanders guilty too?” teachers may prompt students with a poem by Martin Niemöller, “First they came…” to discuss the possible consequences for individuals who stand up to bullies. The poem can support a class discussion on the positive and negative consequences of addressing oppression. Discussion should be balanced, including a consideration of the dangers and fears that prevent individuals from taking action, as well the value of doing so.
Supporting Question 1The first supporting question—“In what ways did perpetrators persecute the victims of the Holocaust?”—has students identify the various ways in which individuals contributed to oppression. The formative performance task asks students to create a graphic organizer that lists and describes perpetrator groups and persecutions of Holocaust victims. The two featuredsources for this question come from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Featured Source A is an interactive timeline chronicling the evolution of the Holocaust from prejudice and legal discrimination to mass murder, beginning with Hitler’s ascension to the chancellorship. Featured Source B, “Some Were Neighbors” Online Exhibition, is a collection of articles, videos, and testimonies, describing the roles of ordinary people in committing a broad spectrum of forms of persecution. These two resources enable students to connect national events to the everyday actions of citizens. Teachers may choose to have students explore the information in the database or select resources for focus.
Supporting Question 2For the second supporting question—“How did ordinary people act as rescuers for the persecuted groups?”—studentscontrast the actions of perpetrators with those who risked their lives to act as rescuers.In the formative performance task, students write a summary that describes the actions of different types of rescuers. In addition to the resources from the previous supporting question, the two featured sources provide students with additional materials that allow them to explore the many ways in which ordinary citizens helped persecuted groups. Featured Source A is a database from Facing History and Ourselves, wherein students are presented with contentshowing the risks of rescuing, as well as reflections as to why people were willing to take such risks. Featured Source Bis a collection of personal stories of rescuers and victims from Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to Holocaust victims.
Supporting Question 3The third supporting question—“What responsibilities do bystanders have?”—asks students to consider the extent to which inaction is or is not an action in itself. Students write a claim and counter-claim about the responsibility of bystanders as the formative performance task. Using the featured sources, they select at least two pieces of supporting evidence for each claim. In addition to the previous featured sources, the sources for this task show different perspectives as to the responsibility of bystanders. These sources reflect some of the historiographical discussion of the culpability of those labeled as “bystanders” in the Holocaust. Featured Source A is an excerpt from Primo Levi’s The Reawakening. Levi, an Auschwitz survivor and prominent writer in Holocaust studies, reflects the view that those who did not act share in some responsibility for the crimes of Nazism. Featured Source B is an excerpt from The Altruistic Personality, a large-scale study on the motivations of rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust. This particular excerpt highlights self-preservation as a motivatingfear felt by those living under Nazism. Featured Source C is a short documentary titled “There Are No Bystanders” from Facing History and Ourselves, which argues that inaction to help was itself a perpetuation of the genocide.
Summative Performance TaskAt this point in the inquiry, students have examined the ways in which ordinary people acted as perpetrators, rescuers, or bystanders in the course of the Holocaust, considering the consequences of action and inaction of each group.
Students should be expected to demonstrate the breadth of their understandings and their abilities to use evidence from multiple sources to support their claims. In this task, students construct an evidence-based argument using multiple sources to answer the compelling question “Are bystanders guilty too?” It is important to note that students’ arguments could take a variety of forms, including a detailed outline, poster, or essay.
Students’ arguments will likely vary, but could include any of the following:
- Despite considerable risks, there were ways to help people persecuted during the Holocaust.
- Bystanders were not to blame during the Holocaust because they were not the ones directly harming others.
- Bystanders can not be blamed for the Holocaust because there were many dangers and they, too,saw themselves as victims.
- As a whole, bystanders should not be blamed for the Holocaust because circumstances varied making it more dangerous for some individuals than for others to help.
- Although they should not be seen as perpetrators, all bystanders have the responsibility to speak up to injustice.
To extend their arguments, teachers may have students create a “Crash Course” style video lesson that addresses the experiences of the four groups: perpetrators, rescuers, bystanders, and victims.
Students have the opportunity to Take Informed Action by drawing on their understandings of individual agency in addressing oppression. To understand, students can identify and research a modern ethnic or religious persecution campaign (i.e., the genocide of the Yazidis by ISIL). To assess the issue, students evaluate the policies taken by the international community and ordinary citizens to address the persecution. To act, students create an educational video to address the persecution that considers the role of ordinary citizens.
Staging the Compelling Question
Featured Source / Source A: Martin Niemöller, poem, “First They Came…” 1946First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
Accessed from:
Supporting Question 1
Featured Source / Source A: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, interactive timeline, “Some Were Neighbors: Collaboration & Complicity in the Holocaust,” , 2016Accessed from:
Supporting Question 1
Featured Source / Source B:United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, online exhibition, “Some Were Neighbors: Collaboration & Complicity in the Holocaust,” 2016Accessed from:
Supporting Question 2
Featured Source / Source A:Facing History and Ourselves, database, “Rescue: Holocaust,” 2016Accessed from:
Supporting Question 2
Featured Source / Source B:Yad Vashem: The World Holocaust Remembrance Center, database, “The Righteous Among Nations,” 2016Accessed from:
Supporting Question 3
Featured Source / Source A:Primo Levi,book, The Reawakening, 1965 (excerpt)[I]n spite of the varied possibilities for information, most Germans didn’t know because they didn’t want to know. Because, indeed, they wanted not to know. It is certainly true that State terrorism is a very strong weapon, very difficult to resist. But it is also true that the German people, as a whole, did not even try to resist. In Hitler’s Germany a particular code was widespread: those who knew did not talk; those who did not know did not ask questions; those who did ask questions received no answers. In this way the typical German citizen won and defended his ignorance, which seemed to him sufficient justification of his adherence to Nazism. Shutting his mouth, his eyes and his ears, he built for himself the illusion of not knowing, hence not being an accomplice to the things taking place in front of his very door.
Knowing and making things known was one way (basically not all that dangerous) of keeping one’s distance from Nazism. I think the German people, on the whole, did not seek this recourse, and I hold them fully culpable of this deliberate omission.
Supporting Question 3
Featured Source / Source B: Samuel P. Oliner & Pearl M. Oliner, book, The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe, 1988 (excerpt)Acceptance of or accommodation to Nazi authority helps explain why some bystanders engaged neither in general resistance nor in helping Jews. But, for most bystanders, failure to act appeared to have other causes. Despite their hostility toward Nazis, the majority of bystanders were overcome by fear, hopelessness, and uncertainty. These feelings, which encourage self-centeredness and emotional distancing from others, provide fertile soil for passivity. Survival of the self assumes paramount importance. This was the characteristic response of most bystanders. Asked to describe their lives during the war, their stories are brief and overwhelmingly involved with basic survival.
Supporting Question 3
Featured Source / Source C:Facing History and Ourselves, video, “When There are No Bystanders,” , 2013Accessed from:
Transcript:
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