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K–12 Standards

Grades 9-12: Holocaust Education

Other Florida Social Studies sets

Analyze the origins of antisemitism and its use by the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi) regime. SS.912.HE.1

  • 1

    Define the Holocaust as the planned and systematic state-sponsored persecution and murder of European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945.SS.912.HE.1.1

    1. Clarification 1

      Students will explain why the Holocaust is history’s most extreme example of antisemitism. 

  • 2

    Analyze how the Nazi regime utilized and built on historical antisemitism to create a common enemy of the Jews.SS.912.HE.1.2

    1. Clarification 1

      Students will explain the origins of antisemitism and trace it from the Ancient World through the twenty-first century (e.g., Pagan, Christian, Muslim, Middle Ages, Modern era). 

    2. Clarification 2

      Students will explain the political, social, and economic applications of antisemitism that led to the organized pogroms against Jewish people. 

    3. Clarification 3

      Students will examine propaganda (e.g., the Protocols of the Elders of Zion; The Poisonous Mushroom) that was and still is utilized against Jewish people both in Europe and around the world. 

  • 3

    Analyze how the Treaty of Versailles was a causal factor leading the rise of the Nazis, and how the increasing spread of antisemitism was manipulated to the Nazis’ advantage. SS.912.HE.1.3

    1. Clarification 1

      Students will explain how the Nazis used antisemitism to foment hate and create a shared enemy in order to gain power prior to World War II. 

    2. Clarification 2

      Students will explain how events during the Weimar Republic led to the rise of Nazism (e.g., Dolchstoss, Ruhr Crisis, hyperinflation, the Great Depression, unemployment, the 1920’s Nazi platform, the Dawes Plan, the Golden Age, the failure of the Weimar Republic). 

    3. Clarification 3

      Students will recognize German culpability, reparations, and military downsizing as effects of the Treaty of Versailles. 

  • 4

    Explain how the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or Nazi Party, grew into a mass movement and gained and maintained power in Germany through totalitarian means from 1933 to 1945 under the leadership of Adolf Hitler.SS.912.HE.1.4

    1. Clarification 1

      Students will compare Germany’s political parties and their system of proportional representation in national elections from 1920 to 1932. 

    2. Clarification 2

      Students will explain how the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Schutzstaffel (SS), the Wehrmacht, the Gestapo, and Hitler’s inner circle helped him gain and maintain power after 1933. 

    3. Clarification 3

      Students will explain how the following contributed to Hitler’s rise to power: Adolf Hitler’s Munich Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler’s arrest and trial, Mein Kampf, the Reichstag fire, the Enabling Act, the Concordat of 1933, the Night of the Long Knives (the Rohm Purge), Hindenburg’s death and Hitler as Fuhrer. 

  • 5

    Describe how the Nazis utilized various forms of propaganda to indoctrinate the German population.SS.912.HE.1.5

    1. Clarification 1

      Students will explain how opposing views were eliminated (e.g., book burnings, censorship, state control over the media). 

    2. Clarification 2

      Students will explain how identification, legal status, economic status, and pseudoscience supported propaganda that was used to perpetuate the Nazi ideology of the “Master Race.” 

  • 6

    Examine how the Nazis used education and youth programs to indoctrinate young people into the Nazi ideology.SS.912.HE.1.6

    1. Clarification 1

      Students will explain the impact of the Hitler Youth Program and Band of German Maidens (German: Bund Deutscher Mädel). 

    2. Clarification 2

      Students will examine how the Nazis used the public education system to indoctrinate youth and children. 

    3. Clarification 3

      Students will explain how Nazi ideology supplanted prior beliefs. 

  • 7

    Explain what is meant by “the Aryan Race” and why this terminology was used.SS.912.HE.1.7

    1. Clarification 1

      Students will compare the meaning of Aryan to the Nazi meaning of Aryan Race.  

    2. Clarification 2

      Students will explain how the Nazis used propaganda, pseudoscience, and the law to transform Judaism from a religion to a race. 

    3. Clarification 3

      Students will examine the manipulation of the international community to obtain the votes to host the 1936 Olympics and how the Berlin Games were utilized as propaganda for Nazi ideology to bolster the “superiority” of the Aryan race. 

    4. Clarification 4

      Students will explain how eugenics, scientific racism and Social Darwinism provided a foundation for Nazi racial beliefs. 

Explain the significant events, public policies, and experiences of the Holocaust.SS.912.HE.2

  • 1

    Describe how the life of Jews deteriorated under the Third Reich and the Nuremberg Laws in Germany and its annexed territories (e.g., the Rhineland, Sudetenland, Austria) from 1933 to 1938.SS.912.HE.2.1

    1. Clarification 1

      Students will analyze the Nuremberg Laws and describe their effects.

    2. Clarification 2

      Students will explain how the Nazis used birth records, religious symbols, and practices to identify and target Jews.

  • 2

    Analyze the causes and effects of Kristallnacht and how it became a watershed event in the transition from targeted persecution and anti-Jewish policy to open, public violence against Jews in Nazi-controlled Europe.SS.912.HE.2.2

    1. Clarification 1

      Students will understand the reasons for Herschel Grynszpan’s actions at the German embassy in Paris and how the assassination of Ernst vom Rath was a pretext used by the Nazis for Kristallnacht.

    2. Clarification 2

      Students will describe the different types of persecution that were utilized during Kristallnacht, both inside and outside Germany.

    3. Clarification 3

      Students will analyze the effects of Kristallnacht on European and world Jewry using primary sources (e.g., newspapers, images, video, survivor testimony).

    4. Clarification 4

      Students will analyze the effects of Kristallnacht on the international community using primary sources (e.g., newspapers, images, video, survivor testimony).

  • 3

    Analyze Hitler’s motivations for the annexations of Austria and the Sudetenland, and the invasion of Poland.SS.912.HE.2.3

    1. Clarification 1

      Students will define the term lebensraum, or living space, as an essential piece of Nazi ideology and explain how it led to territorial expansion and invasion.

    2. Clarification 2

      Students will analyze Hitler’s use of the Munich Pact to expand German territory and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact to keep the Soviet Union out of the war.

  • 4

    Describe how Jewish immigration was perceived and restricted by various nations from 1933 to 1939.SS.912.HE.2.4

    1. Clarification 1

      Students will examine why immigration was difficult for Jewish people (e.g., MS St. Louis, the Evian Conference, immigration quota systems).

    2. Clarification 2

      Students will explain how the Kindertransport saved the lives of Jewish children.

  • 5

    Explain the effect Nazi policies had on other groups targeted by the government of Nazi Germany.SS.912.HE.2.5

    1. Clarification 1

      Students will explain the effects of Nazi “racial hygiene” policies on various groups including, but not limited to, ethnic (e.g., Roma-Sinti, Slavs) and religious groups (e.g., Jehovah’s Witnesses), political opposition, the physically and mentally disabled and homosexuals.

  • 6

    Identify the various armed and unarmed resistance efforts in Europe from 1933 to 1945.SS.912.HE.2.6

    1. Clarification 1

      Students will recognize resistance efforts including, but not limited to, the White Rose, the Rosenstrasse Protest, Bishop Clemens von Galen, the Swing Movement, Reverend Niemöller, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Bielski Brothers, and the Partisans in Eastern and Western Europe.

    2. Clarification 2

      Students will discuss resistance and uprisings in the ghettos using primary sources (e.g., newspapers, images, video, survivor testimony).

  • 7

    Examine the role that bystanders, collaborators and perpetrators played in the implementation of Nazi policies against Jewish people and other targeted groups, as well as the role of rescuers in opposing the Nazis and their policies.SS.912.HE.2.7

    1. Clarification 1

      Students will discuss the choices and actions of heroes and heroines in defying Nazi policy at great personal risk, to help rescue Jews (e.g., the Righteous Among the Nations designation).

  • 8

    Analyze how corporate complicity aided Nazi goals.SS.912.HE.2.8

    1. Clarification 1

      Students will analyze corporate complicity as including, but not limited to, supporting methods of identification and record keeping, continuing trade relationships, financial resources, the use of slave labor, production for the war effort and moral and ethical corporate decisions (1930–1945).

  • 9

    Explain how killing squads, including the Einsatzgruppen, conducted mass shooting operations in Eastern Europe with the assistance of the Schutzstaffel (SS), police units, the army, and local collaborators.SS.912.HE.2.9

    1. Clarification 1

      Students will discuss major events of the killing squads to include, but not be limited to, Babi Yar, Vilnius, Rumbula, Kovno, Ponar and the Palmiry Forest.

    2. Clarification 2

      Students will describe the psychological and physical impact on the Einsatzgruppen and how it led to the implementation of the Final Solution.

    3. Clarification 3

      Students will explain the purpose of the Wannsee Conference and how it impacted the Final Solution.

  • 10

    Explain the origins and purpose of ghettos in Europe.SS.912.HE.2.10

    1. Clarification 1

      Students will trace the use of ghettos in Europe prior to World War II.

    2. Clarification 2

      Students will explain the methods used for the identification, displacement, and deportation of Jews to ghettos.

    3. Clarification 3

      Students will explain what ghettos were in context of World War II and Nazi ideology.

  • 11

    Discuss life in the various ghettos.SS.912.HE.2.11

    1. Clarification 1

      Students will explain the origins and purpose of the Judenrat.

    2. Clarification 2

      Students will explain the effects of the Judenrat on daily life in ghettos, specifically students should recognize Adam Czerniakow (Warsaw) and Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski (Lodz) and how these men differed in their approach to leading the Judenrat in their respective ghettos.

    3. Clarification 3

      Students will discuss the difference between open ghettos and closed ghettos and how that impacted life within those ghettos.

    4. Clarification 4

      Students will describe various attempts at escape and forms of armed and unarmed resistance (before liquidation and liberation) including, but not limited to, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

    5. Clarification 5

      Students will explain how and why the Nazis liquidated the ghettos, including the forced decisions of the Judenrat to select individuals for deportation transports to the camps.

  • 12

    Students will explain how and why the Nazis liquidated the ghettos, including the forced decisions of the Judenrat to select individuals for deportation transports to the camps.SS.912.HE.2.12

    1. Clarification 1

      Students will identify countries that had partisan groups who fought the Nazis. 

    2. Clarification 2

      Students will explain the warfare tactics utilized by the resistance movements against the Nazis.

    3. Clarification 3

      Students will recognize that not all resistance movements accepted Jews.

  • 13

    Examine the origins, purpose and conditions associated with various types of camps.SS.912.HE.2.13

    1. Clarification 1

      Students will explain the differences between forced labor camps, concentration camps, transit camps, and death camps, including the geographic location, physical structure, camp commandants and SS leadership and mechanics of murder.

    2. Clarification 2

      Students will describe the daily routines within the camps to include food intake, showers, bathrooms, sleeping arrangements, roll call, work details, illness, environmental conditions, clothing, selection process, torture, medical experiments, public executions, suicides, and other aspects of daily life.

    3. Clarification 3

      Students will describe various attempts at escape and forms of resistance within the camps.

    4. Clarification 4

      Students will discuss how the use of existing transportation infrastructure facilitated the deportation of Jewish people to the camps, including the non-Aryan management of the transportation system that collaborated with the Nazis.

    5. Clarification 5

      Students will describe life in Terezin, including its function as a transit camp, its unique culture that generated art, music, literature, poetry, opera (notably Brundibar) and the production of Vedem Magazine as a form of resistance; its use by the Nazis as propaganda to fool the International Red Cross; and the creation of the film “Terezin: A Documentary Film of Jewish Resettlement.”

    6. Clarification 6

      Students will identify and examine the 6 death camps (e.g., Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, Treblinka) and their locations.

    7. Clarification 7

      Students will explain why the 6 death camps were only in Nazi-occupied Poland.

    8. Clarification 8

      Students will describe the significance of Auschwitz-Birkenau as the most prolific site of mass murder in the history of mankind.

  • 14

    Explain the purpose of the death marches.SS.912.HE.2.14

    1. Clarification 1

      Students will recognize death marches as the forcible movement of prisoners by Nazis with the dual purpose of removing evidence and murdering as many people as possible (toward the end of World War II and the Holocaust) from Eastern Europe to Germany proper.

  • 15

    Describe the experience of Holocaust survivors following World War II.SS.912.HE.2.15

    1. Clarification 1

      Students will explain how Allied Forces liberated camps, including the relocation and treatment of the survivors.

    2. Clarification 2

      Students will discuss the experiences of survivors after liberation (e.g., repatriations, displaced persons camps, pogroms, relocation).

    3. Clarification 3

      Students will explain the various ways that Holocaust survivors lived through the state-sponsored persecution and murder of European Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators (e.g., became partisans, escaped from Nazi controlled territory, went into hiding).

    4. Clarification 4

      Students will describe the psychological and physical struggles of Holocaust survivors.

    5. Clarification 5

      Students will examine the settlement patterns of Holocaust survivors after World War II, including immigration to the United States and other countries, and the establishment of the modern state of Israel.

 Discuss the impact and aftermath of the Holocaust.SS.912.HE.3 

  • 1

    Analyze the international community’s efforts to hold perpetrators responsible for their involvement in the Holocaust.SS.912.HE.3.1 

    1. Clarification 1

      Students will discuss the purpose and outcomes of the Nuremberg Trials and other subsequent trials related to the Holocaust.

    2. Clarification 2

      Students will compare arguments by the prosecution and recognize the falsehoods offered by the defense during the Nuremberg Trials (e.g., Justice Robert Jackson’s opening statement, Prosecutor Ben Ferencz’s opening statement, ex post facto laws, non-existent terminology, crimes against humanity, genocide, statute of limitations, jurisdictional issues).

    3. Clarification 3

      Students will discuss how members of the international community were complicit in assisting perpetrators’ escape from both Germany and justice following World War II.

  • 2

    Explain the impact of the Eichmann Trial on policy concerning crimes against humanity, capital punishment, accountability, the testimony of survivors and acknowledgment of the international community.SS.912.HE.3.2

    1. Clarification 1

      Students will recognize the Eichmann Trial as the first time that Israel held a Nazi war criminal accountable.

  • 3

    Explain the effects of Holocaust denial on contemporary society.SS.912.HE.3.3

    1. Clarification 1

      Students will explain how Holocaust denial has helped contribute to the creation of contemporary propaganda and the facile denial of political and social realities.

  • 4

    Explain why it is important for current and future generations to learn from the Holocaust.SS.912.HE.3.4

    1. Clarification 1

      Students will explain the significance of learning from Holocaust era primary sources created by Jews who perished and those who survived.

    2. Clarification 2

      Students will explain the significance of listening to the testimony of Holocaust survivors (e.g., live and through organizations that offer pre-recorded digital testimony).

    3. Clarification 3

      Students will describe the contributions of the Jews (e.g., arts, culture, medicine, sciences) to the United States and the world.

    4. Clarification 4

      Students will explain the significance of “Never Again.” 

  • 5

    Recognize that antisemitism includes a certain perception of the Jewish people, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jewish people, rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism directed toward a person or his or her property or toward Jewish community institutions or religious facilities.SS.912.HE.3.5

    1. Clarification 1

      Students will analyze examples of antisemitism (e.g., calling for, aiding, or justifying the killing or harming of Jews, often in the name of a radical ideology or an extremist view of religion; making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as a collective, especially, but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions; accusing Jews as a people of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Jewish person or group, the State of Israel, or even for acts committed by non-Jews; accusing Jews as a people or the State of Israel of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust; accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interest of their own nations).

    2. Clarification 2

      Students will analyze examples of antisemitism related to Israel (e.g., demonizing Israel by using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism to characterize Israel or Israelis, drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis, or blaming Israel for all interreligious or political tensions; applying a double standard to Israel by requiring behavior of Israel that is not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation or focusing peace or human rights investigations only on Israel; delegitimizing Israel by denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination and denying Israel the right to exist).

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What grade levels do these standards cover?
Grade 9, Grade 10, Grade 11, and Grade 12

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