Media literacy skills have become essential for young people to successfully navigate and critically assess the ever-increasing amount of information they receive throughout their day — on social media, advertisements, television, and film. In this webinar explore the events of the Holocaust through the lens of media, by examining propaganda deployed by the Nazis to discriminate against Jews and other minorities. Educators will gain the tools to facilitate classroom discussions on the role and impact of Nazi propaganda during the Holocaust and support their students to critically analyze media in today’s world.

As students study the Holocaust, they will — and should — have lots of questions. Answering and engaging in discussion about these and other questions that arise in the classroom is a valuable opportunity to refute incorrect information, add additional content and context, and deepen learning. You will have a chance to submit your students’ toughest questions and during this webinar, an Echoes & Reflections staff member and former classroom teacher will answer those questions with supporting primary sources, video testimony, and classroom strategies.

Antisemitism existed long before Hitler’s rise to power: Jews had been victims of widespread hatred and suspicion for centuries before. This video explains the historical context of racial antisemitic ideology and provides a framework to enable you to teach this subject.

December 2018 marked the 25th anniversary of the release of Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, which depicts the true story of Oskar Schindler—a man who saved the lives of more than 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust. It was Spielberg’s experience making this film that inspired him to collect and preserve the testimonies of over 54,000 Holocaust survivors and witnesses, a pursuit which ultimately led to the creation of what is now USC Shoah Foundation. In honor of Universal Pictures’ rerelease of Schindler’s List, Echoes & Reflections has created a short, classroom-ready Companion Resource, that will help educators to provide important historical background and context to the film, as well as explore powerful true stories of rescue, survival, and resilience with their students.

Holocaust denial is a new form of antisemitism. What is denial, who are the deniers, and how can they deny the Holocaust in light of all the documentation and evidence that exists? How can we combat this phenomenon? During this webinar, a facilitator from Yad Vashem will present and discuss the challenges that educators face today when addressing Holocaust denial.

Gita is a fighter, a mother, a therapist and an Auschwitz survivor. Born in a part of the world that changed hands from Czechoslovakia to Hungary, she was ghettoized, starved, dehumanized and deported to Auschwitz and other forced labor camps. Through all this she kept her humanity and dignity.  During this special webinar for educators, Gita Cycowicz will tell her amazing story.

During this special webinar, open to educators and their students, Holocaust survivor Irving Roth will share his powerful story. Born in Czechoslovakia, Irving Roth experienced antisemitism, discrimination, and exclusion that shaped his life. Irving has devoted his life to speaking about his experiences and educating students about the history of the Holocaust and its lessons for today.

Internationally acclaimed scholar and historian, Professor Yehuda Bauer, joins the Echoes & Reflections community from Israel for a special presentation on the Holocaust and other genocides. While the Holocaust is a unique historical event, the study of this history can inform the study of other mass atrocities. During this webinar, Professor Bauer will talk about similarities and differences between the Holocaust and other genocides, and what can be learned and applied from a study of the Holocaust to a study of other genocides.

Teachers and their students will take a virtual tour of the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam to examine the extraordinary life of Anne Frank and how her legacy continues to inspire young people today. Led by educators from the Anne Frank House, this webinar will leave time for Q&A. Registrants will also receive a link to view the powerful documentary, “The Short Life of Anne Frank,” to prepare for the webinar.

Big Sonia is the award-winning film about Sonia Warshawski, a Holocaust survivor who shares her powerful experiences with students, inmates, and her community - all from a small tailor shop in the bottom of a dead Kansas City mall. As seen in the film, Sonia’s outgoing personality and story of survival helps students connect the history of the Holocaust to their own lives. Participate in this webinar for a unique opportunity to learn more about Sonia’s life and the film from her granddaughter, Producer, and Director, Leah Warshawski.

Examining artifacts from the Holocaust can enrich students’ understanding of this history and provide a unique perspective about the individuals and communities involved. In this webinar, an educator from the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in NYC will present Holocaust artifacts from the Museum’s collection and approaches for teaching about the Holocaust with these types of primary sources, as well as provide best practices for student museum visits. An Echoes & Reflections facilitator will make content connections to support classroom discussions and activities that focus on the impact of Holocaust artifacts.

This webinar, focused on the topic of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust, provides educators with instructional strategies and tips from Echoes & Reflections and the Jewish Partisans Educational Foundation (JPEF) to promote student learning about this topic. During this webinar, facilitators will highlight classroom resources to expand students’ thinking about how Jewish victims of the Holocaust fought back against the Nazis, including the spectrum of possible responses to genocide and other forms of aggression – from spiritual to non-violent to armed resistance. Participants will also have the opportunity to explore the Resistance Matrix, a tool for analyzing and brainstorming solutions to conflict.

The “Holocaust by Bullets” was the model for mass extermination of Jews and Roma during the Holocaust in Eastern Europe, while the Nazi’s addressed the extermination of persecuted groups differently in the west. During this webinar, an educator from Yahad – In Unum, an organization dedicated to identifying sites of mass execution and gathering evidence of these massacres in Eastern Europe, will share classroom resources for sharing this history with students.

The brand new book "Our People" is a compelling quest for truth about the central role played by ordinary Lithuanians in collaborating with the Nazis during the Holocaust, and the efforts of the Lithuanian government to hide this crime both in the past and in the present. Dr. Efraim Zuroff, chief Nazi hunter for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, will be with us to discuss the book. Dr. Zuroff, a descendant of the victims, co-authored this book with journalist Ruta Vanagaite, a descendant of the perpetrators.

Salvaged Pages is a powerful collection of diaries written by young people during the Holocaust, reflecting a vast and diverse range of experiences—some of the writers were refugees, others were hiding or passing as non-Jews, and some were imprisoned in ghettos. In this webinar, the author of Salvaged Pages, Alexandra Zapruder, will share about the book’s history, impact, and value as part of the historical record of the Holocaust, with time for Q&A. Following the webinar, participants will receive a 25% off discount code to purchase the book.

In his captivating book Sweet Noise: Love in Wartime, photographer and child of Holocaust survivors, Max Hirshfeld, shares his parents’ poignant Holocaust love story through photographs, post-war love letters, and text. After falling in love in a Polish ghetto, Max’s parents were separated by barriers to immigration and not reunited in the United States until 1949. During this webinar, Max Hirshfeld will talk about his book and his parents’ story, which echoes themes and social issues that are evident in the world today.

Creating artwork inspired by stories from Holocaust survivors is a powerful way to help students cultivate creativity and make personal connections to this history. During this webinar, participants will learn about The Memory Project Production’s Face-to-Face program, which supports students in creating visual art and portraits inspired by personal stories from Holocaust survivors. A facilitator from the USC Shoah Foundation will highlight testimonies and activities from Echoes & Reflections and IWitness that can help to bring the power of art into your students’ learning and understanding of the Holocaust.

Podcasts can be an innovative tool to engage with students in the study of the Holocaust in a virtual learning environment. This webinar features We Share The Same Sky, USC Shoah Foundation’s first podcast, which tells the personal story of a granddaughter’s decade-long journey to retrace her grandmother��s story of survival and the impact it has on her understanding of self and the present world. Rachael Cerrotti, the podcast producer and host, will lead a conversation about her story, the podcast, and its application in today’s classroom environment.

Can Holocaust education make a difference in young people’s attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors as they move into adulthood?  At Echoes & Reflections, we have long been eager to understand the downstream effects of exposure to Holocaust education on students.  Last year, we commissioned Lucid Collaborative LLC, with oversight by evaluation experts from USC Shoah Foundation at the University of Southern California, to administer a survey to a nationally representative sample of U.S. undergraduate students.  The results are encouraging! Join us for a special briefing to see what we learned and discuss its implications for educational practice and program development. During this briefing, Echoes & Reflections Managing Director, Lindsay J. Friedman, will discuss these findings with USC Shoah Foundation’s Director of Education and Evaluation, Dr. Claudia Wiedeman and Emma Naughton, founder of Lucid Collaborative.

This study provides strong evidence of the positive impact of Holocaust education on students’ attitudes towards diversity, tolerance, and upstander behavior in the face of hate and intolerance. Importantly, it shows that these outcomes are sustained over time, appearing in students who have left high school and are transitioning into young adulthood. It also provides strong evidence that the use of survivor testimonies, whether in person or digitally, may be even more effective at developing these positive attributes in students. These findings have important implications for education policy and practice discussions. This is especially true for decisions on how to most efficiently and impactfully deliver Holocaust education to cultivate citizenship values, empathy, respect for differences, and willingness to take action against hate and prejudice in today’s challenging political and social environment.