GUEST POST: The Holocaust Explained from the Wiener Holocaust Library
In March 2020, the Wiener Holocaust Library relaunched its online educational website for young learners and schools. In this guest post from the Library, we find out about the new content and features added to the site.
Struggling to teach your children or students about the Holocaust during lockdown? The Wiener Holocaust Library has recently relaunched The Holocaust Explained, an online educational resource that has been created to help learners understand the essential facts of the Holocaust, its causes and its consequences.
Designed with the British school curriculum in mind, the website aims to answer questions that students most often want to ask in an accessible, reliable and engaging way. The content is clearly organised across nine easy-to-navigate topic areas with the information being presented clearly in the form of videos, images and text. New features for the 2020 relaunch include: video recordings of Holocaust survivor testimony; multimedia content; a glossary; content written by teachers and historians; advanced content for those who have already achieved a good basic understanding of the topic; and engaging tools for browsing and searching.
The project has been coordinated by Roxzann Baker, who was thrilled to be able to relaunch The Holocaust Explained with revitalised content and new interactive features, which help users explore the unique documents from the Library’s archive. Describing its importance, Roxzann said: “The Holocaust is one of the darkest chapters of human history and having an engaging resource that delicately explores this topic in a reliable and accessible way for children is essential. The outreach potential of this website is enormous, and I hope that the site continues to grow and showcase the compelling and rare documents in The Wiener Holocaust Library’s archives to vast new audiences.”
Alongside refreshed content, we have also created three brand new educational resources. These resources have been designed for British schoolchildren aged between 13 and 18 years old, with the GCSE and A-level curriculum in mind. They include downloadable primary sources, worksheets (pictured below), a glossary, contextual information and teaching guidance. The image beside it is a page taken from a Hitler Youth colouring book, c. 1930s. It features in our Childhood in Nazi Germany resource which explores what life was like for children growing up in Nazi Germany.
