Among Neighbors Educator Guide: Context, Resources, and Discussion

About This Resource

This Educator Guide helps prepare students in grades 7 and up to view Among Neighbors and offers tools for reflection afterward. With short readings, guiding questions, lessons, maps, and survivor testimonies, the guide provides essential context and supports meaningful discussion and debriefing of the film’s themes.

Among Neighbors tells the story of Gniewoszów, a small rural town (shtetl) in Poland where Jews and Polish Catholics lived side by side for centuries before World War II. Through the voices of Yaacov Goldstein, the town’s last Jewish survivor, and Pelagia Radecka, a Polish witness, the film uncovers how, after the Holocaust, Jewish survivors in Gniewoszów were murdered by their own neighbors.

Using first-hand testimony, hand-drawn animation, and verité footage, filmmaker Yoav Potash brings this silenced history to light, highlighting both the silence that surrounded these events and the courage it takes to confront denial and preserve memory.

Recommended Viewing

It is recommended that students have received an introduction to the Holocaust and the history of antisemitism before viewing the film.

The following videos from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum provide an introduction to the Holocaust and a history of antisemitism.

Explore the Resources

To help prepare students for viewing Among Neighbors and to foster thoughtful discussion, this guide offers resources in three key areas:

Survivors’ Experiences as Hidden Children
Introduce students to first-hand testimonies and classroom resources that illuminate the resilience of children who survived in hiding during the Holocaust.
The History of Jews in Poland
Support student learning with readings, maps, and lessons that trace Jewish life in Poland before, during, and after the Holocaust, building essential historical context.
Postwar Poland: Holocaust Memory and Jewish Resilience​
Engage your students with resources that examine Holocaust remembrance in Poland and foster critical reflection on how memory influences present-day perspectives.
The Among Neighbors Educator Guide was developed in partnership with the USC Shoah Foundation.
Survivors' Experiences as Hidden Children