Curriculum & Resources

JFCS Holocaust Center curriculum focuses on expanding students’ understanding of the Holocaust and genocide, so they can develop empathy, critical thinking skills, and moral courage.

Resource Types

Curriculum Consultations
Our staff can work with local teachers to support your teaching of the Holocaust and patterns of genocide. Consultations include sharing resources, teaching pedagogies, and connecting Bay Area schools with programming through the JFCS Holocaust Center. Schedule a consultation >

Lesson Plan

Eugenics & Immigration in the United States: Case Studies of Jewish Immigrant Experiences

This lesson plan aims to educate students about the intersection of eugenics and immigration policies in American history. Through this curriculum, students explore the historical context and implications of eugenic theories on immigration laws and policies, particularly during the…

Time: 60-120 Minutes

Audience: 7th-12th

eBook

The Last Letter

Born a German Jew in 1915, Rudy Baum was eighty-six years old when he sealed the garage door of his Dallas home, turned on the car ignition, and tried to end his life. After confronting her father’s attempted suicide,…

Audience: 9th-12th

eBook

Why?

Why? explores one of the most tragic events in human history by addressing eight of the most commonly asked questions about the Holocaust: Why the Jews? Why the Germans? Why murder? Why this swift and sweeping? Why didn’t more…

Audience: 9th-12th

eBook

Rain of Ash

Jews and Roma died side by side in the Holocaust, yet the world did not recognize their destruction equally. In the years and decades following the war, the Jewish experience of genocide increasingly occupied the attention of legal experts,…

Audience: 9th-12th

eBook

How to Fight Anti-Semitism

WINNER OF THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD • The prescient founder of The Free Press delivers an urgent wake-up call to all Americans exposing the alarming rise of anti-Semitism in this country—and explains what we can do to defeat…

Audience: 9th-12th

eBook

The Postcard

Winner of the Choix Goncourt Prize, Anne Berest’s The Postcard is a vivid portrait of twentieth-century Parisian intellectual and artistic life, an enthralling investigation into family secrets, and poignant tale of a Jewish family devastated by the Holocaust and…

Audience: 9th-12th

eBook

First, They Erased Our Name

Through the eyes of a child, we learn about the historic persecution of the Rohingya people and witness the violence Habiburahman endured throughout his life until he escaped the country in 2000. First, They Erased Our Name is an…

Audience: 9th-12th

eBook

Rising Out of Hatred

The powerful story of how a prominent white supremacist changed his heart and mind. From the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, this is a book to help us understand the American moment and to help us better understand one another….

Audience: 9th-12th

Survival Stories

Gary B.

Gary describes the challenges faced by some of the newcomers to Shanghai, as well as his social life there. …

eBook

Moshe’s Children

Moshe’s Children presents the inspiring story of Moshe Zeiri, a Jewish carpenter responsible for rescuing hundreds of Jewish refugee children who had survived the Final Solution. During the liberation of Italy, Zeiri, a volunteer in the British Army in…

Audience: 9th-12th

eBook

The Cost of Free Land

“Sharply insightful . . . A monumental piece of work.”—The Boston GlobeAn award-winning author investigates the entangled history of her Jewish ancestors’ land in South Dakota and the Lakota, who were forced off that land by the United States…

Audience: 9th-12th

Teacher Guide

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