Subject: NJ Holocaust Curriculum Outlines
Date: 12 May 1995 12:10:24 -0700

     At its meeting on May 8, 1995, the New Jersey Commission approved
the following curriculum outlines for grades K through 12.
    These guidelines are identical to those that I posted in April,
except that the word "terribly" has been inserted in Objective #9 of
the K-2 outline to reflect Richard Green's perceptive comments
(received through the Internet), and sections in the outlines
concerning rescuers now include references to Bulgaria and Chiune
Sugihara.

Murray Laulicht, Chairman 
New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education

                
                    THE HOLOCAUST & GENOCIDE
                
                    K-8 Curriculum Outlines
                
                    7-12 Curriculum Outlines
                
                
                
                   The following outlines were initially developed by
the
                New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education and
                finalized with input from the Department of Education,
                the New Jersey School Boards Association, the New
Jersey
                Teachers Associations, and the Principals, Supervisors
                and Administrator Organizations.  These outlines
provide
                the basis for the teaching of a Holocaust and Genocide
                Curriculum in the elementary and secondary schools of
                New Jersey in accordance with chapter 13 of the New
                Jersey Laws of 1994.
                
                
                
                May 1995
                               

Grades K-2              LEARNING HOW TO BE FRIENDS


Goal:         People are different, and those differences make
              each of us special.

Objectives:   The student should be able to:

         1.   Understand the many different influences that  help
              to form a person:  family, age, gender, race,
              ethnic background, culture, environment, education,
              physical characteristics, religion, friends, etc.

         2.   Compare and contrast self to others.

         3.   Recognize and list differences in people.

         4.   Explain how each difference in people potentially
              enriches all people.

         5.   Recognize the things all of us share in common.

         6.   Understand concepts of respect and trust.

         7.   Apply concepts of respect and trust to self and to
              others.

         8.   Understand how words can hurt us or make us feel
              good.

         9.   Understand that feelings are your own, but that
              some feelings, such as feeling sorry for people who
              do terribly bad things, are wrong.

         10.  Understand that actions do affect self and others.

         11.  Plan ways that the student can be more trusting and
              caring of others to avoid hurting people

Grades 3-4                COMMUNITIES ARE PEOPLE

Goal:         Each person is strengthened and enriched by the
              differences they find and accept in others.

Objectives:   The student should be able to:

         1.   Identify physical characteristics of themselves and
              others.

         2.   Identify cultural contributions of people of
              different backgrounds.

         3.   Recognize those contributions people give to one
              another.

         4.   Understand the effects of our words and actions on
              others.

         5.   Define prejudice, discrimination, racism and
              sexism.

         6.   Give examples of prejudice in action against
              individuals and groups.

         7.   Explain how prejudice hurts everyone and ways we
              all (individually, as a community, a nation, a
              world) suffer because of it.

         8.   Give examples of times that prejudice has led to
              the persecution and killing of groups of people,
              such as the Holocaust.

         9.   Understand that in time of prejudice and
              persecution, some people are courageous and help
              the victim, some remain silent, and some are guilty
              of doing evil things to others.

         10.  Explain some of the reasons people choose to think
              and to act in caring or in hurtful ways.

         11.  Understand that prejudice and the hurtful actions
              it leads to can affect any individual or any group
              at any time.

         12.  Recognize and accept that each person is
              responsible for their actions.

         13.  Think of ways in which people can stand up for what
              they believe is right and good.

         14.  Develop a plan to be more thoughtful, caring and
              trusting of other

Grades 5-6                  PEOPLE NEED PEOPLE

Goal:         Prejudice hurts each of us as individuals and
              weakens the group as a whole.

OBJECTIVES:   The student should be able to:

         1.   Recognize that each of us has traits and attributes
              in which we take pride.

         2.   Recognize the values that influence each student.

         3.   Identify the sources from which people learn their
              values.

         4.   Define and explain the term "prejudice."

         5.   Explain the terms bigotry, discrimination, racism,
              stereotyping, scapegoating, ethnocentrism,
              anitsemitism and genocide.

         6.   Give examples of prejudice toward individuals and
              groups in history and in the present.

         7.   Analyze how prejudice and discrimination may lead
              to genocide.

         8.   Define the term "The Holocaust."

         9.   Analyze the reasons why laws are adopted.

         10.  Explain the basic ideas contained in the Nuremberg
              Laws and the impact they had on the events that
              followed leading to the Holocaust.

         11.  Define the term "Kristallnacht."

         12.  Analyze reasons why individuals and groups act in
              certain ways.

         13.  Analyze why people and nations act in the following
              ways:  bullies, gangs, rescuers, heroes, and silent
              bystanders.

         14.  Examine various aspects of Nazi policies and their
              impact on individuals and groups (laws, isolation,
              ghettos, murder, slave labor, separation of
              families, starvation and sickness, deportation, and
              concentration camp).

         15.  Identify other groups who were victims of Hitler
              and Nazi policies:  handicapped, Gypsies/Roma,
              Poles, Communists, Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses,
              Anti-Nazis, Soviet prisoners of war.

         16.  Describe and analyze the responses of nations, who
              were allies of the United States or Germany, to the
              Nazi policies of persecution and mass murder.

         17.  Define different types of resistance that may occur
              in various situations.

         18.  Give examples of different types of resistance made
              by victims, heroes, rescuers, and partisans.

         19.  Analyze the actions and motivations of righteous
              individuals, groups and nations.

         20.  Explain why it is important to us today to study
              about the Holocaust and genocide.

         21.  Analyze how we might prevent these occurrences from
              ever happening again.

         22.  Demonstrate an understanding that each of us is
              faced with many choices and the difficulty in
              making choices.

         23.  Understand that choices have consequences for the
              group and the individual

Grades 7-8            CHOOSING TO MAKE A BETTER WORLD

Goal:         Individual choices and actions influence group
              attitudes and behavior; the group influences the
              individual's behavior.

Objectives:   The student should be able to:

    1.   Recognize various types of human behavior, positive and
         negative.

    2.   Review and explain the following behaviors:  perpetrator
         (persecutor), collaborator, bystander, righteous person,
         rescuer, and hero.

    3.   Analyze why people and nations act as the following: 
         perpetrator (persecutor), collaborator, bystander,
         righteous people, rescuer, and hero.

    4.   Understand that behavior reflects individual choices and
         decisions.

    5.   Evaluate the role of personal values in making choices
         and decisions.

    6.   Understand the impact of group dynamics on individual
         choices and actions.

    7.   Compare and contrast various types of genocide and give
         examples from history and the present.

    8.   Apply the analysis of conditions that may lead to
         genocide to several examples in history.

    9.   Explain why the term "The Holocaust" has been applied to
         the genocide carried out against the Jews during World
         War II.

    10.  Examine the various aspects of Nazi policies and their
         impact on individuals and groups (laws, isolation,
         ghettos, murder, slave labor, deportation, labor camps,
         death camps, concentration camps, physical and mental
         torture, and the final solution).

    11.  Understand and analyze the use of propaganda by Hitler
         and the Nazi regime.

    12.  Compare and contrast different forms of resistance that
         may occur in various situations (passive, slowdown,
         direct, moral, economic boycott, physical, etc.)

    13.  Analyze the nature of resistance and give examples of
         different types of resistance offered by victims, heroes
         and rescuers - as individuals (e.g., Anne Frank, Oskar
         Schindler, Raoul Wallenberg, Chiune Sugihara); groups
         (e.g., Vilna and other partisans, White Rose movement,
         Zegota); communities (e.g., Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and
         citizens of Le Chambon); and nations (e.g., Denmark,
         Italy and Bulgaria).

    14.  Analyze the findings of the Nuremberg Tribunal.

    15.  Evaluate the impact of the Holocaust on our lives today.

    16.  Analyze why some people say the Holocaust or a particular
         genocide never occurred.

    17.  Predict whether a future Holocaust or genocide can occur
         again.  If yes, explain why.

    18.  Analyze how we might prevent these occurrences from ever
         happening again.

    19.  Understand the importance of moral responsibility in
         making choices.

    20.  Understand the consequences of certain choices in terms
         of human pain and happiness, and human construction and
         destruction

                          7th Grade - 12th Grade


I.  The Nature of Human Behavior

    1.   Examine human behaviors of obedience, conformity,
         silence, courage, integrity, martyrdom, empathy, caring,
         cruelty, collaboration, and other positive and negative
         behaviors in relation to personal relationships.

    2.   Draw preliminary conclusions about human nature and
         behavior.


II. From Prejudice to Genocide

    1.   Define and determine the causes of prejudice,
         scapegoating, bigotry, discrimination and genocide.

    2.   Compare contemporary examples of hatred, prejudice,
         discrimination and genocide.

    3.   Understand the history of antisemitism from ancient times
         to 1933.

    4.   Analyze the relationship, if any, between
         education/culture and the potential for genocide.  Why
         was the Holocaust perpetrated by a civilized, highly
         educated people?

    5.   Study ideologies related to prejudice and how they might
         lead to a genocide: discrimination based on race, sexual
         orientation, creed, gender, religion, social class, age,
         ethnicity.

    6.   Reassess human nature in light of examples of prejudice,
         scapegoating, bigotry, discrimination and genocide.  To
         where would tolerance, respect, acceptance lead?


III.     The Rise of Nazism: Prelude to the Holocaust

    1.   Analyze the background of German political, economic and
         social thought in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

    2.   Assess the domestic and worldwide conditions that
         influenced Germany after World War I and contributed to
         the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.

    3.   Investigate reasons for and the impact of the decline of
         the Weimar Republic.

    4.   Examine the role of Jews in Germany before the rise of
         Hitler.

    5.   Determine why Nazi philosophy and government appealed and
         still appeals to certain aspects of human nature or
         behavior.

    6.   Study the life of Adolf Hitler.

    7.   Evaluate the role of the media and propaganda in relation
         to Nazi ideology.

    8.   Develop generalizations about the reasons for the rise of
         the Nazi state.

    9.   Reassess human nature in light of knowledge about
         Hitler's life and the Nazi Party to 1933.


IV. Persecution to Mass Murder:  The Holocaust

    1.   Evaluate the extent to which Nazi policies, laws and
         teachings in the years immediately following their rise
         to power prepared the foundation for the Holocaust. 
         Examine the erosion of Jewish rights, boycotts of Jewish
         businesses, and the dehumanization of the Jewish people.

    2.   Describe changes in the lives and legal rights of Jews in
         Germany after the rise of the Nazis to power:  the
         Nuremberg Laws.

    3.   Investigate the escalation of Nazi policies of
         persecution and murder of Jews, which culminated in what
         the Nazis called:  "The Final Solution," to include (a)
         Euthanasia Program; (b) Kristallnacht; (c) the isolation
         and ghettoization (concentration) of Jews; (d) the
         Einsatzgruppen; and (e) the Wannsee Conference.

    4.   Compare and contrast the operation and conditions of the
         concentration camps and death camps in Germany and in
         other occupied countries.

    5.   Review the literature, art, and music of the Holocaust to
         determine the motivations, insights and interpretations
         of human experience that they reflected, including acting
         as a form of resistance.

    6.   Analyze the roles in the Holocaust of business/industry;
         medical, scientific, educational and legal
         professions/systems; and the church.

    7.   Analyze the responses to the Nazi persecution policies by
         Germans and collaborators from other nations.

    8.   Evaluate the continuing role of the mass media and
         propaganda in Nazi Germany, including use of the "Big
         Lie" and the corruption of language.

    9.   Investigate the reasons why specific groups become
         victims of the Nazis, including children, Gypsies, Soviet
         prisoners of war, Blacks, Jehovah's witnesses, the
         handicapped, homosexuals, and others, and investigate the
         reasons for their respective treatment.

    10.  Examine the war plans and priorities of the United States
         during the World War II as they relate to the Holocaust,
         including:  (a) the Evian Conference; (b) the St. Louis,
         (c) the Bermuda Conference; and (d) the failure to bomb
         Auschwitz or the railroad tracks leading to Auschwitz.

    11.  Explore eye-witness accounts of the Holocaust by
         survivors and liberators.

    12.  Develop a chronology of the Holocaust, 1933-1945.

    13.  Define the Holocaust:  the Shoah.

    14.  Reassess human nature and behavior in light of events in
         Nazi controlled areas from 1933-1945.


V.  Resistance and Intervention and Non Action

    1.   Analyze Jewish physical and spiritual resistance to the
         Holocaust.

    2.   Examine resistance to the Holocaust by non-Jewish people
         in Germany (e.g., the White Rose movement) and in the
         Nazi occupied countries (the Righteous Gentiles).

    3.   Assess the limited responses against the Holocaust of (a)
         the United States and the Allies; (b) the Vatican; (c)
         religious organizations and leaders; and (d) the media.

    4.   Analyze the responses of American Jews to the Holocaust.

    5.   Define heroic behavior, and identify those people who had
         the courage to care during the Holocaust, such as Raoul
         Wallenberg, Oskar Schindler, Chiune Sugihara and the
         people of Le Chambon, Denmark, Italy and Bulgaria.

    6.   Reassess human nature in light of the local and worldwide
         responses to the Holocaust.


VI. Genocide/Atrocities Against A People

    1.   Define genocide, atrocity, random acts of violence.

    2.   Understand the methods of how to study a genocide and
         atrocities.

    3.   Define different forms of genocide and atrocities:

         political      cultural       religious
         economic       racial         physical

    4.   Review and study genocides and atrocities of the past
         such as:

         African American (slavery)    Native American
         Armenian                      Cambodian

         Individual communities may choose other areas to study.

    5.   Review and discuss current events regarding genocide and
         atrocities, including but not limited to Rwanda, Bosnia.

    6.   Compare and contrast the similarities and differences
         between the Holocaust, genocide and atrocities.


VII.     Related Issues of Conscience and Moral Responsibility

    1.   Differentiate between crime and war crime.

    2.   Examine issues of guilt and responsibility.

    3.   Assess the effectiveness of the Nuremberg War Crimes
         Tribunal.

    4.   Assess the relationship between the Holocaust and the
         establishment of the State of Israel.

    5.   Examine post-Holocaust persecution of Jews in Eastern
         Europe.

    6.   Analyze the rise of the Nazi movement in Germany in the
         1990's and that country's responses.

    7.   Examine contemporary issues of conscience and moral
         responsibility (for example: internment of Japanese-
         Americans; use of the atomic bomb; the Vietnam War; civil
         rights movement; apartheid; Serbian policy of "ethnic
         cleansing"; etc.)

    8.   Assess the implications of the Holocaust and genocide for
         the present and the future.

    9.   Assess the moral and philosophical implications of recent
         antisemitic incidents and other forms of prejudice,
         discrimination, bigotry, and racism in American society.

    10.  Evaluate individual and collective responsibility for the
         Holocaust and genocide.

    11.  Evaluate the uniqueness of the events of the Holocaust
         and the universal lessons that may be learned.

    12.  Evaluate the relationship of the Holocaust to our lives.

    13.  Evaluate the impact of the Holocaust upon survivors,
         including the hidden children.

    14.  Examine the contributions to the world made by survivors
         of the Holocaust and genocides.

    15.  Examine the impact of the Holocaust and genocide on the
         families of survivors.

    16.  Assess the contributions to the world that might have
         been made by victims of the Holocaust and genocide.

    17.  Examine the reasons why the Holocaust and genocide must
         be studied.

    18.  Hypothesize whether or not a Holocaust or genocide can
         happen again.

    19.  Examine recent events in Rwanda, Bosnia/Herzegovina, and
         republics of the former Soviet Union; bias crimes locally
         and nationally in the United States; and the reappearance
         of Nazism and hatred around the world.

    20.  Evaluate the responsibility of each individual to prevent
         another Holocaust or genocide.

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