Remembering the Holocaust
Session Description
This session explores visual representations of Holocaust stories, with a focus on Unsung Heroes. It emphasizes the importance of maturity and sensitivity when depicting the Holocaust and other genocides through art. Participants will learn strategies to help students thoughtfully consider perspective, audience, and message in their creative work. The session also guides educators in supporting students to produce age-appropriate artworks that align with sound educational principles. Through this process, participants will deepen their understanding of the Holocaust and discover how creating art can foster historical awareness, empathy, and compassion in students.
Learning Outcomes
- Reflect on the roles and responsibilities of individuals, groups, and nations when confronting the abuse of power, civil and human rights violations, and genocidal acts.
- Provide context for students to explore the fears, pressures, and motivations that influenced the decisions and behaviors of individuals during the Holocaust.
- Understand that the Holocaust occurred because individuals, organizations, and governments made choices that legalized discrimination and allowed prejudice, hatred, and ultimately mass murder to occur.
- Question the role of silence and indifference to the suffering of others, or to the infringement of civil rights in any society, as a factor that can—however unintentionally—perpetuate these problems.
- Recognize antisemitism and racism in Nazi ideology and their impact on the events of the Holocaust.
- Examine artwork created during the Holocaust (1933-1945) to help students learn about history and grow their empathy and compassion.
- Explore appropriate artistic representations of LMC Unsung Heroes from the Holocaust.
- Strengthen connections between visual art, language arts, and history/social studies.
About the Instructor
Megan Helberg
Program Coordinator, Anne Frank Center at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29201
Helberg received the prestigious honor of being named the 2020 Nebraska Teacher of the Year. She taught 8-12th grade students at Loup County Public School (her alma mater), Loup County, NE. She thoroughly enjoys learning through experience, which has been the catalyst to take her across the world. Holocaust and genocide education is a passion for Helberg, and she feels strongly about providing opportunities for her students that include glimpses into various cultures and ways of life.
In 2013, Megan received a Fund for Teachers grant to visit Holocaust-related sites in Poland, Germany, and the Czech Republic, and has spent time in Rwanda studying the 1994 genocide. She has also lived with an Indigenous tribe in the Amazon Rainforest. In 2016, she was named a Museum Teacher Fellow for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Helberg was selected as a 2021 Lowell Milken Center Fellow and continues to assist LMC as a facilitator. In 2022, Mrs. Helberg was selected to attend the Olga Lengyel Institute. In 2023, she received the distinguished honor of being named the Anne Frank Center Educator of the Year and was selected by Echoes and Reflections to attend their summer institute in Jerusalem participating in their intense Holocaust education program at the highly acclaimed institution, Yad Vashem.
