The Florida Holocaust Museum offers free teacher training across the state.
These trainings cover a variety of topics from introductory sessions for teachers who are new to Holocaust Education through more in-depth workshops on specific aspects of Holocaust history as applicable for Social Studies, Language Arts, and Character Education. Training can be conducted in-person and online.
Upcoming Teacher Training & Programs
How Jews Lived: Life Before the Holocaust
Tuesday, November 11
5:30 PM – 7:30 PM EST
Zoom
When teaching about the Holocaust, it is not enough to teach how Jews were murdered; we must also teach students how Jews lived. Likewise, it’s not enough to teach Nazi stereotypes of Jews; we must educate students about Jewish life in Europe before World War II and give them an accurate picture of the group most targeted by the Nazis.
Using the 1200 interviews and 23,000 digitized photographs of Jewish life in 15 Central and Eastern European countries collected by Centropa (www.centropa.org), and The Florida Holocaust Museum’s collection of prewar Jewish life, we will explore the diversity of early 20th century European Jewish life (religious, social, economic, geographic), and the historical context from which Jews in Western, Central, and Eastern Europe faced the Nazis and their collaborators.
You will leave with classroom materials from both The Florida Holocaust Museum and Centropa you can use immediately to teach your students about Jewish life before the Holocaust.
On-Demand Teacher Training & Programs
The Florida Holocaust Museum is excited to offer recordings of our teacher trainings and programs on-demand. This resource is free for educators. Register at the link to access a program’s recording.
Using Photographs to Teach about the Holocaust
Teaching about the Holocaust with photographs is a powerful way to reach students through a medium they’re familiar with while cultivating critical analytic skills. Photographs taken by the Nazis to record the destruction of the Jews for posterity or those taken by Jews to document what was happening to them might look similar, but they tell very different stories—or, they tell the same story from very different perspectives.
In this two-hour online presentation, The Florida Holocaust Museum and Centropa share photographs and discuss how you can use them to teach the history and stories of the Holocaust. When they register, educators will be able to access all the resources discussed during the presentation, including photographs shown, and specific activities and ideas for using them.
Holocaust Rescue Stories
In the midst of the fear, hate, and violence that swept through Europe during the Holocaust, some people stood up for the persecuted Jews. Danish leaders, police, and citizens resisted and rescued most of the Jews in their country by hiding them and sending them to Sweden via boats. Bulgaria’s religious, political, legal, medical, and other leaders protested the deportation of Jews, as did their citizens—and the Jews within the core area of Bulgaria were saved (though Jews living in territory Bulgaria acquired during the war were sent to death camps). Great Britain took in almost 10,000 Jewish children on the Kindertransport. And individuals throughout war-embattled Europe risked their lives to rescue Jews.
In this two-hour online presentation, The Florida Holocaust Museum and Centropa explore Holocaust rescue stories and share materials for teaching your students about the many ways nations and individuals stood up to save Jews during the Holocaust.
The FHM with Yahad In-Unum: The Holocaust by Bullets
On Tuesday, October 1, 2024, Yahad – In Unum and The Florida Holocaust Museum led a teacher training focusing on the history of the Holocaust by Bullets.
Learn about Yahad – In Unum’s investigative methodology of research and field work, discover the range of primary source materials central to Yahad – In Unum’s work, investigate in depth an excerpt from an eyewitness testimony and how this can be used to enhance student critical thinking skills, and analyze the five steps of the crime typical of nearly every mass shooting perpetrated by the Einsatzgruppen.
The Life and Art of Toby Knobel Fluek
On Wednesday, August 14, 2024, The Florida Holocaust Museum presented a teacher training with Professor Rakhmiel Peltz from Drexel University, featuring the life story and art of Toby Knobel Fluek.
A survivor of the Holocaust, Toby Knobel Fluek (of blessed memory) became an artist later in life. Using her art, she illustrated a unique view of Jewish life in Eastern Europe before and during the Holocaust. Toby Fluek’s art helps us learn about the life shattered first through Russian occupation and then because of the devastation wreaked by the Nazis and their collaborators.
The Shoes on the Danube: An Interactive Lesson Exploring the Memorialization of a Massacre
On Wednesday, April 17, 2024, The Florida Holocaust Museum, Centropa, and the Holocaust Center for Humanity presented an interactive lesson teachers can use to: teach about memory/how we memorialize historic events; engage students in a geography-based approach with what the Holocaust was and how it was humanly possible; and explore how personal stories—coupled with geography—can inform our learning about the Holocaust in specific places.
Using Google Earth, film clips, and primary source interview excerpts from Centropa, this lesson will study the placement of the memorial, explore its efficacy as a public remembrance, and discuss what it teaches us about the actions of Hungarians against their Jewish neighbors. Appropriate for grades 6-12.
Stories of the Holocaust in Hungary
On March 19, 1944, the Nazis occupied Hungary. Prior to this date, approximately 63,000 Hungarian Jews had died or were killed by the Hungarian Arrow Cross fascist regime. In little over a year, over 500,000 more Jews were murdered or died of malnutrition before April 1945, when Soviet troops succeeded in pushing the last of the German troops and Arrow Cross collaborators out of the country.
To commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Nazi occupation of Hungary and the devastation of Hungarian Jewry, Centropa—an organization that conducted 176 interviews with elderly Jews in Hungary between 2000 and 2009—and The Florida Holocaust Museum hosted a webinar on Thursday, February 22, 2024 to share the history and resources to help you teach about this important but little taught part of Holocaust history.
When They Turn Your City Against You: The Anschluss, Kristallnacht, and Vienna’s Jews
On November 29, 2023, The Florida Holocaust Museum, in partnership with Centropa, hosted an interactive lesson about how the Jews of Vienna lived in the city they loved, and how the Nazis turned that city against them when they invaded Austria in March 1938 (the Anschluss). This lesson was created and presented by Lauren Granite, US Education Director of Centropa, and Paul Regelbrugge, Director of Education of Seattle’s Holocaust and Humanity Center.
Using Google Earth, film clips, and primary source interview excerpts from Centropa (www.centropa.org), in this online presentation teachers will explore questions of identity, what constitutes home, what the events of 1938 in Vienna meant for Jews, and the impact of personal stories when teaching about the Holocaust. All materials needed for teaching this lesson to students are provided. Appropriate for grades 6 – 12.
Chutz-POW! Superheroes of the Holocaust: Teach About the Holocaust with Comic Books
On October 25, 2023, The Florida Holocaust Museum hosted a webinar with Marcel L. Walker, lead artist and project coordinator for Chutz-POW! Superheroes of the Holocaust, an anthology comic book series that features authentic stories of Jewish and non-Jewish Upstanders during the Holocaust. Marcel’s presentation featured a history of comic books being used for social good, background on how the Chutz-POW! series is created, and how you can use these comic books to teach about the Holocaust and Upstanders in your classroom.
CHUTZ-POW! SUPERHEROES OF THE HOLOCAUST is an acclaimed and ongoing comic-book series created and published by The Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh that seeks, as its mission, to place stories of Upstanders’ courage, resilience, and sacrifice at the forefront of Holocaust awareness. Each volume is an anthology by award-winning creative collaborators, telling true-life stories of heroic survivors who brought light into some of the darkest recesses of World War II. Created for both general and scholastic audiences ages 12 and up, CHUTZ-POW! unravels the larger narrative of the Holocaust with thematic volumes that explore the documented micro-histories of its profiled subjects. With vivid, historically-accurate art and stirring fact-based writing, these are stories that defy the expectations of conventional superhero comic books.
The Tower of Life: How Yaffa Eliach Restored Humanity to the Victims of Her Town
On September 13, 2023, The Florida Holocaust Museum and author Chana Stiefel led a teacher training session presenting classroom lessons from her award-winning children’s book The Tower of Life: How Yaffa Eliach Rebuilt Her Town in Stories and Photographs (Scholastic, 2022).
Learn about the true story of Holocaust survivor and historian Yaffa Eliach and her journey to collect thousands of photographs of her beloved Eishyshok, which she used to create The Tower of Life, a central exhibit at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Discover how to incorporate this unique story into the classroom, the importance of museums and memorials in preserving its history, and the relevance of Yaffa’s legacy in modern times.
Stories of Bulgaria’s Jews and the Holocaust
Bulgaria sent to their deaths nearly 12,000 Jews in Bulgarian-occupied Greece and Yugoslavia. Yet, 48,000 Jews lived in Bulgaria before the Holocaust and nearly all of them were alive at the end of the Second World War. Through a mixture of luck, good friends, and civil courage, Bulgaria’s Jews were not sent away to Nazi death camps in March 1943 (80 years ago next month). Two months later, however, 20,000 Jews from Sofia were deported internally, consigned to forced labor, and stripped of their assets, living in terrible conditions.
Access this webinar to learn about this little-known story of the Holocaust and the people who lived through it. This training was presented by The Florida Holocaust Museum and Centropa on March 2, 2023.
How Jews Lived: Stories of Children and Teens Before the Holocaust
This training will help educators learn about the history of Central and Eastern European Jewish life, return to classes with primary sources for teaching about the lives of young Jews prior to the Holocaust, and learn about new activities, lessons, and projects you can do with your students.
This training was presented by The Florida Holocaust Museum and Centropa on October 20, 2022.
Teaching About the Holocaust with The FHM’s Virtual Library
This training was presented by The Florida Holocaust Museum on October 13, 2022. During this training, educators will learn guidelines and standards for Holocaust education, how to use Holocaust literature in their classroom, and how to access The FHM’s FREE virtual library for Holocaust and character education.
Teaching About the Holocaust with We Share The Same Sky: Training Presented by Award-Winning Author & Educator Rachael Cerrotti
On April 5, 2022, The Florida Holocaust Museum hosted author and educator Rachael Cerrotti for a teacher workshop on how to use her acclaimed podcast and book, We Share the Same Sky, in the classroom.
This training explores topics such as how to teach the Holocaust from a contemporary and universal perspective and how to use the stories of survivors to engage students in meaningful conversation about their own personal experiences and family histories. In addition, Rachael will introduce teachers to what classroom-ready resources are available online to support her work. Learn more about Rachael’s work at www.sharethesamesky.com.
Jews of Spanish Heritage – Part 2
This training features Centropa’s 12-minute film “Survival in Sarajevo,” which tells the story of how Jews — Holocaust survivors and their children — opened the doors of their synagogue to Muslims, Catholics, and Orthodox Serbs during the Bosnian war, and they all worked together to survive and get through the war.
The Florida Holocaust Museum also presents its collection of art created by children in Sarajevo during the war in the 1990s.
This training aired originally on March 9, 2022 to prepare teachers to teach about the 30th anniversary of the Bosnian War.
Jews of Spanish Heritage in the Holocaust: for Spanish, ESL, and teachers of any subject who teach Heritage Spanish Speakers – Part 1
This training features a presentation by The FHM on the guidelines for teaching about the Holocaust and an introduction to the history of Sephardic Jewry through Centropa’s films “El Otro Camino: 1492” and “Three Promises: The Story of the Kalefs of Belgrade.”
This training aired originally on March 2, 2022 and is geared towards teaching Spanish-speaking learners.
The USHMM and The FHM: Resources for Holocaust Education
Offered in partnership with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, this training discusses resources that can be used to teach about the Holocaust for different grade levels. This training was originally recorded on November 4, 2021 at The Florida Holocaust Museum.
Holocaust Education Week Activities using Primary and Secondary Sources: Kristallnacht and the Kindertransport
Compelling resources, dynamic ways to use them to teach about two critical events in Holocaust history.
Presented by Lauren B. Granite, Ph.D., Director of Education, North America at Centropa and Yara Lugo, Manager of Outreach Programs at The FHM. This training was originally presented in October 2021.
Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust
The Florida Holocaust Museum in partnership with Yeshiva University’s Emil A. and Jenny Fish Holocaust and Genocide Studies Center presents this special teacher workshop featuring keynote speaker Dr. Mordechai Paldiel. This workshop focuses on Jewish and non-Jewish rescuers of Jews during Shoah. Presented by Dr. Shay Pilnik, Director of the Emil A. and Jenny Fish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Yeshiva University, Ursula Szczepinska, Director of Education & Research at The FHM, and Dr. Mordechai Paldiel.
Dr. Mordechai Paldiel is a leading scholar on the rescue of Jews during the Holocaust. He earned an MA and PhD in Holocaust Studies at Temple University, Philadelphia. Paldiel was the director of the Righteous Among the Nations Department at Yad Vashem – Israel’s national Holocaust Memorial, from 1982 to 2007. Under his stewardship, some 18,000 non-Jewish men and women from various countries were awarded the prestigious honor of “Righteous Among the Nations” for their role in saving Jews from the Nazis. Dr. Paldiel has published numerous books and articles on the rescue of Jews during the Holocaust. He currently teaches several courses at Yeshiva University – Stern College and Touro College in New York City.
Teaching about the Holocaust at a High School Level
Presented by Ursula Szczepinska, Director of Education & Research at The FHM, this training originally took place on July 16, 2021 with St. Johns County Schools. This training discusses resources from The Florida Holocaust Museum and other organizations for Holocaust education at the high school level. It includes print and digital resources based on primary sources for different grades at a high school level.
Genocide in the 20th Century: A Case Study of Rwanda
Presented by Ursula Szczepinska, Director of Education & Research at The FHM, this training took place on June 30, 2021 with the Panhandle Area Educational Consortium. It starts with guidelines for teaching about genocide, the origins of the term, and recommendations for resources that can be used in the classroom. The program then focuses on the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and highlights its history as well as grade-appropriate resources based on primary sources pertaining to this genocide.
Teaching about the Holocaust through Primary & Secondary Sources
Perfect for Holocaust Education Week lessons and programming, teachers use Centropa and The FHM resources to teach Holocaust, social studies, ELA, art, foreign language, filmmaking, photography, and civics.
Presented by Ursula Szczepinska, Director of Education & Research at The FHM and Lauren B. Granite, Ph.D., Director of Education, North America at Centropa. This training was originally presented in April 2021.
Student Programs
The FHM presents virtual programs for students during Holocaust Education Week and throughout the school year to support their learning. Recordings of past programs are available to watch on-demand.
Q&A with Holocaust Survivor Jackie Albin
On Thursday, November 7, 2024, teachers and students joined The FHM online for a live Q&A with Holocaust Survivor Jackie Albin.
Jacqueline (Jackie) Albin was born in Belfort, France in 1937, two years before the beginning of World War II. When Jackie was two years old, her father was drafted into the French army where he served from 1939-1942. Jackie and her mother lived with her grandparents in Gex, a town in France near the Switzerland border, that had become part of the occupied zone. In 1942, her grandparents were sent to Auschwitz where they were gassed on their arrival. In 1944, when the Germans were losing the war, Jackie, her mother, her newly born sister, and a group of others fled to the mountains because it was becoming more and more dangerous for them. Her father, who had joined the French Resistance, stayed behind to fight. After the war ended, Jackie’s mother was able to reunite with her mother and brothers–German Jews who managed to leave Germany in time and who were already living in Chicago.
Watch Jackie Albin’s full testimony video for free at www.thefhm.org/for-educators/testimony-videos/.
My Mother’s Daughter: A Virtual Testimony and Book Reading Event with Halina Herman, Holocaust Survivor
On November 10, 2022, The FHM presented My Mother’s Daughter, a virtual book reading and testimony event for teachers and students featuring Holocaust survivor and author Halina Herman.
Halina Herman (née Kramarz) was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1939. Her father was a physician and was sent away by the Germans to a slave-labor camp in April 1941. Halina never saw him again. Halina’s mother obtained false papers and got a job as a maid in Kraków. She placed Halina with a non-Jewish family who raised her as a Christian child. After the war, Halina was reunited with her mother and continued to go to church until the mother revealed their Jewish identity to her in 1949. They went to France as refugees, where they stayed until they were able to immigrate to Canada. Most of Halina’s immediate family died in the Holocaust. Halina is a practicing clinical psychologist and lives in Florida with her husband, Edward Herman, who is also a Holocaust survivor.
Anne Frank Center USA & The FHM: Virtual Tour of the Secret Annex
Join The Florida Holocaust Museum and The Anne Frank Center USA for a special tour of the Secret Annex where Anne Frank and her family and friends hid from the Nazis. This tour has been developed specially for two age groups: students in grades 5-8, and high school students. This program originally aired on November 12, 2021.
Letters from Anne & Martin
Combining the iconic voices of Anne Frank and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., this compelling production evokes the timeless message of hope for peace and a more united world. The production is a dramatic presentation of parallel worlds and kindred spirits in our history, drawn entirely from the text of Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl (1947, expanded 1995) and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963).
This production was written, produced, and directed by The Anne Frank Center USA.