Teaching the Holocaust – Using the Concept of Bullying

Teaching the Holocaust can be an incredibly challenging endeavor. After all, most Western students would find it very difficult to imagine a national government actually turning against an entire people, or more precisely, an entire group of people and other subgroups (gypsies, homosexuals, people with physical and mental disabilities and political opponents). Fortunately, the Holocaust is foreign to most students today.

Of course, when teaching the Holocaust, it is imperative to try to make it as relevant to students’ lives as possible. Actually, this is true when teaching anything. Relevance promotes comprehension and retention. While the Holocaust may be foreign to students’ lives, bullying, unfortunately, is not that foreign to our students. Many of our students have experienced bullying in one form or another, and obviously some have acted like bullies. Ask students to consider why people bully others. Although bullying can certainly hurt the one being bullied, the bully is hurting too. After all, why bully if something doesn’t hurt?

Obviously, this question can become abundant. Why intimidate if one thing or another hurts you? Unfortunately, the answer makes too much sense. Bullies bully so they don’t have to think about their own pain and hurt. Instead of turning their attention inward toward their own problems, they turn their attention outward in a mean way. Through intimidation they feel powerful and important, something their own pains prevent them from feeling if they turn their attention inward.

So when teaching about the Holocaust, a good place to start would be with the reasons why the German Third Reich was in pain before committing Holocaust atrocities. In fact, they were feeling real pain. For one, they had just lost World War I. The Allied victors were extracting significant payments from the Germans. Obviously these payments hurt the German economy. A whole wheelbarrow full of money could buy a loaf of bread. Challenge students to consider the ways previously successful Germans might have felt about these new challenges and difficulties. Unfortunately, in light of an understanding of bullying, students will now be better able to understand the horrors of the Holocaust.