Spring 2026 Gizella Abramson Teaching the Holocaust Conference

8:30: Introductions/Housekeeping

• Introduction Slide Show
• Overview of the Gizella Abramson Holocaust Education Act and Resources Slide Deck

8:35-9:35: 2G Survivor Tomas Levi

• • Tomas Levi Email: levizinhogso@gmail.com

9:35-9:45: Break

9:45-11:00: Breakout Session #1 (Teachers choose one when they register in the morning): 

NC Council on the Holocaust Presentation: Guidelines and Rationale for Teaching the Holocaust 

In this session, participants will explore how to teach about the USHMM’s Guidelines for Teaching the Holocaust and consider their rationale for teaching about the Holocaust in their classroom. Participate in a discussion about these thoughtful guidelines and connect some of the key guidelines with lessons before creating a rationale for teaching the Holocaust, which will help teachers narrow their focus on what resources would be best to use with their own students.

• Guidelines for Teaching the Holocaust Slide Deck
• USHMM Guidelines for Teaching about the Holocaust Video
• Handout for Guidelines Activity
• Excerpt from The Assignment
• Define the Holocaust: Echoes and Reflections Lesson Comparing Different Definitions of the Holocaust
• Avoid Simple Answers to Complex Questions: USHMM Challenges of Escape Lesson
• Rationale for Teaching the Holocaust Slide Deck
• Rationale for Teaching the Holocaust Teacher Handout
• Video: The Myth of Race: Debunked
• Research about Holocaust Simulations:
  • https://www.adl.org/resources/tools-and-strategies/why-simulation-activities-should-not-be-used
  • https://echoesandreflections.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/WhySimulationActivitiesShouldNotBeUsed.pdf 
  • https://www.chalkbeat.org/2021/11/9/22745966/holocaust-lesson-regret/
  • https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Bsfi9WXLXPFLdpifkd-Hy4fAC7oRc1FO/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=107961532611341832976&rtpof=true&sd=true 

9:45-11:00: Breakout Session #1 (Teachers choose one when they register in the morning): 

Facing History and Ourselves: Resistance in the Holocaust: 

This session explores the many forms of Jewish resistance, from armed partisan movements in Europe to spiritual and cultural defiance in wartime North Africa. Through poetry, film, survivor testimony, and close analysis of Abba Kovner’s Ghetto Manifesto and camp narratives from Libya and Tunisia, participants examine how individuals preserved dignity and exercised agency under oppression. Interactive strategies model how to deepen historical understanding while helping students analyze resistance within a more complete story of the Holocaust.

NC Council on the Holocaust Presentation: Americans and the Holocaust: 

By using a guiding activity to explore the Americans and the Holocaust online exhibition from the USHMM, participants will examine the motives, pressures, and fears that shaped American attitudes and responses to the threats of Nazism and the Holocaust during the 1930s and 1940s. Participants will learn about actions taken at all levels of society—by the government, the media, other organizations, and individual citizens—and how opportunities for action changed over time. This lesson promotes reflection and critical thinking about the factors that shaped attitudes and actions during that time and the factors that influence us today, and also includes a lesson on how to use archives of American newspapers from that period to further explore what Americans knew about the Holocaust.

11:15-12:30: Breakout Session #2 (Teachers choose one when they register in the morning): 

NC Council on the Holocaust Presentation: Photo Narrative and Timeline of the Holocaust: 

This session will feature two hands-on lessons to help students define the Holocaust, analyze primary sources, and build a historical timeline of the Holocaust. Both lessons are from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and the NC Council on the Holocaust has some unique additions to the Timeline activity for teachers in NC, including two new layers. We highly recommend this session for all teachers, but especially those who are new to teaching about the Holocaust, as these lessons can provide a solid foundation for learning how and why the Holocaust happened.  

• Photo Narrative Slide Deck
• Photo Narrative Lesson Plan from USHMM
• Photographs of the Holocaust for Photo Narrative PDF (print two to a page)
• Timeline Lesson Slide Deck
• Timeline Lesson Student Handout
• Timeline Lesson NC Survivor PDF (print two to a page)
• Timeline Lesson Salvaged Pages Layer PDF (print two to a page)
• Click here to order the FREE timeline layer cards from the USHMM

11:15-12:30: Breakout Session #2 (Teachers choose one when they register in the morning): 

NC Council on the Holocaust Presentation: Danish Rescue Through Picture Books

This session will explore the Danish resistance and rescue of its Jewish population in October 1943. This effort was unique due to national unity and consensus that recognized Danish Jews as fellow citizens.  Ordinary citizens, fishermen, and officials managed to save 98% of the Jewish population by ferrying them to neutral Sweden. We will explore this topic using The Whispering Town and The Yellow Star picture books to anchor information, and also through using survivor and rescuer testimony.  

11:15-12:30: Breakout Session #2 (Teachers choose one when they register in the morning): 

Facing History and Ourselves: Memorials and Legacy

This lesson engages students in the processes of both responding to and creating memorials to the Holocaust. By doing so, they are forced to grapple with key questions about why history is important and how our memory of history is shaped. Students will begin by learning about several Holocaust memorials around the world and analyzing the choices that artists and communities made when creating them. Then they will design, plan, and create their own memorial to represent an idea, event, or person they believe is important to remember from the history of the Holocaust.

12:30-1:30: Lunch on your own (please return on time)

1:30-2:45: Breakout Session #3 (Teachers choose one when they register in the morning):

NC Council on the Holocaust: Expanding Depth and Rigor in Holocaust Education: Creative and Critical Approaches for High School Classrooms

This professional development session is designed for Holocaust educators who teach the Holocaust and are seeking to move beyond foundational content toward deeper instruction. Participants will explore strategies to expand historical complexity, strengthen analytical rigor, and foster meaningful student engagement while maintaining age-appropriate sensitivity. By the end of the session, educators will leave with practical tools, adaptable lesson frameworks, and renewed confidence to teach the Holocaust with greater depth, creativity, and intellectual rigor, empowering students to move from basic understanding to thoughtful historical analysis.

1:30-2:45: Breakout Session #3 (Teachers choose one when they register in the morning):

Echoes and Reflections: History and Features of Antisemitism: Understanding and Combating it Today

This session will provide an overview of how teachers can approach teaching about the history of antisemitism from the past to the present day, including common myths/tropes used throughout history. This program helps teachers educate about antisemitism by examining its complexities from historic and contemporary perspectives.

• Echoes and Reflections Website
• Antisemitism Unit for Echoes and Reflections
• Contemporary Antisemitism Unit for Echoes and Reflections
  • Student Handout: Who are the Jewish People?
  • Student Handout: About Jews and Judaism
  • Interactive Map of Jewish Populations
  • Student Handout: The Perseverance of Jewish Life
  • Definition of Antisemitism
  • Holocaust Denial, Distortion, and Inversion
• Testimony Video Guide
• iWitness
• USC Shoah Foundation: Dimensions in Testimony

1:30-2:45: Breakout Session #3 (Teachers choose one when they register in the morning):

Facing History and Ourselves: The Weimar Republic and the Fragility of Democracy: Rm #: PAC-163

This session examines the 14-year history of the Weimar Republic, the democratic government established in Germany after World War I. Participants explore the political, economic, cultural, and social forces that shaped the era, while analyzing the choices made by citizens and leaders that strengthened or weakened democracy. Grounded in the rise of the Nazi Party and the path to the Holocaust, the session invites reflection on how individual and collective choices influence the health of democracy—both then and now.

2:45-3:00: Break

Beginning at 2:45, the evaluation link on the left will be open for participants to evaluate the conference and receive a CEU certificate, which will be emailed to you when you submit your evaluation form. You can also use this short link to the evaluation: https://bit.ly/march5evaluation 

3:00-4:00: Holocaust Survivor Speaker: Renee Fink

Renee Fink is a Holocaust survivor whose life story spans continents, identities, and extraordinary courage. Born Renate Gabriele Laser in 1937 to German Jewish parents who fled Nazi Germany, Renee spent her earliest years in the Netherlands in a loving family. That childhood was shattered when she was separated from her parents at age four and placed into hiding with a Catholic resistance family, the van den Brinks. Today, Renee shares her journey to illuminate the enduring relevance of the Holocaust and to inspire others to stand up, speak out, and choose moral courage in the face of injustice.