Teaching Holocaust Geographies in Middle and Secondary Schools, Vol 1: Promoting Inquiry into Space, Genocide, and Civic Responsibility

This two-volume book seeks to provide support for teachers that intersects Holocaust, geography, and civic education. Teachers want to expand their knowledge and understanding of the Holocaust, their commitment to developing their students as participants in a democracy, and their understanding that pro-democracy education centers human rights in the curriculum. In other words, they are dedicated to countering indifference in their classrooms, schools, and communities. Yet, teachers struggle to use geographic skills to study Holocaust, to think of the Holocaust outside of the discipline of history. This is neither their fault nor a surprise. The Holocaust is seen as a subject to be taught in a history course. This "history bias" resulted from course offerings, state standards, professional development, and curriculum. Currently, the available resources documenting instructional examples about Holocaust geographies for middle and secondary teachers are limited and this absence of examples perpetuates the history bias. Thus, these volumes were developed to acknowledge the civics-focused work taking place in our schools, provide educators with a resource that balances theory and practice, and begin a conversation around teaching Holocaust geographies in our present time.