Confronting the "Final Solution": Teaching the Holocaust with Care and Courage, June 2026

“The Final Solution of the Jewish Question” was the Nazi policy to murder all of the Jews. It replaced earlier policies for forced relocation with a policy of systematic annihilation, and resulted in the murder of 6 million European Jews. This course utilizes primary resources and responsible pedagogy to empower educators to teach this difficult topic with care, courage, and confidence in the classroom.

Course Details:

• Course opens June 8th at 7AM EDT; approximately five hours to complete in total – at no cost.
• Proceed at your own pace each week, be supported by an instructor, and enjoy interaction with other educators.
• Complete all activities for a five-hour certificate.
• Graduate credit available through the University of the Pacific. Please visit their site for more information. 

Learning Goals:

1. Explore effective pedagogy when teaching the "Final Solution" and gain capacity and confidence to teach this difficult topic.
2. Definite the "Final Solution" and explain how it was driven by Nazi racial ideology which included virulent antisemitism.
3. Summarize th epurpose of the mobile killing squads and death camps in Nazi Europe, and the systems used to carry out mass annihilation.
4. Identify various forms of resistance that some Jewish people engaged in while imprisoned in concentration camps -- including spiritual, cultural, and armed resistance -- to help students recognize how victims maintained their humanity despite the constant threat of death.
5. Discover and learn how to incorporate a variety of primary resources in your classroom to document conditions of life and death in the camps to gain better understanding of the conditions victims endured during the period when the Final Solution was being carried out.

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