The Task

This WebQuest asks you to consider the perspectives of different real-life individuals who lived through the Holocaust. The goal is to understand their perspective while empathizing with their experiences. The purpose is not necessarily to accept the beliefs of those individuals. Rather, it is to learn one perspective, and compare it with other, perhaps different, perspectives.

You will be assigned to a group of four, with each group member assuming the role of one of four individuals: Oskar Schindler, Rudolf Hoess, Elie Wiesel, and Wladyslaw Szpilman.

Each group member will be responsible for the creation of a newspaper or circular that reflects the perspective of that historical individual and his experiences. The product of each member would be a work that might be distributed to camp guards, Jewish prisoners, or appropriate audience the individual might write for.

Each newspaper would include images of the Holocaust with appropriate captions, student created political cartoons, editorials, and of course, news stories. A copy of each member’s newspaper will be distributed to the other members of the group upon completion. Each member will be asked to explain why he or she created the newspaper in the manner they did.

The group would then discuss which elements of each paper best reflects the character who would have wrote them. Then, the group would put these pieces together into one newspaper publication that would be a holistic perspective of those individuals.