'Remember Our Faces'--Teaching about the Holocaust. ERIC Digest.

A Holocaust survivor recently implored social studies teachers to "remember our faces." This becomes an especially poignant plea when one considers the ages of the Holocaust survivors, rescuers, and liberators. This generation will soon be gone. Who will remain to tell their stories? As the 50th anniversary remembrance of World War II continues, the significance of the European Holocaust and its implications for teaching social studies at the middle and high school must be considered. Too often the Holocaust is forgotten in the recitation of dates and battles, commanders and campaigns. The annihilation of more than six million Jews cannot be described in the one or two paragraphs devoted to the Holocaust in the average social studies text. Though Auschwitz, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen, and other Nazi death camps are synonymous with horror, what of the identities of the victims of those camps? How do educators teach about those individuals who died in the camps, of those survivors who left the camps forever changed, or of those rescuers who risked their lives to help others? The goals of this ERIC Digest are to: (1) present a rationale for Holocaust education; (2) discuss curriculum placement for inclusion of the topic; (3) list organizations and resources available to help educators in teaching about the Holocaust; and (4) provide a bibliography of relevant materials in the ERIC database. (Author/DB)