Inheritance of Memory Holocaust Story Project
For educators

Teaching with Inheritance of Memory

Free, classroom-ready materials for middle school through university. Each lesson pairs survivor testimony with the second-generation reflections and journey maps at the heart of this project — grounding history in the lives of real families.

Lesson plans

Three ways into the stories

Each plan includes objectives, a procedure, primary-source handouts, and assessment prompts aligned to common history and language-arts standards.

Discussion questions

For reflection and conversation

Before reading

  1. What do you already know about how families were separated during the Holocaust?
  2. Why might a photograph survive when so much else was lost? What can — and can't — a photograph tell us?
  3. What does it mean to "inherit" a memory you did not personally experience?

Journeys & maps

  1. Choose one family. Trace both routes on the map. Where do they diverge, and why might that be?
  2. How does seeing a journey as a line on a map change the way you understand it?
  3. Many routes end far from where they began. What is gained, and what is left behind, in starting over?

Inheritance & memory

  1. The book pairs a survivor's voice with their child's. Where do the two accounts agree? Where do they differ?
  2. What responsibilities, if any, do later generations have toward these stories?
  3. How might you record and preserve a story from your own family?
Downloadable resources

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Files are provided free for educational, non-commercial use. Please credit the Holocaust Story Project. Replace these links with your hosted PDFs before publishing.