Bearing Witness: Understanding Holocaust Testimony Within Urban High School Students’ Lives

     “Bearing Witness: Understanding Holocaust Testimony Within Urban High Schools Student’s Lives” is a curriculum to be used in the urban high school in grade 9 and to be coupled with Eli Wiesel’s novel, Night.  This is a curriculum that can be used as a bridge from a social studies unit on World War II into an English class using the Yale University videos of Holocaust survivors. Students will watch videos of Father S. and Paul D.  Coupled with reading the School District of Philadelphia’s freshman year requirement of Wiesel’s Night with students being asked to address a trauma they have experienced or have seen first hand in their neighborhoods.  Students will be asked to act on behalf of others. Individuals will be asked to depict this trauma in some form of display for presentation of classroom. Choices for student display can be skits, poetry, short stories, interviews, or dances. Short films or power point presentations can also be produced.