Teaching the Holocaust or slavery: Is role playing effective or fraught with problems?

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• A better resource for teaching the Holocaust is the new book Storming the Tulips. Written by Hannie J. Voyles, a survivor who went to school with Anne Frank, the book is an intimate encounter with history, as told by twenty former students of the 1st Montessori School in Amsterdam. They were children, contemporaries of Anne Frank, and this book is a companion to her Diary of a Young Girl. While Anne’s story describes her sequestered life in the Annex, Storming the Tulips reveals what children on the outside endured—on the streets, in hiding, and in the concentration camps.
  Their friends disappeared. Their parents sent them away. They were herded on trains and sent to death camps. They joined the Nazi youth. They hid Jews. They lost their families. They picked the pockets of the dead. They escaped. They dodged bullets. They lived in terror. They starved. They froze. They ate tulip bulbs. They witnessed a massacre. They collected shrapnel. And finally, they welcomed the Liberation. Some lost their families, most lost their homes, but they all lost their innocence as they fought to survive.
  Learn more here http://linkshrink.com/3pi

  • While I'm leaving this post because it is relevant, I will add the note that Nancy's email indicates she works for the publisher of the book she promotes here.