Methodology

Teaching compendium

collection

The HerStories Teaching Compendium is a comprehensive educational resource designed to explore Jewish women’s experiences in 20th-century Europe, inspired by the seven biographies in the HerStories project. It is made by teachers, educators, and researchers who took part in the project with the aim to equip educators with a variety of tools to introduce women's stories into classrooms, fostering empathy, historical awareness, and thoughtful discussion around themes of gender, identity, religion, persecution and resilience. With lesson plans, oral history methodologies, and interdisciplinary activities, the compendium makes history more accessible, especially for students in today’s diverse classroom environments.

It's available both as a downloadable PDF file and as a section on this website.

Historical background

Historical background: Greece

article by Alexandra Patrikiou, Jewish Museum of Greece

This document gives an overview of the historical background of Greece during the early 20th century, to better understand and contextualize Lisa Pinhas' biography.

Historical background: Spain

article by Manu Valentin, Mozaika

This document gives an overview of the historical background of Slovakia during the early 20th century, to better understand and contextualize the biography of Rosl Heilbrunner.

Historical background: Slovakia

article by Jana Turanska, Centropa Germany

This document gives an overview of the historical background of Slovakia during the early 20th century, to better understand and contextualize the biography of Katarína Löfflerová.

Historical background: Poland

article by Anna Wencel, Galicia Jewish Museum

This article gives an overview of the historical background of Poland during the early 20th century, to better understand and contextualize the biography of Irena Wygodzka.

Historical background: Germany

article by Johanna Blender, Centropa Germany

This document gives an overview of the historical background of Slovakia during the early 20th century, to better understand and contextualize the biography of Rosa Rosenstein.

Historical background: Czech Republic / Czechoslovakia

article by Jana Turanska, Centropa Germany

This document gives an overview of the historical background of Czechoslovakia during the early 20th century, to better understand and contextualize the biography of Katarína Löfflerová.

Historical background: Hungary

article by Maria Lieberman, Centropa Hungary

This document gives an overview of the historical background of the Jewish history in Hungary, to better understand and contextualize the biography of Vera Szekeres-Varsa.

Student exercises

Photo album of women

exercise by Sára Szilágyi, Centropa

Students learn to discuss the topic of Holocaust by comparing pictures of women Holocaust survivors, and talking about their stories. The idea of this exercise is to make Holocaust stories personal and visual (while at the same time not too graphic or violent), in order to let students relate better and gain a concrete idea about what people went through. In this exercise, students will discover particular faces and life stories

Posters of women

exercise by Sára Szilágyi, Centropa

Students learn about Holocaust history through individual women’s stories, and apply their knowledge through creating their own poster. By making informative posters, students learn how to sort out important information and remember it through active learning. Students “educate themselves” by becoming creators of their own learning material. 

Women’s stories

exercise by Éva Marton, teacher

This exercise is divided into seven practical parts. Its aim is to help students imagine stories from the Holocaust, and contrast them with realities learned from women’s biographies. The idea is to let students work with their imaginationstory-tellingmap-readingpicture interpretation and text analysis. Elements such as music, live art and personal map creation should help students be personally engaged with some Holocaust stories, while keeping the learning atmosphere playful

Women writing about their Nazi camp experiences

exercise by Jewish Museum of Greece

This exercise

  • Extends students' spatial and temporal awareness of the Holocaust;
  • Adds depth and nuance to understanding of the evolution and development of the Holocaust;
  • Raises awareness about women who survived the Holocaust and the ways in which they communicated their experiences;
  • Helps students improve their research skills;
  • Challenges the understanding of the Nazi concentration camps (often limited and Auschwitz-centric), through a comparative analysis of two camp experiences . 
  • Highlights the diversity of experiences and responses

A poster for Lisa: narrating the Holocaust through a woman’s eyes

exercise by Jewish Museum of Greece

After hearing about Lisa Pinhas' life and seeing photos of her, students will create a poster about her that reflects her experiences. The tool for this task is Google Jamboard.  This exercise aims at developing historical knowledge of camp life in Auschwitz-Birkenau, at adding depth and nuance to understanding the woman’s perspective and at practicing analytical competencies, as well as familiarising them with multimodal texts. This exercise helps students to reflect on the ethical responsibility for narrating the past.

Discussing 20th century Jewish history through photographs

exercise by Fabian Rühle (Centropa) & Mónica Buzali (Mozaika)

This exercise is meant to encourage students to look beyond the image. Students should develop values such as empathy by relating to the people in the photo.

The activity includes a discussion about the significance of photos in which students are asked to explain why photos are important in general and why specifically photos shared by Holocaust survivors are a unique historical source.

External resources for teaching women's history

A Practical Guide to Teaching Women's History

lecture by Organization of American Historians in Angličtina
An online lecture on a teaching project about the history of American women

Jewish Women´s Archive

collection in Angličtina
Contains encyclopedia, educational resources including lesson plans, activities, teaching tools,

"You Said the Words You Wanted Me to Hear but I Heard The Words You Couldn't Bring Yourself to Say": Women's First Person Accounts of the Holocaust

article by Judith Tydor Baumel in Angličtina

A journal article about Jewish women's narratives of their WWII experiences, including their gender-related roles

Women and the Holocaust: Hidden Women

eclass course by Jewish Museum of Greece in Greek, Angličtina
The educational program "Women and the Holocaust" aspires to expand students' knowledge of the Holocaust and highlight the special experiences of women during Nazi persecution. It is estimated that approximately 2 million women were executed or murdered in Nazi concentration camps or died due to the tragic living conditions they experienced in the ghettos, camps and "death marches". The program includes three different thematic sections: a) Women in Auschwitz b) Women in the Resistance c) Hidden Women. The primary source that will support this thematic section "Hidden Women" is an excerpt from the interview of Simha Salariou Bati, who together with her parents, her sister and her second sister's family hid in Athens and survived.

Women and the Holocaust: Women in Resistance

eclass course by Jewish Museum of Greece in Greek, Angličtina

The educational program "Women and the Holocaust" aspires to expand students' knowledge of the Holocaust and highlight the special experiences of women during Nazi persecution. It is estimated that around 2 million women were executed or murdered in Nazi concentration camps or died due to the tragic living conditions they experienced in ghettos, camps and "death marches". The primary source that will support the specific thematic "Women in the Resistance" is an excerpt from the testimony of the fighter of the National Resistance, Sara Jesua-Fortis, also known as "Captain Sarika", which aims to illuminate the unique experiences of women who took an active part in the resistance to save themselves from the Nazis' genocidal policy against the Jews.

Women and the Holocaust: Women in Auschwitz

eclass course by Jewish Museum of Greece in Greek, Angličtina

The educational program "Women and the Holocaust" aspires to expand students' knowledge of the Holocaust and highlight the special experiences of women during Nazi persecution. It is estimated that around 2 million women were executed or murdered in Nazi concentration camps or died due to the tragic living conditions they experienced in ghettos, camps and "death marches". The primary sources that will support this thematic section "Women in Auschwitz" are the testimonies of three women who survived the Nazis' genocidal policy against the Jews in the Auschwitz camp. They are Lisa Mano Pinhas, Janet Nahmia and Olga Lengyel.

Athens, March 1944

eclass course by Jewish Museum of Greece in Greek, Angličtina
On the occasion of the anniversaries of the arrest and deportation of the Jews from the Italian occupation zone (March 23-25, 1944), the Jewish Museum of Greece (JMG) created this educational program.

Liberation and Survival

eclass course by Jewish Museum of Greece in Greek, Angličtina
This educational program aspires to illuminate a lesser-known side of the Holocaust: the liberation of the camps by Allied troops. Through the cases of specific camps (Auschwitz, Mauthausen, Bergen-Belsen) the students will have the opportunity to examine through rich audio-visual material and the testimonies of the survivors themselves this difficult, painful and even dangerous transition of the inmates from camp life to normalcy.

The Persecution and Murder of Greek Jews from the Bulgarian Zone

eclass course by Jewish Museum of Greece in Greek, Angličtina
The JMG created this educational program in order to highlight the history of the deportation of Greek Jews from the Bulgarian-occupied zone on the night of March 3-4, 1943 to the Treblinka extermination camp. No Greek returned from this camp. This story provides an opportunity to highlight a special aspect of the history of the Holocaust.

Five chimneys: the testimony of Olga Lengyel

eclass course by Jewish Museum of Greece in Greek, Angličtina
This educational program aspires to expand students' knowledge of the Holocaust camp experience through the words of a survivor. It is based on the story of Olga Lengyel, who was deported to Auschwitz in 1944 with her husband, children and parents. Only she survived. The program is structured around six passages selected from her testimony, Five Chimneys .

My dear children... Thessaloniki, Spring 1943

eclass course by Jewish Museum of Greece in Greek, Angličtina

Based on an excerpt from a letter of Neama Kazes in April 1943 to her sons, the JMG created this new educational activity, which can be used on the occasion of March 15, when the first train from Baron Hirsch (Thessaloniki's Ghetto) to Auschwitz started.

“The Second World War and the Holocaust of the Greek Jews 1941 – 1944″

digital application by Jewish Museum of Greece in Greek, Angličtina
An interactive application for displaying archival material, which summarizes the history and events of World War II, the history of the Holocaust in Europe and more extensively in Greece, while referring to the timeless and topical issue of anti-Semitism, a highly hateful form of racism that plagues modern societies even today.

“The Jews of Greece: 2,300 Years of History and Tradition”

digital application by Jewish Museum of Greece in Greek, Angličtina
The interactive app features archival material and presents the history of Greek Jews since late antiquity. It contains information about their religious traditions and everyday life, as well as their presence in the political, social and cultural life of the country. It also refers to the persecution of Greek Jews during the Second World War and traces the local history of the Jewish communities throughout the country. It includes folklore and ethnographic references, literary extracts, rare photographs, oral testimonies and other audiovisual material. The content was mainly drawn from the JMG Collections, Library, Photographic Archive and Oral History Archive, while some of it was kindly provided by private individuals.

Jewish Life and Modern Antisemitism in Germany, Greece, Poland and Serbia

online course by The HANNAH project in Greek, Angličtina, Nemčina, Polish,

A free online course, which aims to introduce its users to the richness and vibrancy of Jewish history and culture from the comfort of their home. It’s flexible and interactive, allowing them to study at theis own pace and to delve into a variety of resources from Germany, Greece, Poland and Serbia.