Free Online Holocaust & Genocide Studies Resources

Photo of Auschwitz for Holocaust and Genocide Studies page

The Nazi German extermination camp Auschwitz II-Birkenau in Poland.

The websites below offer free online Holocaust and genocide studies resources, including lesson plans and other materials that can help enhance an educator’s classroom teachings.

Teachers may also find the resources on my Teachers Study Day page helpful.

Holocaust/Shoah Studies

Encyclopedia Resources

Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education – College of Saint Elizabeth
The Center has published five parts of the Encyclopaedia Britannica’s Coverage of the Holocaust online, including discussion questions.

David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
Educators can access entries in the Encyclopedia of America’s Response to the Holocaust. The site has also published hundreds of articles, seven special reports and many other educational materials.

(The) Holocaust Chronicle
This site contains every word and image that appears in the print edition of The Holocaust Chronicle (Publications International, Ltd, 2000).

Mémorial de la Shoah’s References for Teachers
There are many online resources for educators on this site, including filmography, an online archive and a multimedia encyclopedia.

Museums and Archival Materials

Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies’ Virtual Museum – Univ. of Minnesota This website provides scholarly information related to the Holocaust. It also has a virtual museum and offers direct access to resource materials such as slides, film, video and audio tapes.

European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI)
The site’s Online Portal provides access to information on archival material held in institutions across Europe and beyond. Teachers, lecturers and students will especially find the Online Course in Holocaust Studies helpful.

Holocaust Museum LA
Educators can download comprehensive teacher guides that focus on Holocaust survivor testimony and other primary sources.

Museum of Tolerance – A Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum
Educators can access lessons and activities that support several overarching themes and learning objectives.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Resources for Educators
The Museum’s site offers suggestions about where to begin teaching about the Holocaust. It also includes resources for teaching with limited class time.

Lesson Plans and Curricula Resources

Cohen Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies – Keene State College
The Center provides educators with access to lesson plans and other materials for elementary, middle school and high school levels.

Echoes & Reflections
The site offers educators access to a library of comprehensive Holocaust content that is classroom-ready. Educators can access pedagogy for instruction, lesson plans, an audio glossary and a timeline.

Facing History and Ourselves’ Educator Resources
Educators can access online multimedia, such as primary sources, teaching strategies and lesson plans.

Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team (H.E.A.R.T)
Educators and other visitors can view photos and images and hundreds of articles, essays and editorials.

HolocaustHistory.net
This site provides basic information about the Holocaust. Materials include photographs, documents, video footage and stories about real people.

Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation (JPEF)
JPEF provides access to ready-to-use lesson plans, activities, study guides and biographies. Most can be completed in 45-60 minutes.

Lookstein Center
The Center offers a list of Yom HaShoah/Holocaust teaching materials, including lessons plans and activities.

New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education
Educators can access curriculum guides, an interactive world map, photos and PowerPoint presentations.

Tennessee Holocaust Commission
The Commission provides lesson plans and an Adult Education Curriculum.

UCL Centre for Holocaust Education – University College London
The Centre website’s Teachers Resources page provides open-access to 20 lesson plans.

Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre (VHEC)
Educators can access online exhibits, multimedia tools and teacher’s guides.

Yad Vashem’s International School for Holocaust Studies
This site provides access to courses, lesson plans and guides for ceremonies and educational activities.

Survivor Testimonies and Memoirs

Aish.com
Aish’s provides articles about theological issues, as well as articles and videos of personal histories and testaments.

Centre for Holocaust Education and Scholarship (CHES) – Carleton University
Educators can access lesson plans and a collection of 10 stories that make up the Ottawa Holocaust Survivors Testimony Project.

Centropa
This site has preserved Jewish family stories and photos from Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans.

Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies – Yale University
The Archive currently holds over 4,400 testimonies of individuals with first-hand experience of Nazi persecutions.

Holocaust Center for Humanity
The Center has created and published a series geared towards students in grades 7-12. The series focuses on the stories of individuals directly affected by genocide.

Holocaust Teacher Resource Center (TRC)
TRC provides a variety of educational resources, such as lesson plans, publications, survivor videos, annotated bibliographies and videographies.

March of the Living Digital Archive Project
This site hosts documentaries from footage with Holocaust survivors who participated in the annual March of the Living in Canada.

Midwest Center for Holocaust Education
The Center has video and audio testimonials from 70+ Survivors of the Holocaust.

Nathan and Esther Pelz Holocaust Education Resource Center – HERC
The HERC has posted 80+ Holocaust Survivor Testimony Videos.

Telling Their Stories
High school students at the Urban School of San Francisco have filmed and transcribed interviews with Bay Area Holocaust survivors. 

Voices of the Holocaust – British Library
Voices provides oral testimonies from Jewish men and women who came to live in Britain during or after WWII. These testimonies are personal stories that describe the hardships of life during Hitler’s reign.

Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive – University of Michigan
This online repository of Holocaust survivor oral histories provides a curriculum for teachers and in-class presentations and workshops for middle and high school students.

Children and the Holocaust

Anne Frank House Teachers’ Portal
The Portal provides lesson materials and tips for educators about Anne Frank, World War II and various contemporary themes. Educators can also register for the organization’s free newsletter.

Coming of Age in the Holocaust, Coming of Age Now
This is an interactive middle-school curriculum designed to accommodate classes of students working as a group.

Education World
Education World provides 10 lesson plans, which cover material about Anne Frank and Holocaust rescuers. They also engage students in various activities such as creating time lines and writing poetry and letters.

Kindertransport Association (KTA)
Educators can take a virtual tour of The Kindertransport Journey Museum Quality Traveling Exhibit. This exhibit traces the epic journey of the Kindertransport from 1938 into the 21st century. You can also read KTA’s Voices of the Kinder. This is a showcase for memoirs, stories, poetry and other genres of writing by members of the Kindertransport Association.

Open Hearts/Closed Doors – The War Orphans Project
A group of young Jewish orphans immigrated to Canada after WWII as part of the War Orphans Project. Using their own words and artifacts, this virtual exhibit tells the stories of the orphans’ courage and resilience. It also tells the stories about the tireless efforts of the people who helped them.

World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust and Descendants
Visitors to the site can read various first-hand accounts from child survivors. Educators can also contact the survivor and can learn how to prepare a class to meet a Holocaust survivor.

Concentration Camps

Centre for Dialogue and Prayer in Oświęcim (Auschwitz)
The Centre’s site offers a variety of education resources concerning the German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.

(The) Nazi Concentration Camps: a teaching and learning resource
This website provides an online archive of photos and documents, maps, films and testimonies. It also includes teaching resources, such as lesson plans about Nazi crimes and concentration camps.

Remember.org
One of the special projects they’ve created is the Virtual Tour of Auschwitz. This unique project utilizes 360º moving photos of the main camp at Auschwitz.

Art and Music

Music and the Holocaust
This website’s articles describe musical activities that took place in camps and ghettos across Nazi-occupied Europe. Their wide range of sound recordings of music include songs written and sung by victims across Europe. Additionally full-length compositions, written primarily in Theresienstadt and in the post-war period, are available. The site also provides materials for educators who are interested in including music in their Holocaust commemoration events.

Teacher’s Guide to the Holocaust – University of South Florida
This site provides an overview of people and events of the Holocaust through photographs, documents, art, music, movies and literature.

Rescuers

International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation
Educators can download various lesson plans and other materials and resources on this site’s Education page.

Jewish Foundation for the Righteous (JFR)
JFR allows educators to download two units of study for free. One unit addresses the rescue of Jews in Denmark. The other focuses on Zegota, that part of the Polish underground that was established to help Jews. These units, which deal with two themes related to rescue, are designed to be covered in one or two class periods.

Catholics and the Holocaust

Hiatt Holocaust Collection – College of the Holy Cross
Visitors to the Collection’s site can access online resources in the following areas: Catholics and the HolocaustPope Pius XII and the HolocaustThe Popes and the Holocaust; and Oral & Written Testimonies: Lithuania and the Holocaust.

Propaganda

German Propaganda Archive – Calvin College
Professor Randall Bytwerk maintains this growing collection of English translations of propaganda material. His impressive collection includes primary materials created by Nazi and GDR leaders and other propagandists.

The Nuremberg Trials

Nuremberg Trials Project – Harvard University
The site presents digitized images of the Library’s Nuremberg documents, descriptions of each document and general information about the trials. You can also examine trial transcripts, briefs, evidence files and other papers from the trials of leaders of Nazi Germany.

Holocaust Denial and Antisemitism

Coordination Forum for Countering Antisemitism
Here you will find the largest and most comprehensive database of antisemitic incidents reported throughout the world. The site, which is updated daily, provides reports, pictures, video clips and statistics.

Holocaust Denial on Trial (HDOT)
This site provides documents and materials aimed at demonstrating the power of truth over deception and history over hate.

Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism (SICSA)
The Center is devoted to the independent, non-political accumulation and dissemination of materials related to antisemitism. SICSA provides free access to their publications, which includes book-length studies, conference papers and an annual report.

Other Genocides and Mass Atrocities

Armenian National Institute (ANI)
ANI provides maps, curricula and encyclopedia entries about the Armenian Genocide.

Arnold-Liebster Foundation
The Foundation provides survivor testimony and lesson plans about the Nazi persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education (CHHE)
This site provides lesson plans about mass atrocities in Cambodia, Guatemala, Bosnia, Srebrenica, Rwanda, Darfur and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies – Appalachian State University 
The Center has testimonies from survivors of the Holocaust and Rwanda Genocide.

Genocide Archive of Rwanda
This site teaches about the dangers of genocide denial and the importance of genocide prevention.

Genocide Education Project (GenEd)
GenEd has created an Armenian Genocide Resource Library for Teachers page, which provides lesson guides, survivor accounts, maps, articles and videos.

Institute for Holocaust & Genocide Studies – Raritan Valley Community College
This site offers resources and materials about the Holocaust and other genocides in Armenia, Bosnia, Cambodia, Darfur, Kosovo and Rwanda.

International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ)
ICTJ provides access to their publications, which focus on massive human rights abuses in various counties.

Montreal Institute for Genocide & Human Rights Studies (MIGS) – Concordia Univ.
MIG’s website provides resources for research into the Rwandan Genocide and Ukrainian Famine.

New York Time’s Learning Network
Educators can access lesson plans on the Holocaust and other genocidal acts in Armenia, Cambodia, Darfur, Kenya, Kosovo, Srebrenica and Sudan.

Survivors Fund (SURF)
SURF has produced lesson plans that supplement their free education packets about the Rwandan Genocide.

University of South Florida (USF) Libraries Digital Collections & Oral Histories
This site provides access to testimonies that focus on the Holocaust, Armenia and Africa.

Visual History Archive Online – USC Shoah Foundation
The archive includes testimonies from the Holocaust, Armenian Genocide, Nanjing Massacre and Rwandan Genocide.