In this project Jewish middle/high school students explore Jewish life in Europe, the Holocaust, and post-war immigrant life in America through the experiences of local Holocaust survivors from Central or Eastern Europe.  The students take primary source material from the survivors’ oral history testimonies and combine that with background historical study.  They use this material to create short films telling the life stories of the survivors before, during, and after the Holocaust.  Essentially, students perform the work of historians in transforming the raw data of history

This lesson asks students to research family history and to create a project that tells the story of his/her family origins. Using the Centropa films about Max Uri and Jozsef Faludi students examine issues regarding Jewish identity and cheder (Jewish religious school) and students compare specific issues in the films with their own lives today. Then, the lesson employs Centropa-inspired techniques to ask students to create their own short films about their personal family history.

This lesson aims to enlighten students about Sephardic history in the Balkans, and was originally taught in the context of a Jewish day school in the United States.  The Jews expelled from Spain who settled in the Balkans were welcomed, and Jews were generally accepted as part of society, as they were in all parts of the Ottoman Empire.

In this project, students in groups of 3-4 will read a memoir, diary or biography about a European child whose life was turned to chaos during the Shoah, 1933 to 1945. To start the project, each group will receive a photograph of a contemporary railway station in Europe near where the child’s story takes place and they will begin their Geographical Treasure hunt by finding out where that railway station is today.

Students interviewed and took pictures of a relative while they prepared a favorite family recipe. The students then created a PowerPoint presentation that included their relative preparing the dish; background information about the recipe and the family member; and a recipe from Centropa that will highlight the similarities in Jewish cooking. Students’ interactions through family collaborative tasks can provide opportunities for them to acquire knowledge that may ultimately influence their personal development and growth.

This project is a student museum about Czech Jewry. Students research the lives of Czechoslovakian Jews between World War One and World War Two.  The Museum consists of panels dedicated to individual Czech Jews exploring one aspect of their lives; video of individual Czech Jews; historical context of both Jewish life in Czechoslovakia and of the country itself; an exhibit on personal family histories, ambience exhibits. This exhibit was open to the public, and invitations were sent out for a special gala evening for the opening of the exhibit for the entire school community.

This lesson uses the interview from Hedvig Endrei, from Hungary. In a labor camp during the war, Mrs. Endrei and her friends wrote out a book of recipes and she returned home with this book.  

In this family history project, students conduct oral histories with family members with the objective of creating a final project about their family history and understanding how an individual's family story is part of the larger story of Jewish history. The project begins in November, starting with the National Day of Listening Project (http://nationaldayoflistening.org).

Just as we pass the Torah from one generation to the next at bar and bat mitzvahs, so do we pass family stories dor l’dor (from generation to generation). Stories connect us to our history, our traditions, and who we are.