Educational Programs Combating Bullying, Bigotry, and Hate

This past year, July 2024-June 2025, the Holocaust Memorial Museum served a record

45,927 unduplicated visitors and students. Of the 45,927 served, 34,186 were students from 31 school districts who engaged with Holocaust education in a meaningful age-appropriate way.

These students experienced the Museum's mission through a variety of avenues:

•             On-site field trips that brought history to life within our galleries.

•             In-school presentations led by our education staff.

•             Loaned educational trunks and traveling exhibits - carefully curated resources designed to bring Holocaust history, survivor stories, and lessons on empathy, resilience, and human rights directly into classrooms across the region.

•             Museum in Motion – giving students a more in-depth look at lessons of the Holocaust

This level of unprecedented reach underscores our commitment to ensuring students have access to impactful learning-whether through on-campus programs or visits to the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

By providing educational personnel and resources, we are providing enriching experiences for young students –that will empower children coping with challenging school environments, the difficult political climate, and the sometimes-contentious family lives that children seem to find themselves in more and more often.

 By providing educators with curriculum, training, and classroom resources, we empower students to navigate today’s challenges—including bullying, division, and social pressures—with resilience, empathy, and critical thinking. Our educational best practices are designed to:

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• Develop impactful teaching materials that actively engage students in meaningful learning.
• Connect with larger curricular goals and extend the learning over a longer duration – this is accomplished by following state guidelines (primarily TEKS) and providing educators with curriculum and lesson plans that are easily paired with their annual curriculum.
• Materials and lessons focus on both cognitive and emotional aspects of learning with empowering lessons from the Holocaust.
• Create an emotionally safe environment and an age-appropriate approach

Resources and materials used in the school setting include:

Educational Trunks:  include those appropriate for High School, Middle School, Elementary School, as well as Spanish language trunks: 

·        Museum in Motion (6-8) – English Language Arts, History/Social Studies

·        High School – English Language Arts, History / Social Studies

·        Middle School - English Language Arts, History / Social Studies

·        Elementary School

·        Spanish language – Night

·        Spanish language – Number the Stars

·        Spanish language – Diary of Anne Frank

·        Spanish language – Pink Rabbit

Traveling Exhibits include Introductory Level, Intermediate Level, and Advanced Level exhibits and are tailored to the knowledge level of the audience:

Introductory Level - This exhibit explains the concept of genocide, the events that led up to the Holocaust, and the effects of Hitler’s rise to power on the Jewish people in Germany.

 Intermediate Level -This exhibit focuses on what life was like for people of Jewish heritage during the Holocaust; particularly the effects of propaganda, the loss of citizenship, living conditions in the ghettos and killing centers, and acts of Jewish resistance.

Advanced Level - Deep explorations into themes such as:

·       Times of Betrayal & Defiance (stories of rescue in Nazi-occupied France)  

·       Seeking Justice: The Real Nazi Hunters (postwar accountability

·       Advanced Level – War of Ideas: Censorship and Book Burning (silencing voices and shaping hate)

·       Advanced Level – Isolation (how prejudice and exclusion paved the way to dehumanization)

Students who come to the Museum for a tour are also provided programming that centers their attention on the underlying themes of the Holocaust, and invites the children to make informed decisions about how they would act under similar circumstances – very thought-provoking exercises not available in the classroom setting.

The Holocaust illustrates the dangers of prejudice, discrimination, antisemitism and dehumanization. It also reveals the full range of human responses - raising important considerations about societal and individual motivations and pressures that lead people to act as they do - or to not act at all.  

 Additionally, studying the Holocaust allows students to develop the capacity and willingness to be informed and active citizens. It shows us how fragile the institutions that are supposed to protect the rights and security of everyone can be, and how those institutions should not be taken for granted. Our educational initiatives are a mission broader than merely educating our children and community about the history and lessons learned from the Holocaust. We are focused on combating bullying, bigotry, racism, and discrimination, primarily by bringing groups of school-age children and educators to the Holocaust Memorial Museum for transformational and enduring sessions so that they help light the path to a better world.