In several areas of the United States, April is recognized as Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month.
Here are four classroom resources you can use in April, or any time of year, to introduce your students to specific moments in world history while encouraging them to consider the behaviors—such as prejudice, stereotyping, and conformity—that contribute to the proliferation of violence today.

Topics: Art, Books, Professional Development, Armenian Genocide, Facing History Resources, Holocaust, Genocide/Collective Violence, Teaching Resources, Video, History

Topics: Antisemitism, Human Behavior, Facing History Resources, Holocaust, Genocide/Collective Violence, Facing History and Ourselves, History

Teaching after mass violence, including acts of terrorism, is incredibly challenging.

Topics: Antisemitism, Democracy, Choosing to Participate, Human Rights, Immigration, Religious Tolerance, Teaching, Schools, News, Identity, Genocide/Collective Violence

This weekend marks the 77th anniversary of the Nanjing Atrocities, a seminal event in the history of World War II, yet one that few know much about.

Topics: Books, Facing History Resources, Genocide/Collective Violence, Facing History and Ourselves, Teaching Resources, History

Each year, Facing History and Ourselves and Knights and Daughters of Vartan host an annual Armenian Genocide Commemoration Essay Contest. In 2014, the contest asked high school and college students across the United States to respond to the question, “On the threshold of the 100th anniversary, how should the world recognize the Armenian Genocide?” This essay, from Facing History student Elizabeth Ray, took second place. It was reprinted with Elizabeth's permission.

Topics: Student Voices, Online Workshop, Choosing to Participate, Armenian Genocide, Facing History Resources, Teaching, Facing History Together, Genocide/Collective Violence, Facing History and Ourselves, Teaching Resources, History

Topics: Books, Choosing to Participate, Armenian Genocide, Human Rights, Facing History Resources, Teaching, Upstanders, Genocide/Collective Violence, Facing History and Ourselves, Teaching Resources, Video, History

Forty-one years ago this month, a violent military coup in Chile led by Army Commander-in-Chief Augusto Pinochet overthrew Salvador Allende's democratically-elected government.

Topics: Classrooms, Art, English Language Arts, Teaching Strategies, Democracy, Memory, Choosing to Participate, Human Rights, Facing History Resources, New York, Teaching, Identity, Holocaust, Genocide/Collective Violence, Teaching Resources, History

Facing history is difficult. Facing ourselves may be more so.

 

Shot by Shot: The Holocaust in German-Occupied Soviet Territory, a new eBook from Facing History published this month, asks us to do both.

Topics: Antisemitism, Holocaust, Genocide/Collective Violence, History

A woman who was interned in Auschwitz came to speak to our class.

We were in 7th grade and she gathered us around her.

Topics: Antisemitism, Student Voices, Cambodia, Choosing to Participate, Human Rights, Facing History Together, Holocaust, Genocide/Collective Violence, History

A Bosnian Muslim widow examines body bags containing the remains of recently exhumed victims of the 1992 “ethnic cleansing” campaign waged by Serbs against their Muslim neighbors (July 2001). Exhumations of mass graves began in 1996 and are expected to last for many years to come. Nearly 30,000 Bosnian Muslims—most of them civilians—were listed as missing at the end of the war; most are believed to have been victims of “ethnic cleansing.” Photo courtesy of Sara Terry and the Aftermath Project.

This month marks the 19^th anniversary of the Srebrenica Massacre in Bosnia, which has been called the worst crime on European soil since World War II.

Topics: Online Tools, Photography, Identity, Genocide/Collective Violence, Teaching Resources, History