Free online lesson plan Stand Firm: Choice and Consequences.
Lesson plan explores the issues of conformity and obedience through the eyes of two young Jehovah’s Witnesses who chose to stand firm for their beliefs. The Nazis took hundreds of young Witnesses from their parents and sent them to juvenile camps, reformatories, and Nazi foster homes. Using primary sources and first-person survivor testimony, this outline focuses on the difficult choices made by Jehovah’s Witnesses, a group of people who adhered to their beliefs despite brutal efforts to make them conform to Nazi ways.
Objectives:
Online exhibit Standing Out—Standing Up: A Jehovah’s Witness Experience. Includes free downloadable lesson plan and survivor testimony video clips.
Lesson plan uses clips from the video testimony of Simone Liebster, a Jehovah’s Witness survivor, who recounts her struggles to stand up for her beliefs in the face of Nazi pressures. Teachers can implement this exercise in their classroom using the material provided in the lesson plan, which includes free downloadable lesson plan and survivor testimony clips. Objectives: use primary sources to learn about the Jehovah’s Witnesses during the Holocaust; define the term “core values”; learn to recognize and counter peer pressures that might undermine those values; and understand the importance of adhering to one’s own voice of conscience.
© Arnold-Liebster Foundation 2008