Night by Elie Wiesel
Night is a 1960 book by Elie Wiesel about his experience with his father in the Nazi German concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald from 1944 to 1945, at the height of the Holocaust toward the end of the Second World War.
After the Holocaust, Elie Wiesel eloquently stated “never again.” Since he first uttered this compelling sentiment, genocides have erupted across the world from Guatemala to Cambodia. April was chosen as Genocide Prevention Month since the Holocaust, Rwandan, Bosnian, Armenian and Cambodian genocides are commemorated during this time.
Twelfth grade English Language Arts (ELA) teachers Susan Gleeson and Alex Tsironis found that many students wanted to talk more in depth about the campaign of cultural genocide. This conversation allows us to bring the world into the classroom and serve as a launching pad for students to better understand the roots of systemic violence. The study of genocide offers a chance to examine moral issues that are part of the fabric of any society.
In order to strengthen an understanding of genocide, students will research a specific genocide of their choice. Students will then synthesis their research to demonstrate their knowledge and support a thesis statement.
Watch: “Elie Wiesel, Another Look at Genocide” on left (4:22), the Grand Prize winner of the Speak Truth to Power video contest in 2015.
Use this Jamboard to answer the question, “What would be needed to resist an oppressive regime?”
PBS offers a great place to start, with excerpts from the book, Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen. Worse Than War is a paradigm-changing investigation into the phenomenon of genocide and mass killing that provided the basis for the PBS documentary. Click here to access PBS resources.
Below is a list of TZHS resources to help launch your research:
tzstudent/Dutchmen |
 tzhs/dutchmen |
 south4/orangetown |
 tzhs/look |
 TZHSLIBRARY/Dutchman |
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🌃 Review the Night Research Rubric
🌃Select a topic, a specific genocide.
🌃Find two articles about your topic. Your article research should support the topic you choose. Build a thesis statement that answers your question.
🔔Use Google Keep to help you stay organized. Click here to watch a video on how to use Google Keep.
🔔Use the CRAAP Test to help you evaluate your resources.
🌃Create a works cited page. A works cited page is an alphabetized list of your sources using the Modern Language Association (MLA) format. A works cited page serves to show the reader where the information is from giving the source credit for the information and ideas. Cite the book, article, or document using the appropriate format.
Here are the best free online bibliography and citation tools:
🔔EasyBib
🔔KnightCite
🔔Citation Builder
🔔Citation Machine
Beyond this lesson: Take a look at contests at Speak Truth, https://rfkhumanrights.org/work/teaching-human-rights/contests
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