Summary
This session focuses on a chapter from the forthcoming book, Teaching Holocaust Geographies in Middle and Secondary Schools. The camp system was the heart of Nazi terror and control, and it played a dominant role in the systematic murder of millions of people. When war broke out in September 1939 and Nazi Germany began occupying countries, the camp system grew and expanded into those occupied countries. The camps offer a unique way to examine citizenship, identity, and othering, and to explore how those concepts informed prisoner experiences within the camps. Using geographic concepts to inform examinations of the camp system in classrooms allows students to critically examine the role of geographic and national identity, the concept of othering and exclusion – both internal and external – in constructing national identity, and how these identities came together in the microcosm of Nazi camps and influenced the experiences and chances of survival for those imprisoned in them.
Session Focus
Secondary/High School | World History | Holocaust, Citizenship, Identity
Conference Room
Nebraska
Meet the Presenter
Leah Rauch (she/her) is Director of Education at Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, where she is responsible for the oversight of all educational initiatives and programs related to educational curricula, field trips, leadership programs, and teacher professional development offered by the Museum. She previously worked as an adjunct professor, teaching Jewish-German history and Holocaust courses in Berlin, where she also worked as an educator at Sachsenhausen Memorial and Museum. She has presented at international academic conferences in France, Germany, and the U.S., and has published articles in academic journals including The Journal for Holocaust Research. She recently co-authored a chapter in Teaching Holocaust Geographies in Middle and Secondary Schools. In 2024, Rauch was appointed to serve on the Illinois Holocaust and Genocide Commission.
Amanda Friedeman (she/her) is Associate Director of Education at Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center, overseeing programming for the museum’s school-aged audiences, including field trip content, professional development offerings for educators, and Make a Difference! The Harvey L. Miller Family Youth Exhibition. She also directs the Museum’s Speakers’ Bureau of Holocaust survivors and eyewitness and is a nationally-recognized expert on incorporating voices of the Second Generation into Holocaust education. Friedeman was historical consultant on Hour of Need: The Daring Escape of the Danish Jews during WWII, winner of the 2023 Claus Deleuran Prisen; co-editor of Interrupted Lives: Nine Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust; co-author of a chapter in Teaching Holocaust Geographies in Middle and Secondary Schools; and author of “The Visitor as Ambassador and Conduit: Civic Wellness Programs at Illinois Holocaust Museum” (Journal of Museum Education, 50.1, 2025).
