Some Were Neighbours

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) has constructed a new IWitness (USC Shoah Foundation) activity in conjunction with the museum’s Some Were Neighbors exhibit.

Some Were Neighbors examines the spectrum of motives and pressures that influenced individual choices to act during the Holocaust: fear, indifference, antisemitism, career, community standing, peer pressure, chances for material gain. It also looks at individuals who did not succumb to the opportunities and temptations to betray their fellow human beings, reminding us that there is an alternative to complicity in evil acts—even in extraordinary times.

In the Some Were Neighbors: Collaboration and Complicity IWitness activity, students choose a photo taken during November Pogrom and reflect on what this photo reveals about the event. Then they review a short film, article and map to learn more, and watch a testimony clip about how Kristallnacht affected the Jewish community as well as various roles played by neighbors. Finally, students re-examine the photo they started with and reflect on how the actions of ordinary people shaped the events of the November Pogrom

USHMM hopes that students will learn how to critically examine primary sources and analyze information from multiple sources of information to better understand the historical events and that teachers and students will gain insights into the important role of collaboration and complicity.

IWitness is an educational website developed by USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education that provides access to more than 1,500 full life histories, testimonies of survivors and witnesses to the Holocaust and other genocides for guided exploration. IWitness brings the human stories of the Institute's Visual History Archive to secondary school teachers and their students via engaging multimedia-learning activities.

Members of both the USHMM and the USC Shoah Foundation are members of the United States Delegation to the IHRA.