For most students, the word ‘resistance’ is associated with particular acts or modes of behaviour. In the context of the Holocaust, ‘resistance’ is commonly understood to constitute physical, usually armed and often violent forms of ‘fighting back’. The assumption Jews didn’t resist the Nazis (or didn’t do this enough) is therefore one derived from a particular conception of what resistance is and what it looks like. Representations in wider culture reinforce these ideas, with the result students can end up using one-dimensional understandings.

This lesson aims at complicating students’ thinking and inculcating more dynamic ways of thinking about ‘resistance,’ encouraging students to explore a myriad of examples of non-violent responses and behaviours. Through this encounter, students’ are placed in an informed position from which they then decide upon what representation of the past they wish to create.