Storytelling Classes and Projects for Students

Listening and Telling Personal Holocaust History

Teaching students to tell stories helps them create personal connections to the Holocaust.

Holocaust storytelling is a perfect capstone project for a class who has spent several years learning about the Holocaust in various ways.

Storytelling can also be used to teach the Holocaust to students with no background, as all the pieces can be taught with this modality. Storytelling draws the students in to create strong connections to the history.

Let us bring a program to your school or community, in person or online, as a class or a capstone project.

Class/Project Description

Through this project, your students will become listeners of Holocaust stories and tellers of Holocaust stories.

We can teach you to run this class, or one of our experienced storytelling teachers can run the project for you.

Students will hear stories from amateur storytellers. Students then to learn to tell the stories of people who experienced the Holocaust. Working with a partner, they will have the opportunity to practice scenes and storytelling techniques in low-stress situations.

They will each choose a story that connects to them. They can work with

  • A story that they heard in class
  • A story they learned from a memoir, diary, or video
  • A story they heard from their family or from a survivor.

Students can learn to tell Holocaust stories from primary text or video sources, without needing survivor involvement, or they can learn to tell stories that they have heard from survivors. By using primary sources, we can tell the stories of victims, as well as the stories of survivors.

When Young People Listen

A poem by former Storytelling Director and Poet-in-Residence, Jennifer Rudick Zunikoff, about teaching students at Goucher College to tell the stories of survivors they had interviewed.

Listen to the whisper of their story

An article by former Storytelling Director, Jennifer Rudick Zunikoff, about the need to remember the stories of those who experienced the Holocaust.

They are Gone

They are gone.
They cannot tell their stories any longer.
But we can.
We can hold open the window, this fragile window,
We can give their stories wings.
Let us give their stories a voice, so they can fly into others’ ears, into others’ hearts.
Only we can tell their stories now.
Only we.

Jennifer Rudick Zunikoff

Sources for Stories

Here are some places you can find stories for your students. Be sure to vet the individual stories before you recommend them to your students.

Video Testimonies:

Books and Diaries:
There are many memoirs and diaries you can offer your students. Here are two collections that may be helpful.

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