Death for a Loaf of Bread… | Lesson plans and educational materials - Instytut Pileckiego

Education

Death for a Loaf of Bread… | Lesson plans and educational materials

We invite you to use the lesson plans developed as part of the “Called by Name” program. We hope that these scenarios and the accompanying source materials will help preserve the memory of Poles who paid with their own lives – and the lives of their loved ones – for rescuing Jews from extermination, and whose memory in particular we commemorate every year on 24 March, the National Day of Remembrance of Poles Who Saved Jews Under German Occupation.

Since 2019, the Witold Pilecki Institute of Solidarity and Valor has been using the “Called by Name” program to commemorate Poles who gave their lives rescuing Jews during the German occupation. Thanks to the efforts of the Institute and local authorities, symbolic memorial stones have been erected in many towns across Poland, commemorating these individuals as well as those they sacrificed their lives to save. During unveiling ceremonies, teachers and local officials repeatedly raised the need for appropriate educational materials that would help introduce students to the tragic period of the Holocaust and to the individuals who, at great personal risk, helped those in need. This package responds to that need.

 

The issue of the Holocaust and the attitudes of Poles toward the tragedy of the Jews are present in school textbooks and in numerous materials prepared, among others, by the Institute of National Remembrance, the POLIN Museum, and the Jewish Historical Institute. However, this material differs in that it is devoted entirely to individuals who lost their lives while rescuing Jewish fellow citizens. The choice they made and the price they paid deserve respect, remembrance, and inclusion in textbooks and educational materials. The proposed lesson plans will not only contribute to understanding their fate, but will also enable educational discussions about the values that guided them: mercy, courage, compassion, opposition to evil, and solidarity with those who suffer from it.

 

The scenarios included in this package, prepared by experts from the Pilecki Institute and Wydawnictwa Szkolne i Pedagogiczne [Publishing House for School and Pedagogical Books], can be used not only in history classes, but also in homeroom sessions, Polish language classes, and ethics lessons. Each includes references to the current core curriculum. They are generally designed for one class period, although teachers are best placed to determine how much time is needed to achieve the proposed lesson objectives.

 

First, we present a set of five lesson plans (available for download below):

  • Scenario I: The Holocaust – the extermination of Jews during the Second World War
  • Scenario II: “For a loaf of bread…” Sadowne, 13 January 1943
  • Scenario III: Called by Name
  • Scenario IV: “…we had a small amount of necessary courage…” – people and values in difficult times
  • Scenario V: “Over the immensity of history wheels the specter of indefiniteness…” – Zbigniew Herbert’s poetic “reckoning” with history in the poem “Mr. Cogito on the Need for Precision”

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Scenario I: The Holocaust – the extermination of Jews during the Second World War Scenario II: “For a loaf of bread…” Sadowne, 13 January 1943 Scenario III: Called by Name Scenario IV: “…we had a small amount of necessary courage…” – people and values in difficult times Scenario V: “Over the immensity of history wheels the specter of indefiniteness…” – Zbigniew Herbert’s poetic “reckoning” with history in the poem “Mr. Cogito on the Need for Precision”

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