Centropa’s most unusual film to date. Shelly Weiner and Raya Kizhnerman live in Greensboro, NC. But these two kindly grandmothers were born in the bustling city of Rivne—then in Poland, now in Ukraine. In 1941 20,000 Jews lived in Rivne, but when the German Wehrmacht and the Waffen SS stormed into town, they planned on murdering every Jew they could find. How Shelly and Raya survived the massacre is a story they tell themselves, not long after they visited Rivne in 2013. With old photographs and exquisite, custom-made drawings by artist Emma Flick. Motion graphics by Wolfgang Els.
Return to Rivne: A Holocaust Story
Lesson plans for this film
6 results
| Title | Language | For grades | Documents | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Return to Rivne History In this lesson, students will be able to analyze a documentary about two young cousins who survived the Holocaust in order to extend our understanding of what we can learn from individual experiences of significant historical events. |
en | 8 | ||
| Courageous People Project Civic activism Students work on the questions of “what is an act of moral courage” and “what is required to act courageously”. They explore the past and the present to discover courageous acts and/or courageous people. |
en | 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 | ||
| Looking back: A child’s recollections of the Holocaust through the eyes of the children of today History In this cross-cultural project, three Jewish school teachers assigned their students to read the same text using slightly different assignments. Students in all classes produced art in response to the text and sent the art to Thessaloniki, where their work was displayed in the Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki. This project can be done with any text or Centropa story. |
en | 10, 11, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 | ||
| What We Live is History English, History “What We Live is History,” can be used in social studies, history, English, and other classes. This lesson challenges students to consider that their lives now will one day be considered history, and using Centropa’s film Return to Rivne they explore the differences between primary and secondary sources. The final product asks students to document for history their experiences living in the pandemic of the last year. This lesson can be used either in remote or in-person teaching. We hope you can adapt it to your own classes! |
en | 10, 11, 12, 6, 7, 8, 9 | ||
| Return to Rivne: Stations Lesson Using Return to Rivne as the centerpiece, this lesson uses stations for students to explore the geography, pre-war life, Roma people, the family that hid Shelly and Raya, the toys Shelly and Raya made, statistics, and Holocaust terms for students to explore the context of this story. Google Earth and Google Voyager are used to virtually visit Rivne. |
en | 6, 7, 8 | ||
| Diary and Memoir Project History An interdisciplinary lesson is designed to expose students to important responses to historical and social events and enable students to explore the following statement of inquiry: In times of social crisis man seeks meaning and value in his life through expression. This lesson uses Centropa’s film Return to Rivne, among other primary sources, and was designed for distance learning. |
en | 6, 7, 8 |