Lesson Plans

Love on a Paper Airplane

The class watched Centropa’s film Love on a Paper Airplane as an introduction to the love story of Judit Kinszki’s parents, and the early modern photography of Imre Kinszki (Judit’s...

Postcards to Sarajevo

We began this lesson by watching Centropa’s film, Survival in Sarajevo, and walking through the traveling exhibition of the same name, which we brought to our school. Each...

Cross-cultural Cookbook Project

We began by watching Centropa’s film So Memory Doesn’t Die, about Teofila Silberring’s harrowing experience during the Holocaust. She was saved from starvation by a kind family friend who gave...

Centropa exchange: Kielce and Greensboro

This project was carried out in two schools: VI Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. Juliusza Słowackiego in Kielce  (Poland) and Southeast Guilford High School (USA). In the beginning, students made intro videos...

Let All Who are Hungry Come and Eat

In these two back-to-back lessons, students will explore Jewish values, Jewish identity, and the question of how to balance their ethnic/religious identities with being a citizen of the world.  Students...

We Remember

Students make a 3-5 minute film that tells the story of a family member.  We start the project by showing Centropa films as models for short films that tell a...

Multimedia Yom Hashoah Presentation

In this unit, selected 8th grade students worked with three teachers to prepare a multimedia presentation for the middle school using Centropa materials in observance of Yom Hashoah. The...

Storytelling and Filmmaking to Remember Holocaust Survivors

In this project Jewish middle/high school students explore Jewish life in Europe, the Holocaust, and post-war immigrant life in America through the experiences of local Holocaust survivors from Central or...

Using Stories to Connect with Jewish History

This lesson asks students to research family history and to create a project that tells the story of his/her family origins. Using the Centropa films about Max Uri and Jozsef...

Roots in Spain, Trees in Sarajevo

This lesson aims to enlighten students about Sephardic history in the Balkans, and was originally taught in the context of a Jewish day school in the United States.  The Jews...

I Was There - A Journey into a child's past

In this project, students in groups of 3-4 will read a memoir, diary or biography about a European child whose life was turned to chaos during the Shoah, 1933 to...

Food and Family: combining 20th & 21st century Jewish cooking

Students interviewed and took pictures of a relative while they prepared a favorite family recipe. The students then created a PowerPoint presentation that included their relative preparing the dish; background...

History and the Power of Personal Stories

In this family history project, students conduct oral histories with family members with the objective of creating a final project about their family history and understanding how an individual's family...

Preserving Jewish Memory: A Family Education Program

Just as we pass the Torah from one generation to the next at bar and bat mitzvahs, so do we pass family stories dor l’dor (from generation to generation). Stories...

Choosing to be Jewish Family Education Program

During this session families will learn the stories of several individuals who survived the Holocaust and then stayed in Europe after the war. They saw the destruction of the societies...

Lo Ta'amod: A Jewish Values Family Education Program

In this family education program, we apply Centropa’s stories from our past to reflect on our values, and translate that learning into action for the present and future. The goal...

Picturing Kristallnacht

Creating a Student Museum

As of 2013, for three years students at the Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy in Philadelphia have created, curated and been docents for museums they have made using Centropa...

Schindler's List: Another perspective

Using Centropa’s film, So Memory Doesn’t Die, about the life of Teofila (Toska) Silberring – a Schindler Jew - this lesson enables those using Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List in...

"Rescued Memories": Creating a student exhibition

In this lesson plan, Cynthia Peterman illustrates how she used the Centropa database to create a student exhibition.

Digital Story Telling

This is a project that combines a variety of skills and tools with modern technology to create films similar to those produced by Centropa.

Students produce digital stories, using narratives...