Starting with the question ‘Who killed Barney Greenman?’ this lesson unpacks students’ ideas about who the perpetrators, collaborators, bystanders, and rescuers and resisters were during the Holocaust.
They test their hypotheses against the evidence by looking at a series of case studies which help them to interrogate their initial ideas about the roles people played and the choices they made. Ultimately, the session ends by looking back at how we might try to explain ‘Who killed Barney Greenman?’ in light of the historical record. How might we understand the concept of genocide, the choices people made, and what this means for us today?