Decision Making in Times of Injustice

Duration: 60-90 minutes

Grades: 6-12th grades

This program gives participants an awareness of the enormity of the crimes committed during the Nazi Holocaust. The program demonstrates the process by which the Nazis arrived at and were able to carry out the extermination of European Jewry.  Decision Making in Times of Injustice demonstrates that the Holocaust was not a foregone conclusion when the Nazis first came to power and that it needed the participation of thousands of ordinary people and the silence of millions of others to happen. The workshop will look at the decisions made by leaders, bureaucrats, and ordinary citizens at various times in the 1930s and 1940s: decisions that, when taken together, led directly and inexorably to the Holocaust. This workshop reminds participants of the importance of living in a democracy whose citizens are both willing to and capable of making informed judgments, not only on behalf of themselves, but on behalf of a larger community.