Auschwitz Death Camp Analysis

Comparing Sources to Find the Best Way to Teach Students About the Holocaust

Students of the 8th grade have to learn about world events in their curriculum. One of the biggest things they could learn at this time is the Holocaust and what’s a better way to teach these students about such a significant event than to show them a documentary presented by the caring and empathetic Oprah Winfrey. Although this can be based off of perspective, students would best learn from the documentary because they can understand the significance of this event through the emotions of the people who had to suffer through the Holocaust. Not only that, but some students have difficulty reading and watching a documentary takes less time compared to the time needed to complete “Night” by Elie Wiesel.

Auschwitz, Death Camp is a documentary where Oprah Winfrey visits Auschwitz with Elie Wiesel. Elie was a child sent to Auschwitz to work with his father. He endured this lifestyle for years. In the book “Night”, Elie shares all his experiences throughout his time surviving day in and day out from the Nazis. This could be used to argue the book is better to teach than the documentary because Elie just answers Oprah’s questions in the film. In the book, he explains everything he saw and everything he felt while being prisoner, but the

documentary has more pros than cons compared to the book.

A lot of the students in 8th grade couldn’t care less about reading.

Some may even struggle with it, but the point is that it’s not what every student would like to do to learn. Most students learn best from sources they understand easily and most easy to understand sources are videos or documentaries. Again, this could be because students have a hard time reading or words could be difficult to decipher. Documentaries don’t have this problem because they’re always narrated and if a word is said that you don’t know the definition of, you can often figure it out through the context of when it’s used. The simplicity also shows itself when emotions show

up.

Documentaries or videos are much easier to understand emotional situations than books. With documentaries, you can see emotions. You can hear people crying and you can see people’s tears and when you see this, you can tell that the situation is serious. This can be hard to pick up in books because the selection of vocabulary can distract the reader of the situation. This means if there are hard to read words describing emotions, then the reader wouldn’t know what's going on.

Another very important reason the documentary is a better source for teaching is the time component. The documentary is only 45 minutes long. This would take way less time to teach compared to reading the book. The video teaches what happened there and how people were usually affected by it, just like what the book would teach you, but the book takes so much longer to complete.

All students learn differently and learn at different paces. Though for 8th grade students, I believe the documentary is a better choice to teach than the book, My reasoning is defended because the documentary is easier to understand, the documentary take less time to complete and you can understand emotions better, giving mood to the situation.