In today’s political climate, denying or trivializing the Holocaust goes along with a spate of burgeoning antisemitism. Therefore it’s ever more important to teach students the actual tragic history of the Holocaust. The Guide for teachers helps student with the difficulty of visualizing the murder of some six million Jews plus many other people. It may be just a little easier to focus on the fate of 155,000 Jews who lived in the Netherlands (Holland) 1n 1940, when Nazi Germans began their persecution there.

The Guide focuses specifically on the fate of about 27,000 Jews then living in Holland who resisted deportation by running and hiding. In about 18,000 cases, they they were discovered and deported anyway, for example in the case of Anne Frank, who wrote the well-known Diary of a Young Girl. Around 9,000 others hid successfully—like the Heppners and the Graumanns, the central families appearing in the two companion books.

These two families consisted of a set of parents, each with one son. None were murdered by Nazis. However, students will be shocked to hear that of these six people, only three really survived the Holocaust. During their flight, one member of the Graumann family was murdered by local people-smugglers, and two more members of the group died from aftereffects of their persecution. At their liberation in September of 1944, the three survivors ended up sick and traumatized. When they recovered, they emigrated to the United States and gradually began a new life .