"The historical, by its nature, tends to accent the unfolding of events while indicating social
and political trends.
Art, on the other hand, has always sought out the individual and his inner [world],
and from that, it tries to understand the [outside] world.
Art, perhaps only art, is the last defense against the banal, the commonplace and the
irrelevant, and, to take it even further, the last defense against simplicity."
Aharon Appelfeld is the internationally acclaimed author of many novels and books about the
Holocaust, in which he describes what I had experienced in my 25 years of teaching, and
that is that through short stories and art and especially through poetry one can achieve
a connection between pupils and the subject matter of the Holocaust much more easily than
a dry history lesson.
On the website of Yad Vashem, under the heading of "Education", you can find many lesson plans
that use poetry to teach the Holocaust and help you convey ideas in the classroom.