SOURCE: Danks, Carol. “Using the Literature of Elie Wiesel and Selected Poetry to Teach the Holocaust in the Secondary School History Classroom.” Social Studies 87, no. 3 (May-June 1996): 101-05.

In the following essay, Danks recommends Night as a tool to teach high school students about the Holocaust, contending that the work exposes students to such multiple realms as historical, geographical, and personal relations and development.

“Our entry into the world of the Holocaust thus depends on who tells the tale—and how,” says Lawrence Langer in his Versions of Survival (Langer 1982, 5). Although Langer is specifically referring to survivor accounts and the relationship between events and memory, his statement also relates to teaching about the Holocaust. How we as teachers help students deal with the world of the Holocaust depends, in part, on our decisions about who “tells the tale” and how.

Secondary history textbooks have a reputation among many students...