Teaching the Holocaust Through Teen Diaries — Free Educational Tools from We Dared to Write

What happens when Holocaust education starts with a teenager’s diary?

Project Witness is launching a groundbreaking educational initiative tied to its new animated documentary, We Dared to Write. At its heart are five deeply personal diary-based animated shorts and two living voices that extend those stories into the present day. Together, they form a powerful resource for educators across North America—one that invites students to learn not just what happened during the Holocaust, but how it was experienced, recorded, and remembered by young people like them.

And it’s all available for free.

Centering Youth Voices—Then and Now

Each of the five animated diarists featured in We Dared to Write—Moshe Flinker, Ruthka Lieblich, Rywka Lipszyc, Yitskhok Rudashevski, and Anita Budding Meyer—was a teenager during the Holocaust. Their diaries provide a direct, emotional, and intellectual entry point into Holocaust history. The animation brings their words to life, carefully designed to match the historical record, cultural setting, and inner life of each writer.

But this isn’t where the story ends.

Anita Budding Meyer, whose childhood was spent in hiding in Amsterdam, is not just portrayed in the animation—she appears in the film today, now in her 90s. Her segment transitions from animation to live action, allowing students to see the diarist behind the diary, and to understand how memory lives not only in the past, but in the present.

After Anita comes Peter Feigl, another teen diarist and survivor who wrote his wartime journal while hiding in Vichy France. Peter shares his story on camera, offering reflections that blend the immediacy of youth with the perspective of age. Together, Anita and Peter anchor the film’s educational potential: not just voices from the past, but voices still here, ready to be heard.

A Fully Developed Curriculum—Free and Downloadable

For each of the five animated shorts, Project Witness has created a downloadable lesson plan designed for 8th–12th grade classrooms. These materials are both academically rigorous and emotionally accessible, guiding students to explore each diary not only as a historical document but as a living piece of testimony.

Each lesson includes:

Concise historical background on each diarist’s time, place, and cultural context
Curated diary excerpts with built-in discussion prompts
Primary source questions that guide analysis and encourage close reading
Reflection activities that help students draw connections between past and present
Ethical discussion frameworks to explore themes such as spiritual resistance, cultural identity, persecution, moral decision-making, and resilience

Educators will be able to access these tools free of charge through the Project Witness Digital Learning Hub, launching alongside the film’s release.

Digital Storytelling Modules—Bringing History to Life

In addition to written lesson plans, educators will have access to interactive digital storytelling modules, designed to deepen engagement and support differentiated instruction across a range of learners. These digital resources complement the film and provide educators with plug-and-play components for classroom use.

Each module includes:

Animated and annotated maps and timelines following each diarist’s journey through ghetto, hiding, or exile
Archival photographs and scanned diary pages placed alongside the animated clips
Thematic mini-modules on subjects like “Religious Practice in Hiding,” “What Does It Mean to Resist?”, and “Writing as Witness”
Creative reflection tools such as “Write Like Rywka” journaling prompts and “Ask Peter” classroom Q&A sessions
Interactive classroom challenges such as “Diary Detective,” where students match anonymous excerpts to diarists based on voice, content, and historical context

Each module is rooted in historical accuracy and pedagogical best practices. But more importantly, each one starts with a simple, powerful idea: the student should begin by listening—to a peer. To someone their age. To someone who dared to write.

A Program for Every School Type

Whether in public school, private Jewish day school, yeshiva, or homeschool setting, We Dared to Write’s educational program adapts easily to a wide variety of learning environments. Each component is modular and requires no prior familiarity with Holocaust history to implement. For teachers seeking additional support, Project Witness will also be offering:

Webinars and virtual training sessions for educators
Facilitated discussion guides for intergenerational conversations
Access to the documentary and shorts, completely free, for classroom screening

Students who engage with these resources won’t just learn dates or facts. They’ll encounter teenagers who lived through the unimaginable—and recorded it in real time. They’ll discover what it means to bear witness. To write as an act of defiance. To survive through storytelling.

From Diary to Dialogue

By closing with Anita Budding Meyer’s transition from animated character to living narrator, the film offers students a profound realization: this isn’t ancient history. And by following with Peter Feigl’s live testimony, the story expands—into questions of identity, rescue, and what it means to carry memory forward.

Together, these living diarists reinforce the film’s message: the Holocaust is not just something we remember. It is something we must continue to listen to. Teach from. And pass on.

And thanks to We Dared to Write, the next generation now has the tools to do just that.