The High School Student Using Lego to Learn—And Teach—About Nazism

This is pretty ingenious: John Denno, a 16-year-old from Liverpool in England, has created a series of Lego dioramas about Nazi Germany and World War II for a school assignment. The project is sensitively executed and surprisingly moving, with models covering everything from Hitler’s rise to power, to Kristallnacht, to Auschwitz.

The project required a visual component, but Denno was concerned that his poor drawing skills would put him at a disadvantage, so he decided to build the sets with Lego, “because that is what I’m good at.” He told The Huffington Post, “I can’t draw for the life of me so I thought this would be an interesting way to present the project… I’ve been building, animating and photographing Lego since I was very young.”

The lego scenes have gone viral thanks to reddit and imgur, educating many more than just Denno about the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust. (You can view the complete set here.) Lego FTW.