This article explores the concept of historical empathy and how it can foster a greater understanding of a significant episode in New Zealand and Australian history, the 1915 Gallipoli Campaign. It also highlights the potential that the concept holds for encouraging students to participate in civic society. It does this by drawing upon the author's experience of teaching historical empathy to young people in a way that aims to affectively tune in to shared human traits and cognitively comprehend why another person holds a different set of beliefs. In doing this, the author's aim is to develop in young people an empathic understanding of the lives of others, past and present.