The Holocaust

This course focuses on the destruction of Jews in Europe by Nazi Germany, but the true scope of the course is much broader; exploring also the shifting historical conditions from which the Holocaust emerged. Students will explore memoirs, historical documents, poetry, documentary footage, filmic representations, novels, and other media that help to illustrate the multiplicity and variety of human experience during this important historical episode.

By the end of the course, you will have an expanded knowledge and understanding of Eastern and Western Jewish communities, the origins and development of antisemitism, the formation and operation of concentration camps, the resistance movements, and the Holocaust as a problem for world-history. Additionally, you will have engaged with the problematics of representation, memory, "the memorial", and witnessing.

This course is supported by the Neufeld-Levin Chair in Holocaust studies.

Module 1 - Emancipation, Acculturation, and Assimilation
Readings:
Tec, Nehama. Dry Tears.
Bauer. Chapter One "Who are the Jews?"
Dan Pagis, some poems will be provided
Film: Image Before My Eyes

Module 2 - Shtetl Life and the Pale of Settlement
Readings:
Badenheim 1939
Sholem Aleichem's "On Account of a Hat"
Bauer. Chapter Two
Film: Everything Is Illuminated

Module 3 - Narrating Modern Jewish Success and Nazi Antisemitism
Readings:
Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz (part 1)
Bauer. Chapters 6&7
Film: Shoah (excerpts)

Module 4 - Witnessing and Postmemory
Readings:
Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz (part 2)
Wiesel, Elie. Night. (part 1)
Bauer. Chapters 8&9
Paul Celan's poem "Death Fugue"
Film: Night & Fog

Module 5 - Nazi Racial Laws/Demolition of the Jews
Readings:
Wiesel, Elie. Night  (part 2)
Schwartz-Bart. The Last of the Just [excerpts]
Film: Europa, Europa

Module 6 - Nazi Germany and the Totalitarian State
Readings: 
Browning, Christopher. Ordinary Men. [Excerpts]
Bauer. Chapter 11
Film: Divided We Fall

Module 7 - Ghettos/Resistance
Readings:
Arieti, Silvano. The Parnas
Bauer. Chapter 12
Film: Partisans of Vilna

Module 8 - Establishing Extermination Centers
Readings:
Borowski, Tadeusz. The Way for the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen
Bauer. Chapter 13
Film: The Wannsee Conference

Module 9 - The Hungarian Experience of the Holocaust
Readings:
Kertész, Imre. Fatelessness
Kertész, Imre. "Who Owns Auschwitz?"
Bauer. Chapter 14
Film: The Pianist

Module 10 - Deportations & The Legacy of the Holocaust
Readings:
Fink, Ida. A Scrap of Time
Film: The Shop on Main Street