DHIS 25A31 - The Holocaust – History and Legacies

This course will explore the Holocaust from different perspectives: The students will learn 1) about the various stages of the Nazi persecution and extermination of Jews, 2) about Jewish voices, experiences and agency, and 3) about the attitude of the surrounding non-Jewish population towards the Holocaust. Thus, the course aims at introducing the students to what the historian Saul Freidländer called an “integrated history of the Holocaust”, taking into account perpetrators, Jewish victims and the surrounding societies. The geographical focus will be on Eastern Europe, where almost all of the Holocaust killings had taken place. The students will be able to explore different types of sources and historiographical approaches: every-day life, cultural history, gender history, micro-history. In the last sessions of the course the students will explore how different societies coped with the memory of the Holocaust and the difficult past, we will examine Poland, France, and Israel.

Ability to engage with texts and visual material that pertain to mass violence. Trigger warning : We will engage with source material that contain visual scenes of violence or descriptions of violence.

Student engagement during the semester (participation in class discussions during and outside of class, ability to ask questions, and class citizenship etc.) (10%)