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The Holocaust : History, Memory, Historiography

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The Holocaust : History, Memory, Historiography THE HOLOCAUST : HISTORY, MEMORY, HISTORIOGRAPHY Professeur(s) : Dr. Jean-Marc Dreyfus, Dr. Samuel Ghiles-Meilhac Année universitaire 2016/2017 : Semestre de printemps (INTRO SCPO) Wednesdays, 5-7, 9 rue de la Chaise, Room 907. DESCRIPTIF DU COURS More and more, the Holocaust is perceived and assessed as one of the seminal event of the 20. Century in Europe. If its consequences were not clearly embraced in the immediate after war, the long shadow of genocide shapes today’s culture and politics. This course aims at presenting some main themes in the growing field of Holocaust studies. Themes will be on the Holocaust itself, its general interpretations, the question of victims, of perpetrators, the technologies of mass killings, but also on the consequences of genocide (justice, memorials, testimonies). It is a history class, with some interdisciplinarity: politics, literature, psychology will also be used in class. A specific attention will be dedicated to the digital aspects of Holocaust learning, documentation and memory. Assessments : Participation in class : 10% Group work in class (Session 7, March 15), on visual testimonies : 20% . Both an electronic and a printed copy must be submited. An essay: deadline is 17 April 2017. Both an electronic and a printed copy must be submited, 2500 words: 50% (see the topics). A book review : pick up a book in one of the ‘further reading’ lists. 1500 words : 20%. Read the book cover to cover ! Deadline is 19 April 2017. Both an electronic and a printed copy must be submited. A critical review is not merely a summary of the book's contents (though that may be included) but primarily an evaluation of its strengths and weaknesses. Please, answer the following questions about the book (not especially in this set order) : 1. Thesis. What is the author's main argument? Is the thesis readily apparent? Is it convincing 2. Organization. Is the book logically constructed, or is it confusing, repetitive, etc.? 3. Which is the context in which the book was written ? Does it relate to a specific historiographical debate ? 4. Who is the author ? 5. Sources. Even without expertise you can quickly tell whether a book depends on such primary materials as documents, diaries, and letters, or whether it is all drawn from second-hand general texts. 6. Documentation. Any time you quote, you should cite the source 8. Conclusions. General value. How useful might the book be to a specialist in this field, or to a student investigating the subject matter for the first time ? For a more detailed description, see: http://sass.queensu.ca/writingcentre/wp- content/uploads/sites/3/2013/06/Writing-Critical-Book-Reviews.pdf Spring 2017 1 Séance 1 : 25 January, Introduction (JMD) a) Introduction to the course. General presentation. Description of assessments. b) Seminar : discussions of basic concepts on the Holocaust. Terminology : ‘Holocaust’, ‘Shoah’, ‘Rurban’, ‘Genocide’, ‘Crime against Humanity’, ‘Survivor’, ‘Camps’, etc. Discussion of the document Documents : mapping the Holocaust (from Gilbert, Atlas of the Holocaust) ; Hilberg’s scheme (extract) ‘. Reading : None Essay topics : - How specific was the Holocaust compared to other mass atrocities of the 20th Century ? - In what sense was the Holocaust a ‘modern’ genocide ? Further Reading : Bauer, Yehuda, Rethinking the Holocaust (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2000). Dreyfus, Jean-Marc, Langton, Daniel, Writing the Holocaust (London: Bloomsbury, 2011). Friedlander, Saul, Memory, History, and the Extermination of the Jews of Europe (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993). Friedländer, Saul, Nazi Germany and the Jews. Volume 1, The Years of Persecution ; Volume 2, The Years of Extermination, 1933-1945, (New York : HarperCollins, c1997; 2007). Goda, Norman J. (ed.), Jewish Histories of the Holocaust - New Transnational Approaches (Oxford; New York, Berghahn Books, 2014). Kwiet, Konrad, Matthäus, Jürgen (eds.), Contemporary Responses to the Holocaust (Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers, 2004). Lagrou, Pieter, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation: Patriotic Memory and National Recovery in Western Europe, 1945-1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). Langer, Lawrence, Admitting the Holocaust, Collected Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). Marrus, Michael, The Holocaust in History (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England for Brandeis Uni Press, 1987). Mazower, Mark, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999). Saidel, Rochelle G., Never Too Late to Remember (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1996). Steinbacher, Sybille, Auschwitz. A History (New York: Harper Perennial, 2006). Steinweis, Alan E., Rogers Daniel E., The Impact of Nazism: new Perspectives on the Third Reich and its Legacy (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 2003). Stone, Dan, (ed.), The Historiography of the Holocaust (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). Traverso, Enzo, Understanding the Nazi Genocide: Marxism after Auschwitz, translated by Peter Drucker, IIRE notebooks for study and research (London: Pluto, 1999). Digital resources : the Wiener Library in London : https://www.wienerlibrary.co.uk/digital-holocaust-resources Séance 2 : 1 February ; Explaining the Holocaust (SGM) This session will present various theoretical explanations of the Holocaust. The traditional, not fully overcome functionalist/intentionalist debate, the nature of Nazi anti—Semitism, the role of Hitler, will be considered. The controversy with Hayden White on a post-modern view of Holocaust writing will also attract our attention. Reading : - Timothy Snyder ‘Holocaust, the Ignored Reality’, article from the New York Review of Books : https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2009/07/16/holocaust-the-ignored-reality/ - Bauer, Yehuda, Rethinking the Holocaust (New Haven : Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 14-38. - Friedlander, Saul, ed., Probing the Limits of Representation: Nazism and the “Final Solution” (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 1-21. a) Various theoretical approaches to national-socialism and the Holocaust b) Discussion on the texts. Please, consider the following questions : - Which are the more convincing approaches to the Holocaust, according to you ? - How specific are theoretical approaches of the Holocaust ? - Is interdisciplinarity needed to better approach the Holocaust ? Essay questions : - Which are the more convincing approaches to the Holocaust, according to you ? - How specific are theoretical approaches of the Holocaust ? - Is interdisciplinarity needed to better approach the Holocaust ? Further reading : Cohn, Norman, Warrant for Genocide, the Myth of the Jewish World-Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (New York: Harper and Row, 1967). Fraenkel, Ernst, The Dual State, a Contribution to the Theory of Dictatorship (New York: Octagon Books, 1969). Herbert, Ulrich, ed., National Socialist Extermination Policies: Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies (Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books, 1999). Herf, Jeffrey, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Modernism in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). Katz, Jacob, From Prejudice to Destruction: Anti-Semitism 1700-1933 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980). Kershaw, Ian, The “Hitler Myth”: Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). Mosse, George L., The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1964). Neumann, Franz L., Behemoth: The Stucture and Practice of National Socialism 1933-1944 (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982) ; reprint, New York, Octagon Books, 1963. Spring 2017 3 Poliakov, Léon, The History of Antisemitism, volume 1 : From the Time of Christ to the Court Jews, volume 2 (New York: The Vanguard Press, 1965). Postone, Moishe, Santner, Eric, ed., Catastrophe and Meaning. The Holocaust and the Twentieth Century (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2003). Volkov, Shulamit, Germans, Jews and antisemites: trials in Emancipation (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Winckler, Heinrich August, Germany, the long road west, 1789-1933 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). Yahil, Leni, The Holocaust: the fate of European Jewry, 1932-1945, translated from the Hebrew by Ina Friedman and Haya Galai (New York ; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990). Séance 3 : 8 February ; Germans Jews, 1933-1941 (JMD) The years 1933-1941 were decisive in the implementation of the Holocaust. German Jews were submitted to a progressive process of isolation. This process was both ‘legal’ and ‘spontaneous’. The agents of persecution will be described and also the path to violence. Jewish responses will be considered and so will be the attitude of the German population. Can a gendered approach to those responses be useful? Reading : - Bankier, David, Probing the depths of German antisemitism : German society and the persecution of the Jews, 1933-1941 (New York : Berghahn Books, 2001), pp. 271-281 (Kulka) - Hilberg, Raul, The Destruction of European Jews, pp. 61-77. a) Suppressing emancipation ; escalating isolation and violence b) Documents on Kristallnach : video ; written testimonies. Essay questions: - How ‘legal’ (or ‘legalised’) was the isolation of German Jews ? - Describe the various responses of German Jews towards persecution. - What was the specific role of German Jewish women after 1933 ? Further reading : Bajohr, Frank, “The Holocaust and Corruption”, in Gerald D.
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