ENG 477A/FILM 495 Holocaust and Trauma in Film and Literature Roberta Sabbath, Ph.D. T/Th 2:30-3:45 pm Rm: TBD Office: CDC-C323: Hours: TBD Phone: 702-895-5823--office hours only Phone: 609 - 652 - 4302 [email protected] COURSE DESCRIPTION Catalogue: Comparative study of the relations of prose, poetry, and drama to the structure and themes of the cinema, from Dickens to the present. Elie Wiesel has asserted that “Auschwitz represents the negation and failure of human progress; it negates the human design and casts doubts on its validity. Then, it defeated culture; later, it defeated art, because just as no one could imagine Auschwitz before Auschwitz, no one can now retell Auschwitz after Auschwitz.” In his view, only documentary footage, carefully researched history, and the testimony of survivors can convey a semblance of what happened during the Holocaust within the limitations imposed by empathy, images, language, and reason to communicate its horrors. Yet authors and directors of films have portrayed how and why the Holocaust was implemented by its perpetrators and their accomplices, tolerated by the majority of bystanders residing in countries ruled by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, ignored or relegated to a secondary priority by the leaders of the Allied and neutral nations, and resisted by a minority of individuals and organized groups. Filmmakers and writers have depicted it felt for the Jews and other victims of the Third Reich to be persecuted, confined, enslaved, and robbed of their dignity in ghettos and camps where death was always imminent, evading captivity, or resisting the regimes that sought their eradication. Novels and movies also have explored the postwar repercussions of the Holocaust for those guilty of participating in it, those who survived it, and the citizens of countries where its memory was initially repressed and has been gradually rediscovered. This course will compare and contrast how historically accurate, emotionally moving, and thought-provoking documents, documentaries, feature films, fictional stories, and memoirs can be in evoking the cruelty and rationales of those implicated in Nazi genocide, how the victims of the extermination policies coped with their fear, rage, and suffering, during their ordeals, and the legal, psychological, political, and religious impact the Holocaust continues to exert on posterity. STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES: By the end of this class, you should be: • Identify the major events and causes of the Holocaust, the motivations of its perpetrators, collaborators, bystanders, victims, and resisters, and its postwar impact. • Analyze the ethical, historical, and philosophical implications of portraying what happened during the Holocaust in documentary films, feature films and fiction. • Extrapolate how Holocaust iconography and tropes from newsreels, documentaries, eyewitness accounts, and secondary sources are referenced in fiction and feature films to 1 establish a sense of historical authenticity, evoke affective and cognitive responses, and draw analogies between what he Holocaust and current human rights abuses and genocides. • Analyze and explain the typical changes [condensing timeframes, creating binary oppositions, generalizing, inventing characters and dialogue, imposing edifying endings, personalizing collective experiences, sanitizing the horrors, symbolizing , trivializing, and universalizing the Jewish and Sinti ordeals employed by filmmakers when they dramatize historical events from the Holocaust or adapt literary sources about it to produce their movies. • Synthesize how cinematic (visual) and literary (writing) styles and techniques differ. • Assess and evaluate the various portraits and lenses through which the Holocaust is understood, portrayed, and referenced in our assigned literature and movies in this course READINGS: DB=Doris L. Bergen, War and Genocide, 2nd edition EW=Eli Wiesel, Night PL=Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz T&L=Milton Teichman and Sharon Leder, eds., Truth and Lamentation JK= Jerzy Kosinski, The Painted Bird AM=Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces MK=Miriam Katin, We Are On Our Own AS=Art Spiegelman, MAUS, vols. 1 & 2 ELW=Edward Lewis Wallant, The Pawnbroker NE=Nathan Englander, What We Talk About When We Talk about Anne Frank JSF=Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated Online Resources for Further Research AF=Alan Mintz, Popular Culture and the Shaping of Holocaust Memory in America – online Lied Library PC/HM=Understanding and Teaching the Holocaust—online Lied Library AB=Children of Job: American Second-Generation Witnesses to the Holocaust—online Lied Library ES=Writing in Witness: A Holocaust Reader—online Lied Library BL=Philosophical Witnessing: The Holocaust as Presence VA=chapter: Teaching Holocaust Literature in the 21st Century ASSIGNMENTS Date Reading Film, Writing Assignments, Misc 1. Jan 21, 23 Introduction to the course Why the Jews? United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Berger: Ways of Seeing: under “What is Anti- online pdf Semitism?” and Holocaust Denial 2 Night and Fog: YouTube The Shoah: an historical and The Night of Broken Glass: literary overview Library Streaming DB Chapters 1-3 IWitness: Shoah Foundation 2. Jan 28, 30 DB Chapters 4-5 T&L (313): Fink, “A Scrap of Triumph of the Will: ONLINE Time” & DVD HRC Film Unfinished: Library Streaming 3. Feb 4,6 EW Wiesel, Night DB Chapters 6-7 EW Night, cont. Wannsee Conference: YouTube Wannsee Conference Protocols of the Elders of Zion Mein Kampf 4. Feb 11, 13 PL Survival in Auschwitz Shoah: YouTube Clips DB Chapters 8 TBD: Schindler’s List: DVD UNLV PL Survival in Auschwitz, cont. T&L: (poems) Levi, “For Adolf Eichmann” (444); 3 Snodgrass, “Heinrich Himmler” (276) 5. Feb 18, 20 Ghetto Diaries (Korzak): pdf online or Anne Frank, Diary of a Young Girl: pdf online or William Shirer, Berlin Diary: Journal of a War Corresondent 1934-1941: pdf online T&L: Borowski, “This Way Korzak from Ghetto Diaries: for the Gas, Ladies and Library Streaming Gentlemen” (66) 6. Feb 25, 27 T&L: Spiegel, “A Ghetto Dog” (318) Uprising (Warsaw Ghetto): T&L: Lustig, “The Lemon” DVD HRC (90); (poems) Jastrun, “Here Too as in Jerusalem” (231); 912 Days of the Warsaw Sutzkever, “1980” (243); Ghetto: Library Streaming Delbo, “Street for Arrivals, Street for Departures” (218) 7. March 3, 5 T&L: Nomberg-Przytyk, “Esther’s First Born” (86); (poem) Ficowski, “Lamentation” (233) Into the Arms of Strangers: T&L: Ozick, “The Shawl” DVD UNLV (107); (poems) Ficowski, “Both Your Mothers,” (244) “5.8.1942” (475) One Survivor Remembers: DVD UNLV 8. March 10, 12 4 T&L: (poems) Pagis, “Instructions for Crossing the Border,” (224); “Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway- Car” (491) T&L: Wiesel, “An Old Acquaintance” (112); (poems) Kovner, “And There You Were” (260); Whitman, “Budapest: June 1944” (266); Sutzkever, “How?” (278) T&L: (poems) Slutsky, “Burnt” (454); Sachs, “Chorus TBD: Europa Europa: DVD of the Rescued” (279); HRC Zychlinsky, “The Silent Partner” (281); Glatstein, “Nightsong” (473); Klepfisz “Poland, 1944” (263); Jarrell, “Protocols,” (226), “A Camp in the Prussian Forest” (285); Molodovsky “God of Mercy” Spring Break 9. March 24, 26 JK, The Painted Bird JK The Painted Bird Amen: Library Streaming 10. March 31, April 2 AM Fugitive Pieces TBD AM Fugitive Pieces Au Revoir Les Enfants: Library Streaming 11. April 7, 9 AS MAUS, vols. 1 & 2 TBD 5 AS MAUS, continued Defiance: DVD HRC 12. April 14, 16 MK We Are On Our Own MK We Are On Our Own, The Nasty Girl: Prime continued Streaming or UNLV DVD T&L: Megged, “The Name” (327); Rosen, “The Cheek of the Trout” (371); (poem) Tussman, “In Spite” (492) 13. April 21, 23 ELW The Pawnbroker ELW The Pawnbroker The Pawnbroker: DVD HRC T&L: (poems) Piercy, “The Forgigin Dr. Mengele: DVD Housing Project at Drancy,” HRC (236) “Black Mountain” (257) 14. April 28, 30 NE “What We Talk About X-Men in Auschwitz Episode 1 When We Talk About Anne Intro: YouTube Frank” Deborah Lipstadt Ted Talk Eichman in Jerusalem: Hannah Arendt Denial: Prime Streaming Everything is Illuminated Everything is Illuminated: DVD 15. May 5, 7 Essay Talking Points 6 Essay Talking Points Final Exams TBD RESOURCES Shoah Foundation US Holocaust Museum US Holocaust Museum Denial and Distortion Nazi Medical Experiments: US Holocaust Museum Holocaust vs. Shoah Week 1: Article: Berel Lang, “Introduction,” Holocaust Representation1 Article: Philip Lopate, Night and Fog2 Article: Sylvie Lindberg: The “Night and Fog”: a history of gazes3 Week 2: Article: Ansbach Cattle Market 4 Week 3: Article: Pope Pius XII’s Christmas Message of 19425 Article: Decision of the Nuremberg Special Court in the Katzenberger Race Defilement6 Article: Filming the Story of a Spy for God: An Interview with Costa-Gavras 7 Week 4: Christopher Browning, “Revisiting the Holocaust Perpetrators: Why Did They Kill?” 1 Lang, Berel. Holocaust Representation: Art Within the Limits of History and Ethics, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/unlv/detail.action?docID=3318179. 2 Philip Lopate, “Night and Fog,” The Criterion Collection, June 23, 2003. 3 Lindeperg, Sylvie. ""Night and Fog" : A History of Gazes." "Night and Fog" : A History of Gazes. 2011. Concentrationary Cinema (2011) 55-70. Web. 4 “Ansbach Cattle Markets,” Documents of the Ansbach Municipality, City Council meeting on 29 August 1933 (Yad Vashem) Accessed 18 January 2020. www.Yadvashem.org 5 “The Rights of Man: The Feast of Christmas and Suffering Humanity. Broadcast of Pope Pius XII,