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HIST 353: The Holocaust Report a Broken Link

History 353: The Holocaust situates the Holocaust in the colonial frame, traces the parallels between the genocide of the Herero and Nama tribes in German colonies and the Holocaust, and looks at the intersections of the Holocaust and the Nakba. The course contextualizes the euthanasia program, explores Nazi colonial visions of race and space in Eastern European lebensraum, and examines links between ghettoization, Nazi resettlement policies, and genocide. The course offers insight into factors, structure, and agency behind the genocide and a bottom-up perspective on the victims, perpetrators, and collaborators. It applies an intersectional lens to understand Jewish victims’ experience of the Nazi oppressive power structures. In particular, the course scrutinizes agency through the lens of sexuality, sexual violence, and sexual barter and offers insight into dehumanization and desexualization as a means of control of prisoner populations of Jews and Roma but also the population on the margins of scholarly attention such as forced sex workers, young German female asocials, political prisoners, former prostitutes, and Polish female prisoners in concentration camps. The course concludes by looking at how the settler colonial mindset infiltrates the Holocaust histories and pedagogies and examines the benefits of approaching the Holocaust memory as multidirectional rather than competing.

Unit 1: Definition of Genocide—Situating the Holocaust in the Colonial Context

Moses, A. Dirk. “Introduction.” In The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression, 1–46. Cambridge University Press, 2021.
Pergher, Roberta, Mark Roseman, Jürgen Zimmerer, Shelley Baranowski, Doris L. Bergen, and Zygmunt Bauman. “The Holocaust: A Colonial Genocide? A Scholars’ Forum.” Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust 27, no. 1 (2013): 40–73.

Unit 2: From the "German Catechism" Debate to the Holocaust and Nakba

Urban, Susanne. “The Shoah, Postcolonialism, and Historikerstreit 2.0: Germany’s Past in Its Present.” Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs 16, no. 1 (2022): 83–97. 
Moses, A. Dirk. “The German Catechism.” In “The Catechism Debate,” New Fascism Syllabus, 1–8. 2021.
Bashir, Bashir, and Amos Goldberg. “Introduction: The Holocaust and the Nakba: A New Syntax of History, Memory, and Political Thought.” In The Holocaust and the Nakba. A New Grammar of Trauma and History, edited by Bashir Bashir and Amos Goldberg, 1–44. Columba University Press, 2018.

Unit 3: Victims of a Racial State—from Imperial Germany to the Third Reich

Evans, Richard J. “Blueprint for Genocide?” In Third Reich in History and Memory, 3–13. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Evans, Richard J. “Social Outsiders.” In Third Reich in History and Memory, 59–84. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Friedlander, Henry. “The Handicapped Victims.” In The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution, 175–195. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.
Friedlander, Henry. “Excluding Gypsies.” In The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution, 252–267. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

Unit 4: Antisemitism—Origins, Paradigms, and Problems of Definitions

Hayes, Peter. “Targets. Why the Jews?” In Why? Explaining the Holocaust, 3–36. W. W. Norton, 2017. 
Assman, Adeleide. “A Spectre Is Haunting Germany: The Mbembe Debate and the New Antisemitism.” Journal of Genocide Research 23, no. 3 (2021): 400–411. 

Unit 5: Jewish Victims’ Agency within the Power Structure of the Nazi Regime—Intersectional Approach

Kaplan, Marion A. “In Public: Jew Are Turned into Pariahs, 1933–1938.” In Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany, 17–49. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Kaplan, Marion A. “In Private: The Daily Lives of Jewish Women and Families, 1933–1938.” In Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany, 50–73. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. 
Vendrell, Javier Sample. “The Case of a German-Jewish Lesbian Woman: Martha Mosse and the Danger of Standing Out.” German Studies Review 41, no. 2 (May 2018): 335–353.
Unspoken Film. “‘Unspoken’ Lecture with Dr. Jake Newsome—LGBTQ+ Experiences in Nazi Germany.” YouTube, April 27, 2022. Video, 20:16.

Unit 6: State Destruction and Double Occupation—Structural Factors behind the Genocide

Tovey, Bella J. “Oral History Interview with Bella Tovey.” By Sandra Bradley. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. January 30, 1992.

Unit 7: Colonization, Resettlement, and Expulsion—Nazis as Demographers

Aly, Götz, and Susanne Heim. “The General Plan for the East.” In Architects of Annihilation: Auschwitz and the Logic of Destruction, 253–282. London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2002. 
Lower, Wendy. “A New Ordering of Space and Race: Nazi Colonial Dreams in Zhytomyr, Ukraine, 1941–1944.” German Studies Review 25, no. 2 (2002): 227–254.
Browning, Christopher R., and Jürgen Matthäus. “The Search for a Final Solution through Expulsion.” The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942, 36–110. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004.

Skip section in this chapter titled “The Army: From Abdication to Complicity,” pp. 72–81.

Unit 8: Ghettoization and the Failure of Nazi Resettlement Policies

Horwitz, Gordon J. “A City without Jews.” In Ghettostadt: Łódź and the Making of a Nazi City, 30–62. Harvard University Press, 2008.
Horwitz, Gordon J. “The Ghetto Will Endure.” In Ghettostadt: Łódź and the Making of a Nazi City, 91–113. Harvard University Press, 2008. 
Horwitz, Gordon J. “Banishment.” In Ghettostadt: Łódź and the Making of a Nazi City, 143–159. Harvard University Press, 2008. 
Jablonski, Dariusz. Photographer: Łódź Ghetto through the Lens of Walter Genewein. Films Media Group, 1998. 

Unit 9: Nazi-Soviet War—Radicalization and the Final Solution

Snyder, Timothy. “The Economics of Apocalypse.” In Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin, 155–186. New York: Basic Books, 2010. 
Snyder, Timothy. “The Final Solution.” In Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin, 187–225. New York: Basic Books, 2010.
WheelerCentre. “Hitler and the Decisions for the Final Solution: Christopher Browning.” YouTube, January 26, 2015. Video, 57:59.

Unit 10: From Auschwitz to Lety—Dehumanization and Desexualization in L’Univers Concentrationnaire

Levi, Primo. “The Drowned and the Saved.” In Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity, 87–101. New York: Collier Books; Toronto: Maxwell Macmillan Canada, 1993. 
Sommer, Robert. “Camp Brothels: Forced Sex Labour in Nazi Concentration Camps.” In Brutality and Desire, War and Sexuality in Europe’s Twentieth Century, edited by Dagmar Herzog, 168–196. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 
Polansky, Paul. “The Lety Story.” In Black Silence: The Lety Survivors Speak, 9–19. Cross Cultural Communications, 1988. 

Unit 11: Taboo and Agency—Sexuality, Sexual Violence, and Sexual Barter

Hájková, Anna. “Sexuality, Holocaust, Stigma.” German History 39, no 1 (March 2021): 1–14.
Glowacka, Dorota. “Sexual Violence against Men and Boys during the Holocaust: A Genealogy of (Not-So-Silent) Silence.” German History 39, no. 1 (March 2021): 78–99. 
Gusarov, Katya. “Sexual Barter and Jewish Women’s Efforts to Save Their Lives: Accounts from the Righteous Among the Nations Archives.” German History 39, no. 1 (March 2021): 100–111.
George L. Mosse Program in History. “Regina Mühlhäuser, Reconceptualizing Sexual Violence as Weapon during the German War of Annihilation.” YouTube, February 21, 2022. Video, 24:30. 

Unit 12: Perpetrators—Ordinary Men or Willing Executioners?

Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. “Police Battalion 101: Assessing the Men’s Motives.” Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, 239–262. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996. 
Lawson, Tom. “‘Ordinary Men’: Rethinking the Politics of Perpetrator History.” In Debates on the Holocaust, 193–234. Manchester University Press, 2010. 

Unit 13: Collaboration and Collaborationism in History and Memory

Gross, Jan T. “Outline of the Story.” In Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, 14–22. Poland. Princeton University Press, 2001. 
Gross, Jan T. “The Outbreak of the Russo-German War and the Pogrom in Radzilow.” In Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, 54–71. Poland. Princeton University Press, 2001. 
Gross, Jan T. “Preparations.” In Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, 72–78. Poland. Princeton University Press, 2001.
Gross, Jan T. “The Murder.” In Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, 90–104. Poland. Princeton University Press, 2001. 
JBS. “Father Patrick Desbois—Yahad in Unum—Investigating Mass Graves from the Holocaust.” YouTube, March 10, 2016. Video, 1:16:05. 

Unit 14: The Holocaust in the Twenty-First Century—Anxious Histories, Multidirectional Memory, and Settler Colonial Forgetting

Neiman, Susan. “On the Use and Abuse of Historical Comparison.” In Learning from the Germans. Race and the Memory of Evil, 23–40. Picador, 2020. 
Rothberg, Michael. “Introduction: Theorizing Multidirectional Memory in a Transnational Age.” In Multidirectional Memory. Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization, 1–29. Stanford University Press, 2009. 
Silverstein, Jordana. “There Is No Doubt That It Was a Jewish Experience: The Forgetfulness of a Haunting Settler Colonialism.” In Anxious Histories: Narrating the Holocaust in Jewish Communities at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century, 142–177. New York: Berghahn Books, 2015.