Although we may be mistaken about something we have ourselves experienced, we often take direct experience to be valid on its face. How do we know about events that occurred outside our ken? The distinction between knowledge as truth, based on direct knowledge, and mere opinion unhinged from direct observation, has a long lineage. It has given birth to the field of epistemology, the study of truth and how best to obtain and represent it. The tutorial will consider the matter of truth and its telling using a variety of case studies from the Holocaust. How can we, who have no memories of the events of the Holocaust, come to know it? There is a wide variety of ways of seeking and representing truth: memoir, testimony, documents of the time, oral history, each derived from participants. There are also accounts given by non-participants: documentary producers, historians, sociologists, and others using the tools of their disciplines. In addition to concerns about inaccuracy and misrepresentation, truth is often altered by the purpose of the inquiry. For example, legal proceedings consider testimony and evidence under specific rules to determine issue of guilt and punishment standards. How do criteria for truth and validity differ for a serious historian, or a casual reader? One case we shall consider is that of Adolph Eichmann. What role did he play in the "final solution"? We have a variety of sources we can examine for the facts: a film of his trial in an Israeli court; philosopher Hannah Arendt's contemporaneous account of that trial and her interpretation; Eichmann's published interrogation by the Israelis before the trial; and, his own memoir written during and after his trial. In additional we will examine documentaries of various kinds and approaches, fictional accounts, and books by historians and others. In all of the instances we shall explore what it means to determine facts; gain comprehension, assign blame (legal or moral, or both); and, the challenge of point of view (contrasting objective historical depiction at a distance as against subjective intimate experience as a participant). By the end of the tutorial, students will have gained a fuller understanding of the challenges of knowing. Students will discover how rich experience can be distorted and compressed even when those seeking are doing so with the best of intentions (though we will also consider instances of misrepresentation both intentional and not). Format: tutorial. Each student will write and present orally an essay of approximately seven double-spaced pages every other week on an assigned topic (the written essays will be briefer in the first month, 5-6 pages, somewhat longer in the second, 6-7, and 7-9 in the third). Students not presenting have the responsibility of critically reviewing the work of the colleague. There will be a final written exercise and students will be evaluated on this exercise, their essays, and their critical reviews. No prerequisites. Open to all. Enrollment limit: 10 (expected 10). Political Philosophy Subfield