In twenty-first century America, the murder of approximately six million European Jews by Nazi Germany remains a central event in our political, moral, and cultural universe. Nevertheless, the Holocaust still confounds historians' efforts to understand both the motivations of the perpetrators and the suffering of the victims. In this course, we will study the origins and implementation of the Holocaust from the divergent perspectives of perpetrators and victims. Our goal will be to investigate deeply the interaction of individual lives and world historical events. We will also examine the Holocaust within the larger context of the history of World War II in Europe and the historians' debates about Germany's exterminatory war aims. Course materials will include diaries, bureaucratic documents, memoirs, films, and historical scholarship.
Format: seminar. Evaluation will be based on class participation, a map quiz, six thought papers (4 pages) based on class readings, and a final research paper (6-8 pages). No prerequisites.