Study topics and writing assignments

Writing assignment on Triumph of the Will
for February 4

Write a two- to three-page paper on one of the following topics:

1. The message of Triumph of the Will is primarily visual and cannot be rendered completely into cognitive statements. Can you nonetheless formulate statements about the Third Reich that the film probably intends to convey to its audience?

2. It has been said (by Susan Sontag) that Triumph of the Will expresses a "fascist aesthetics". Can you see what might be meant by that? What do you think?

Richard S. Levy (ed.), Antisemitism in the Modern World: An Anthology of Texts (1991), Introduction and documents 4-6 and 15-18

1. What was "the Jewish question"? Was it the same for all the authors we read for this session?

2. What were the common stereotypes of the Jews socially and economically? What about culturally, and politically, and morally?

3. In the view of these authors, why were the Jews so successful in imposing themselves on society?

**Adolf Hitler, "Nation and Race," from his Mein Kampf, vol. I (1925)

**Sebastian Haffner, "Life," from his The Meaning of Hitler (1979)

**Eberhard Jäckel, "The Elimination of the Jews," from his Hitler's Weltanschauung: A Blueprint for Power (1972)

1. What are the characteristics of the Jewish enemy Hitler sees as confronting Germany? Why is this enemy seen as so dangerous? Does Hitler have anything to say on these matters that differs from what was said by the predecessors you have read?

2. Who are the good guys, in Hitler's scheme of things, and what are their characteristics?

3. What can you tell about Hitler's techniques of persuasion from what you have read of Mein Kampf? How does he try to have us accept his arguments?

4. How systematic and coherent was Hitler's thinking? Was he insane (perhaps only on some subjects)? Does it matter anyhow?

Leni Yahil, The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry (1990), ch. 1

**Sarah Gordon, Hitler, Germans and the "Jewish Question" (1984), Introduction and chs. 1 and 2

1. What picture can you form of the condition of the Jews of Germany during the time of the Weimar Republic? Where did they come from? Where did they live? What were their occupations? their politics?

2. How do you imagine the everyday relations of Jews and gentiles in Germany before Hitler came to power – say, in 1932? How bad was the situation of Jews at this time?

3. Can you see how the general political situation in the Weimar Republic played into Hitler's hands?

4. Evaluate this statement: "The Nazi Party won a large following among Germans in spite of its anti-Semitism, rather than because of its anti-Semitism."

Yahil, Holocaust, ch. 3

Lucy S. Dawidowicz (ed.), A Holocaust Reader (1976), pp. 35-49 and section 5

**"Antisemitism 1933-39" (documents with text), from J. Noakes and G. Pridham (eds.), Nazism: A History in Documents and Eyewitness Accounts, 1919-1945, vol. 1 (1983), read pp. 521-47

1. Where were the impulses toward radical persecution of the Jews coming from in the early period of the Nazi regime?

2. When the early Nazi regime held back on anti-Semitic measures, it was in order to placate ..... whom? What priorities does this suggest?

3. Who counted as a Jew?

4. Contrast the approaches of Zionist and non-Zionist German Jews to their dilemma.

Yahil, Holocaust, ch. 4

Dawidowicz, Holocaust Reader, pp. 49-53

**"Antisemitism 1933-39" (from Noakes and Pridham), read pp. 547-67

1. For what reasons did so much of the Jewish population remain in Germany up to Kristallnacht, and in part even afterwards?

2. What do the measures taken by the Jewish community of Germany in response to persecution tell us about the community?

3. Do you see fairly clearly defined stages in Nazi Jewish policy up to the war? Does the progression, whether clear or confused, seem to have elements of a plan, or not?

4. How should we understand the Third Reich's emphasis on Jewish emigration from Germany? In what spirit and for what purposes were such urgings, and even programs, put forward? Was it all a façade, or a charade?

Ezra Mendelsohn, The Jews of East Central Europe between the World Wars (1983), Introduction and ch. 1

1. Compare and contrast the condition of Polish Jewry in the interwar years with that of German Jewry before Hitler came in power. In what respects is the contrast greatest? Are there any instructive similarities?

2. How many different kinds of responses to their difficult situation do we find among Polish Jews? Could you construct a sort of a scale from these?

3. What range of attitudes toward Jews do you find among the ethnically Polish population? Can you understand them at all? How much does Polish anti-Semitism resemble German anti-Semitism, and where is it different?

Mendelsohn, Jews of East Central Europe, chs. 2 and 3

1. Take the following scale of socio-political styles that accounts for much (not all) of what we saw in Poland:

assimilation
acculturation

nationalism: Zionist
                  anti-Zionist
socialism: Jewish socialism
                  Communism

Orthodox conservatism
Hasidism

Where are the Jews of Hungary and the Jews of (the different parts of) Czechoslovakia found on the scale? What reasons do you see for why they went about things differently than many Polish Jews? Out of the range of possibilities, why did they pursue particular solutions to their place in the Hungarian and Czechoslovak worlds rather than others? Lastly: do you have any criticisms of the scale?

2. Apply Mendelsohn’s distinction between the "East European" and "West European" types of Jews (pp. 6-7) to Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

3. To get a line on the Jewry of yet another country (say, Romania or Lithuania), what questions would you ask?

Yahil, Holocaust, chs. 5 - 6
**"The Persecution of the Jews 1939-1941", from Noakes and Pridham (eds.), Nazism, vol. 2 (1988), ch. 37

1. In 1939-41, before the invasion of Russia, what seems to have been the Nazi leadership’s conception of Germany’s war aims and how things were going for them? How did such thinking affect their policies toward the Jews?

2. Imagine that you were a well-informed observer of what the Nazi occupation forces were doing with the Jews in the second half of 1940 or the first half of 1941: the resettlement plans, the labor camps and labor battalions, the ghettos, and other things. What would you learn about the Nazis, and what would you suppose they were trying to accomplish?

3. What do you make of the Nisko resettlement plan? the Madagascar plan?

Yahil, Holocaust, chs. 7 - 8
Dawidowicz, Holocaust Reader, section 6

Writing assignment for March 4

The ghettos set up by the victorious Germans in formerly Polish territory were extremely varied in the degree and form of self-government, the level of activity of the Jewish police, the kind of work performed, how open they were to commerce with the outside world, and in other ways. What role did the inhabitants of the ghettos play in determining these differences, and how did they respond to them?

Write a five-page, typed paper on this topic. Feel free to talk to other students and to me while figuring out the issues, but not while actually planning or writing the paper. For guidance on writing use the course stylesheet on Writing Papers on the website. The paper is due at classtime on March 4.

Tadeusz Borowski, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen (1947), Introduction and the first four stories (through "Auschwitz, Our Home")

1. Most people find Borowski's stories about Auschwitz not only illuminating and painful, but also somehow alarming. Is this the true human condition? Is this human nature in the raw?

2. What is it about Borowski's literary presentation that makes the stories so powerful? Can you find things in how he tells his stories that contribute to the effectiveness of his writing?

3. What are the most striking things you learned about Auschwitz from these stories?

4. Could a film be made of this book?

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz (1947), the whole book

1. What sustains someone in the conditions Levi presents?

2. How is Levi’s book like, or unlike, Borowski’s book?

3. Which book is more affecting? Why?

Yahil, Holocaust, sections 9 - 11 and 13 - 14

1. It's important to figure out who did the killing in the East in 1941, and on whose orders. Also, who exactly was killed?

2. How useful do you find it to make a distinction between East European and West European patterns in what happened in 1941-42? In your view, what factors made the actions against one Jewish population different from those against another such population?

3. From this reading, what would you say made the ghettoization, ruthless persecution, and bestial treatment of the Jews turn into systematic murder?

Writing assignment on The Shop on Main Street
for April 1

Write a two- to three-page paper on one of the following topics. Be sure to illustrate your argument with details taken from the film.

1. The film is surely a tragedy, but whose tragedy: Mrs. Lautmann’s? Tono Brtko’s? Or whose?

2. Does Tono become a "white Jew", like Kuchar? What exactly are his motivations in the latter part of the story?

3. Is the film preaching a moral lesson to us?

Jan T. Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (2001), the whole book

The issue, of course, is why? How was it possible? What can we learn from the whole experience about the relations between Jews and Christians (at least in this sort of town, in this area); about the situation created by the war; or in other ways about the circumstances and context of these terrible events?

**Ian Kershaw, "Hitler: 'Master in the Third Reich' or 'Weak Dictator'" and "Hitler and the Holocaust", from his The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, 4th ed. (2000)
**"The Transition to the Systematic Extermination of the Jews 1941-1942," from Noakes and Pridham (eds.), Nazism, vol. 2, ch. 38

How was the Nazi regime's decision to exterminate the Jews of Europe reached, by whom, and when? Prepare for class by making your best judgment on this question, using all that you know about the course of Nazi policy and practices. Be sure you understand the arguments of both the "intentionalist" interpretation and the "structuralist" (or "functionalist") interpretation, though you need not adopt either of these positions yourself if you see a better approach.

Jiří Weil, Life with a Star (1947), the whole book

1. What picture do we get of members of the Jewish community of Prague as its fate closes in? What picture do we get of members of the surrounding non-Jewish community?

2. What is Josef Roubicek's decision, made toward the end of the book, and how does he arrive at it?

3. The message of the book is ..........?

Yahil, Holocaust, sections 15 - 16

1. Why were the death camps established when and where they were? What differences were there among them? Can you account for these?

2. What factors explain the variation in the deportations of Jews from different countries in the West? What about in Mediterranean Europe and Eastern Europe?

Writing assignment on Shoah
for April 22

From the part of Shoah you have seen, write a two- to three-page paper on the following question:

"What purposes seem to lie behind the film, and how successful is the film in producing the intended effect?"

The question is intentionally open-ended: you're encouraged to branch out from it in any way you like, so long as you touch on both halves of the actual question.

Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (1992), Preface and chs. 1 - 9

1. Were there things in the situation into which these "ordinary men" were put, and how they were put there, that helps explain what they did?

2. Do you think these policemen would have killed Poles in much the same way, if ordered to?

2. Do you find Browning’s explanations (through ch. 9) convincing? Why or why not?

Browning, Ordinary Men, read at least chs. 15 -18, esp. ch. 18
**Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (1996), ch. 8

1. Goldhagen surely scores some points off Browning. What ones do you see?

2. Is Goldhagen’s reading of Browning accurate and fair?

3. Can you recapitulate Goldhagen’s basic argument? Do you have any problems with it?

Yahil, Holocaust, sections 17 and 18 (17 is actually by Israel Gutmann)

1. In what ways and to what degree does knowledge of Jewish armed resistance change your views about the response of the Jews of Europe to Nazi persecution and to the Holocaust?

2. In what ways and to what degree does knowledge of how the Holocaust proceeded in the last year of the war confirm or modify your understanding of how and why the perpetrators carried it out?

**Arnošt Lustig, "The Second Round," "The Old Ones and Death," and "The Last Day of the Fire," from Diamonds of the Night (1958)

1. Lustig (a survivor of Theresienstadt, Buchenwald and Auschwitz) writes differently than Borowski or Levi. Compare and contrast the work of the three authors as to their chosen subject matter, their apparent purposes, the lessons they seem to draw from their material, and other points of similarity or difference you may find.

2. Lustig doesn’t tell us much about the setting of his stories, though there are indications. Try to figure out where and when each story takes place.

Walter Laqueur, The Terrible Secret: Suppression of the Truth about Hitler's Final Solution (1980), Introduction and chs. 1 - 3

From what you have read so far in Laqueur, what were the main reasons that the outside world did not receive, or did not accept, the news that the Nazis were systematically killing the Jews of the lands they controlled? Make up an informal list (to be handed in, but it doesn't have to be typed) of three principal reasons, in order of importance.

Laqueur, Terrible Secret, chs. 4 - 6 and Conclusion 

1. Answer Monday's question (above) from the point of view of the Jews of Europe, and also of the Jews of Britain and America. (No need to write up your answers.)

2. Do you see things that the Allies could have and should have done to stop or alter the course of the Holocaust? If so, why didn't they do these things?

3. In particular: Should the Allies have bombed the Auschwitz camp, or the rail lines leading to it? Answer this question a) from the perspective of a British or American policy-maker of that time, and b) from today's perspective. The answers can be the same, if you want.

Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (1993), chs. 1 - 3 and 7 - 8

1.  Part of the mental equipment of many, probably most, Holocaust deniers is anti-Semitism, whether or not this is explicit.  Can you figure out how anti-Semitism could come to take this unlikely form?

2.  Apart from anti-Semitism, what could cause people to commit themselves to this lonely and improbable cause? Should we be worried, on grounds other than the persistence of anti-Semitism?

Term papers

Your research paper is due at noon on Monday, May 13, the first day of examination period. If I can help you as you work on it, please get in touch.

The papers are expected to be serious research efforts some 20 pages in length.  Please take the form of footnotes and bibliography seriously (because I do!). The website, under "Writing papers", has brief guides to each. Details differ from discipline to discipline, but if you do a careful and consistent job that observes the basic principles of footnoting and bibliographies, that should get you through.