Seminar schedule
Sexualities, Ethnicity, Class: Reinterpreting the Holocaust
Books recommended for purchase:
Doris Bergen, The Holocaust: A Concise History (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009).
Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final
Solution in Poland (New York: HarperPerennial, 1993).
Jan Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne Poland
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
Marion Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1999).
Film we will watch:
Grey Zone (2001)
Outline:
1. October 8: Introduction: What was the Holocaust and why does one study it?
Ruth Klüger, Still alive: A Holocaust girlhood remembered (Feminist Press: New York, 2001),
ch. The camps.
Hayden White, “Historical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth,” in Probing the Limits of
Representation, ed. Saul Friedländer (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992): 37-53.
(Saul Friedländer, Introduction, in Ibid, pp. 1-21.)
Presentation: Primo Levi, If This Is a Man (another edition is named Survival in Auschwitz).
2. October 15: Antisemitism: Jews and Gentiles in Nazi Germany
Bergen, ch. 1.
Kaplan, ch. 1 and 2 (pp. 17-73).
Presentation: Excerpts from Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years,
1933-1941 (New York: Random House, 1999), selection.
3. October 22: Emigration and refugees
Kaplan, ch. 5.
For policy context relating to Britain, see Louise London, Whitehall and the Jews, 1933–1948:
British Immigration Policy, Jewish Refugees and the Holocaust, (Cambridge, CUP, 2003)
Presentation: selected articles from Sybille Quack, ed. Between Sorrow and Strength: Women
Refugees of the Nazi Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
.
4. October 29: Persecution of social outsiders and murder of the disabled
Michael Burleigh, “Psychiatry, German Society and the Nazi “Euthanasia” Programme,” in The
Holocaust: Origins, Implementation, Aftermath, ed. Omer Bartov (London: Routledge, 2000):
43-62.
Beth Griech-Pollele, “Image of a Churchman-Resister: Bishop von Galen, the Euthanasia Project
and the Sermons of Summer 1941,” Journal of Contemporary History 36,1 (2001).
Presentation: Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final
Solution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).
5. November 5: Pioneers of the Genocide
Susanne Heim/Götz Aly, Architects of Annihilation: Auschwitz and the Logic of Destruction,
selection
Presentation: Götz Aly, Final solution: Nazi population policy and the murder of the European
Jews, transl. Allison Brown and Belinda Cooper (London: Arnold, 1999).
6. November 12: no class, reading week
7. November 19: Operation Barbarossa, barbarization of warfare, and the emergence of
the Final Solution
Christian Gerlach, “The Wannsee Conference, the Fate of German Jews, and Hitler's Decision in
Principle to Exterminate All European Jews,” Journal of Modern History 70,4 (1998): 759-812.
Browning, Ordinary Men, selection
Presentation: Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann, War of extermination: the German Military in
World War II, 1941-1944 (New York: Berghahn, 2000).
8. November 26: The local populations and persecution of Jews
Jan Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne Poland
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
Jan Grabowski, “Rural Society and the Jews in Hiding: Elders, Nights Watches, Firefighters,
Hostages and Manhunts,” Yad Vashem Studies 40 (2012).
Jan Grabowski, Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland, Indiana
University Press, 2013.
Bergen, pp. 119-127.
Presentation: Barbara Lambauer, Otto Abetz et les Francais, ou l’envers de la Collaboration
(Paris: Fayard, 2001) or Michael Marrus and Robert Paxton, Vichy France and the Jews (1981, 1995)
Stanford University Press.
9. December 3: Jewish Councils
Isaiah Trunk, Judenrat: the Jewish councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi occupation (New
York: Stein and Day, 1977).
Essays from Dan Diner, Beyond the conceivable: Studies on Germany, Nazism, and the
Holocaust (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
Dan Michman, Jewish Leadership in Extremis in Dan Stone The Historiography of the
Holocaust, Palgrave, 2004. p319-338
Presentation: Beate Meyer, A Fatal Balancing Act. The Dilemma of the Reich Association of
Jews in Germany, 1939-1945 (New York/Oxford, Berghahn: 2013).
10. December 10: Ghettos and everyday life
Eva Mändlova-Roubickova, We're Alive and Life Goes On: A Theresienstadt Diary, trans by
Zaia Alexander (New York: H. Holt, 1998), entries for 1941-1943
Anna Hájková, “Sexual Barter in Times of Genocide: Negotiating the Sexual Economy of the
Theresienstadt Ghetto,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 38, no. 3 (spring
2013): 503-533
Presentation: Halina Birenbaum Hope is the last to die: A coming of age under Nazi Terror
(Armonk, N.Y, 1996) - sections on Warsaw.
Adam Czerniakow, The Warsaw diary of Adam Czerniakow : prelude to doom / edited by Raul
Hilberg, Stanislaw Staron, Josef Kermisz (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999).
last week of the autumn term
11. January 14 Allied responses to the persecution of Jews
Richard Breitman. Official Secrets: What the Nazis planned, what the British and Americans
knew, (London: Allen Lane, 1999).
Frank Chalk, “The BBC Hungarian Service and Rescue of Jews of Hungary, 1940–1945” in
Resisting Genocide, ed. Jacques Semelin, Claire Andrieu and Sarah Gensburger, (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2010), 313-330.
Priscilla Dale Jones “British policy towards German crimes against German Jews” in Critical
Concepts in Holocaust Historical Studies, ed. David Cesarani, (London: Routledge, 2004), 95129.
Michael Fleming, ‘Allied Knowledge of Auschwitz: A (Further) Challenge to the “Elusiveness”
Narrative’ Holocaust and Genocide Studies 28, no. 1 (Spring 2014): 31–57
Bernard Wasserstein Britain and the Jews of Europe, 1939-1945, (London, 1999)
Presentation: Tony Kushner ‘Britain, America and the Holocaust: Past, Present and Future
Historiographies’ in James Jordan and Jan Láníček (eds) Governments-in-Exile and the Jews
during the Second World War (Vallentine Mitchell, London, 2013) p.33-47. / Selected articles
from James Jordan and Jan Láníček (eds) Governments-in-Exile and the Jews during the Second
World War (Vallentine Mitchell, London, 2013)
12. January 21: Sexual violence: Stories and Silences
Doris Bergen, “Sexual Violence in the Holocaust: Unique and Typical?” in Lessons and
Legacies VII: The Holocaust in International Perspective, ed. Dagmar Herzog (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 2006): 179-201.
Elizabeth Heinemann, Sexuality and Nazism: The Doubly Unspeakable?" Journal of the History
of Sexuality 11.1 and 2 (2002): 22-66.
Monika Flaschka, “Only Pretty Women Were Raped:” The Effect of Sexual Violence on Gender
Identities in the Concentration Camps in Sexual Violence Against Jewish Women During the
Holocaust, eds. Sonja M. Hedgepeth and Rochelle G. Saidel (Hanover: University Press of New
England, 2010): 77-93.
Presentation: essays by Robert Sommer and Regina Mühlhäuser in Dagmar Herzog, ed. Brutality
and Desire: War and Sexuality in Europe's Twentieth Century (New York : Palgrave Macmillan,
2009).
13. January 28: Concentration camps
Nikolaus Wachsmann, “The dynamics of destruction: The development of the concentration
camps, 1933-1945,” in Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany: The New Histories, Jane Caplan
and Nikolaus Wachsmann, eds. (London & New York: Routledge, 2009): 17-43.
Nikolaus Wachsmann, A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps, (Little Brown, London,
2015.)
Presentation: Michael Thad Allen The business of genocide: the SS, slave labor, and the
concentration camps (Chapel Hill, N.C,University of North Carolina Press, 2002).
Film: Grey Zone
14. February 4: Prisoner society in the camps
Jane Caplan, “Gender and the Concentration Camps,” in Caplan/Wachsmann, pp. 82-107.
Liana Millu, Smoke over Birkenau (New York: Jewish Publication Society, 1991): 177-197.
Presentation:
Hermann Langbein, People in Auschwitz
or
Jorge Semprún, What a Beautiful Sunday! (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982).
15. February 11: Perpetrators and guards
Karin Orth, “The concentration camp personnel,” in Caplan/Wachsmann, pp. 44-57.
Elissa Mailänder-Koslov, “Going East:” Colonial experiences and practices of violence among
female and male Majdanek camp guards (1941-1944), Journal for Genocide Research, vol. 10,
nr. 4 (2008): 559-578.
Presentation: Sereny, Into that Darkness: An Examination of Conscience (New York: Vintage
Books, 1983).
16. February 18: no class, reading week
17. February 25: Resistance
Hermann Langbein, People in Auschwitz (Chapel Hill: University of North Caroline Press &
USHMM, 2003): ch. Resistance (240-272).
- A more detailed discussion of resistance at Auschwitz can be found in Henryk
Świebocki, Auschwitz 1940-1945 Central Issues in the History of the Camp Volume IV
‘The Resistance Movement’ Oświęcim, Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 2000.
Lenore Weitzman, Women of Courage: The Kashariyot (Couriers) in the Jewish Resistance
During the Holocaust, in Lessons and Legacies VI, ed. Jeffry Diefendorf (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1996): 112-154.
Jules Schelvis, 2007, Sobibor: A History of a Nazi Death Camp, Berg, Oxford. Chapters 9 and
10.
Nechama Tec, Jewish Resistance: Facts, Omissions, and Distortions, USHMM, 1997.
http://www.ushmm.org/m/pdfs/Publication_OP_1997-02.pdf
Presentation: Gad Beck, An Underground life: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin, trans.
Allison Brown (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999).
OR
Nechama Tec, Defiance: The Bielski Partisans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
18. March 3: Mixed marriages and people with mixed background
Beate Meyer, “The Mixed Marriage: A Guarantee of Survival or a Reflection of German Society
during the Nazi Regime?” in Probing the depths of German antisemitism: German society and
the persecution of the Jews, 1933-1941 ed. David Bankier (New York: Berghahn, 2000): 54-77.
Selection from Klemperer diaries.
Ingeborg Hecht, Invisible Walls: A German Family Under the Nuremberg Walls, trans. J.
Maxwell Brownjohn (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1985), selection.
Presentation: Nathan Stoltzfus, Resistance of the Heart: Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse
Protest in Nazi Berlin (New York: Norton, 1996).
19. March 10: Persecution of homosexuals
Geoffrey J. Giles, “‘The Most Unkindest Cut of All’: Castration, Homosexuality, and Nazi
Justice.” Journal of Contemporary History 27, no. 1 (1992): 41-61.
Wolfgang Röll, “Homosexual Inmates in the Buchenwald Concentration Camp.” Journal of
Homosexuality 31, no. 4, (1996): 1-28.
Presentation:
Wanda Półtawska, And I am afraid of my dreams, trans. Mary Craig (London: Hodder &
Stoughton, 1987)
20. March 17: Going into hiding
Kaplan, ch. 8.
Marie Jalowicz Simon, Gone to the Ground (London: Clerkenwell Press, 2015).
Also see Beate Meyer, Hermann Simon, and Chana Schütz (eds) Jews in Nazi Berlin: from
Kristallnacht to liberation (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 2009). ch. 16.
Presentation: Gunner Paulsson Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940-1945 (Yale
University Press, New Haven and London, 2002).
Or
Richard Lutjens, Jews in Hiding in Nazi Berlin, 1941-1945 (PhD Dissertation, Northwestern
University, 2012).
Easter Vacation
21. April 28: Artistic representation: Film and Literature
Sara Horowitz, “But is it Good for the Jews? Spielberg's Schindler and the Aesthetics of
Atrocity,” in Spielberg's Holocaust: Critical Perspectives on Schindler's List ed. Yosefa
Loshitsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997): 119-139.
Village Voice review of the film
Art Spiegelmann, Maus, volume one
Marianne Hirsch, “The Generation of Postmemory,” Poetics Today 29:1 (Spring 2008)
Presentation: Selected articles from Toby Haggith and Joanna Newman (eds.) Holocaust and the
moving image (Wallflower, London, 2005).
Or
Selected articles from Jakob Lothe, Susan Rubin Suleiman, and James Phelan After Testimony:
the Ethics and Aesthetics of Holocaust narrative for the future (Columbus: Ohio State University
Press, 2012).
22. May 5: Revision