History of the Holocaust

June 29-July 2, 2015
Monday-Thursday: 9:00 am -3:30 pm

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This course will focus on the programs of persecution and mass murder carried out by the Nazi regime between 1933-1945 that culminated in the “final solution” and mass murder of European Jewry. Topics to be examined include:  the legacy of anti-Semitism in Germany, the Nazi racial state and its early policies of persecution and exclusion, the concentration camp and life within the barbed wire, as well as the divergent perspectives of perpetrators and victims and those who fell into the category of collaborators and bystanders. 

This course will give participants the necessary tools to teach and address the complexities involved in teaching this subject matter.  Materials used to carry out this goal will include primary source documents, historiographical essays, memoirs, oral histories, and representations of the Holocaust such as film, art, and memorials.

Topics covered:

  1. Lasting Legacies:  Anti-Judaism, Anti-Semitism, and the Foundation of the Nazi Racial State
  2. Programs of Persecution:  Jews and Social Outsiders under Nazism
  3. The Invasion of Poland: Expulsion, Concentration and the Creation of Ghettos
  4. Total War:  Barbarossa and the Final Solution
  5. The Camp Universe
  6. Life in the Lager (camp)
  7. Perpetrators:  Doctors, Bureaucrats, and “Ordinary Men”
  8. Collaborators and Bystanders:  The Case of Jedwabne
  9. Resistance:  Religious, Cultural, and Armed
  10. The Last Days

Instructor: Joanna Sliwa

Joanna Sliwa is a doctoral candidate at the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University. Her dissertation explores daily life and inter-ethnic relations in Krakow, Poland during the Holocaust from the perspective of Jewish children's experiences. Joanna received a B.A. in Political Science and an M.A. in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, both from Kean University. She has held administrative positions at universities, nonprofits, and businesses. Sliwa has experience as an educator and university instructor. She also serves as a researcher, translator, and a foreign language consultant for projects ranging from academic texts, to websites, and films.