'Into That Night': Study Tour of the Holocaust (CH3999T)

Content

This unit combines intensive study with an immersive cultural experience. Students will visit the main sites associated with the Sho'ah (Holocaust) in eastern Germany and Poland , and will explore - through conversations with the lecturer-in-charge and an experienced guide - the social, political, and theological conditions of early-20th century Europe that enabled the Nazis' genocide of the Jews to be carried out. The role of the Protestant and Catholic Churches - in both complicity and protest - will be given articular attention. The unit can be taken as either a stand-alone and non-assessable study tour for no credit, or as a fully assessable unit for credit.

Learning outcomes

Unit sequence

An introductory unit in CH or CT

Pedagogy

Students will travel to Poland together. Preparation for the tour will include reading and outlining an investigative project for the tour, as well as information about the sites to be visited. During the tour there will be engagement at particular sites with experts in the field and seminars with participants.

Indicative Bibliography

• R. Benigni (director), Life is Beautiful, (1997).
• T. Blatt, From the Ashes of Sobibor: A Story of Survival, (Northwestern University Press, 1997).
• D. Cymet, History vs Apologetics: The Holocaust, the Third Reich, and the Catholic Church, (Lexington Books, 2010).
• C.R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, (New York: Harper, 1992).
• D.J. Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, (London: Little, Brown & Co, 1996).
• C. Lanzmann (director), Sho'ah, (1985)
• A. Kuznetsov, Babi Yar, (Vintage, 2023).
• S. Spielberg (director), Schindler's List, (1993).
• R. Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003; repr. 2005).
• E. Wiesel, Night*, (Hill and Wang, 2006).

Assessment