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© Brandeis University
NEJS 169A
Author: Dr. Antony Polonsky

THE DESTRUCTION OF EUROPEAN JEWRY

Description of the Course

We all - Jew and Gentile alike - live in the shadow of the Holocaust. It raises fundamental questions about the nature of our civilization. How was it that a policy of genocide could be initiated and carried out in one of the most advanced and sophisticated countries of Europe, a country which had produced many of the greatest thinkers and artists the world has seen, from Kant to Beethoven and from Goethe to Richard Strauss? Yet while the cosmic dimensions of the Shoah cannot be doubted, there is still no clear consensus about the factors which made it possible. How was it that the National Socialists were able to achieve power in Germany? To what extent was the regime they established a reactionary utopia, which attempted to return to an imagined pre-industrial past, which would not be characterized by the bitter class divisions of the modern world. Was it the consequence of the persistence of the power of pre-industrial strata of society in Germany, was it the outcome of the new and more brutal mass politics of the twentieth century or was it merely a brutal detour on the German path to modernity? Was Nazi anti-semitism a modern form of anti-Jewish attitudes which were deeply entrenched in the mindset of Christendom and or was it a new phenomenon which emerged first in the 1870s? Was the regime determined from its inception to embark on a genocide of the Jews or was the adoption of the policy of mass murder the result of the specific conditions created by the ideological crusade against the Soviet Union which accompanied Operation Barbarossa? Was the mass murder of the Jews 'unique' or was it only one of the many atrocities committed by the Nazis? Can it be compared to other twentieth century genocides, such as that of the Armenians and those which have occurred in the Soviet Union, Cambodia and Rwanda? Could more have been done by the Western powers to check the rise of Nazi Germany and to assist the Jews of Europe, both before and during the war? How is one to assess the behavior of the Jews of occupied Europe? Is Hannah Arendt correct in arguing that the Jewish Councils facilitated genocide, which would have been much more difficult to carry out without their cooperation? Could the Jews of the democracies and in particular, of the United States, have done more to aid their coreligionists under Nazi Occupation? Did the Zionist preoccupation with Palestine inhibit the politics of rescue? Could the Catholic and Protestant Churches have done more to assist the Jews?

There are no easy answers to these problems. Indeed, it may be that artists and writers, philosophers and theologians are better equipped to deal with the fundamental questions about Man's fate raised by the Holocaust than historians, whose training stresses the importance of the specific and particular and whose craft is based on the careful weighing of evidence and is averse to making clear and unequivocal moral judgements. In this course, we shall be examining the Holocaust with the tools of the historian. We shall be concerned to explain how these appalling events took place. The application of cool logic to mass murder is distasteful, and we shall inevitably be compelled to make moral judgements. But these will only be of value if they are informed and based on a full understanding of the complex issues involved. As you start to study these events, I should like you to consider the words spoken to Dante by his guide Virgil as he says farewell to him, having guided him through Hell and Purgatory:

Do not expect any word or any sign from me. Your will is free, upright and sound, it would be wrong not to be ruled by its good sense. And so master of yourself, I crown you and I mitre you.

This is not a course which one can follow without being upset, moved, shocked and angered. We must be aware of how painful this subject is, but we would also be failing in our obligation to remember and honor the victims, if we did not examine their tragedy in a detached and scholarly manner.

Required Reading

  1. Yehuda Bauer A History of the Holocaust, New York, 1982.
  2. Leni Yahil The Holocaust. The Fate of European Jewry, 1932-1945, Oxford University Press, New York, 1990.
  3. Hajo Holborn A History of Modern Germany, vol. 3, 1840-1945, New York, 1969.
  4. Michael Burleigh, The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945, Wolfgang Wipperman Cambridge University Press, 1991.
  5. Lucy S. Dawidowicz A Holocaust Reader, Behrman House, Inc., 1976.

Recommended Reading

  1. Michael Marrus The Holocaust in History , Oxford University Press, New York, 1988.
  2. Jacob Katz From Prejudice to Destruction: Anti- Semitism 1700-1933, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1980.
  3. David Cesarani (ed.) The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation, Routledge, London, 1994.
  4. Abraham Lewin A Cup of Tears. A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto (Edited by Antony Polonsky), Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1988.
  5. Martin Gilbert Atlas of the Holocaust, London, 1982.

    6. Histories of Germany

  6. Hajo Holborn A History of Modern Germany, vol. 3, 1840-1945, New York, 1969.
  7. Gordon Craig Germany 1866-1945, Oxford, 1978.
  8. Koppel Pinson Modern Germany: Its History and Civilization, Germany, 1954.
  9. William Carr A History of Germany 1815-1945, New York, 1979.
  10. Golo Mann The History of Germany since 1789, London, 1974.

    11. Biographies of Hitler

  11. Alan Bullock Hitler:A Study in Tyranny, New York, 1964.
  12. Joachim Fest Hitler, New York, 1975.
  13. Rudolph Binion Hitler among the Germans, New York, 1976.

    14. Bibliographies, Encyclopedias and Teaching Aids

  14. Jack Wertheimer (ed.) The Modern Jewish Experience. A Reader's Guide, New York, 1993.
  15. Deborah E. Lipstadt 'The Holocaust', in Barry W. Holtz, The Schocken Guide to Jewish Books, New York, 1992, pp129-148.
  16. Gideon Shimoni (ed.) The Holocaust in University Teaching, Oxford, 1991.
  17. Yisrael Gutman (chief editor) Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, 4 volumes, New York, 1990.

    18. Collections of Documents

  18. Lucy S. Dawidowicz A Holocaust Reader, Behrman House, Inc., 1976.
  19. Yitzhak Arad, Yisrael Gutman, Documents on the Holocaust, Jerusalem, Abraham Margoliot (eds.) 1981
  20. Jeremy Noakes, Geoffrey Pridham (eds) Nazism 1919-1945, A Documentary Reader, Exeter, 1985-88.
  21. Israel Kermish (ed.) To Live with Honor and Die with Honor, Jerusalem, 1986.,

Course Requirements

Week 1

How and why should we study the Holocaust?

  1. *Michael Marrus The Holocaust in History, pp. 1-30.
  2. *Leni Yahil The Holocaust. The Fate of European Jewry, 1932-1945, Introduction.
  3. Chief Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits 'Some personal, theological and religious responses to the Holocaust', in Remembering for the Future, supplementary volume, pp. 174-187.
  4. Tom Segev The Seventh Million. The Israelis and the Holocaust, New York, 1993, pp. 3-11, pp. 421-507.
  5. *Antony Polonsky (ed.) 'My Brother's Keeper?' Recent Polish Debates about the Holocaust, London, 1990, pp. 1-33.
  6. Michael Burliegh, The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945, Wolfgang Wipperman pp. 1-22.
  7. *Yisrael Gutman 'Nolte and Revisionism', in Yad Vashem Studies, 19, (1988), pp. 115-151.
  8. Yehuda Bauer 'Conclusion: the significance of the Final Solution, in David Cesarani (ed.)The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation, pp. 300-309.
  9. Saul Friedlander Memory, History, and the Extermination of the Jews of Europe, Indiana, 1993, particularly chapter 1.

Week 2

The Impact of Modernisation on European Jewry

  1. *Yehuda Bauer A History of the Holocaust , chapters 1-2.
  2. *Jacob Katz Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of Jewish Emancipation, 1770-1870, New York, esp. 1-80, 199-223.
  3. Paul R. Mendes-Flohr, Jehuda Reinharz (eds.) The Jew in the Modern World. A Documentary History, New York, 1995, esp. 112-54.
  4. Shmuel Ettinger 'The Modern Period', in Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson,(ed.) A History of the Jewish People, Cambridge, MA, 1976, pp.727- 852.
  5. Bela Vago (ed.) Jewish Assimilation in Modern Times, Boulder,CO, 1981,chapters on Germany and Hungary
  6. Monika Richarz (ed.) Jewish Life in Germany. Memoirs from Three Centuries, Indiana, 1991, pp. 1-38

Week 3

The Emergence of Modern Anti-Semitism

  1. Robert Wistrich Antisemitism:the Longest Hatred, London, 1991.
  2. *Jacob Katz From Prejudice to Destruction: Anti- Semitism 1700-1933, Introduction and pp. 245-272, 292-327.
  3. Peter Pulzer The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria, new edition, London, 1988, esp. pp. 1-185, 264-285.
  4. Michael Burliegh, The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945, Wolfgang Wipperman pp. 23-43.
  5. George Mosse The Crisis of the German Ideology, New York, 1964, pp. 1-145 .

Week 4

The Jews in Europe on the Eve of the Shoah

  1. *Yehuda Bauer A History of the Holocaust , chapters 3-4.

    2. Germany

  2. *Donald Niewyk The Jews in Weimar Germany, Louisiana, 1980, particularly pp. 1-42, 96-177.
  3. *Karl Schleunes The Twisted Road to Auschwitz: Nazi Policy towards the Jews 1933-1939, Illinois, 1970, pp. 36-61.
  4. Arnold Paucker, Barbara Suchy (eds.) The Jews in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945, Tu/bingen, 1986, pp. 17-27, 45-53, 55-65, 67-93.
  5. Steven Aschheim Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German- Jewish Consciousness 1900-1923, Wisconsin, 1982, pp. 215-252.
  6. Nahum N. Glatzer Franz Rosenzweig: His Life and Thought, New York, 1961 .

    7. France

  7. Michael Marrus The Politics of Assimilation: French Jewry at the Time of the Dreyfus Affair, London, 1971.
  8. Norman Kleeblatt (ed.) The Dreyfus Affair: Art, Truth and Justice, Berkeley, 1987 .
  9. *Paula Hyman From Dreyfus to Vichy: The Remaking of French Jewry 1906-1939, New York, 1979.
  10. Frances Malino, The Jews in Modern France, Hanover, Bernard Wasserstein (eds.) NH, 1985, particularly pp. 54-77, 103-180, 207-223, 328-346.

    11. Poland

  11. *Ezra Mendelsohn The Jews of East Central Europe between the World Wars, Indiana, pp 1-83.
  12. Lucjan Dobroszycki, Image Before My Eyes, New York, 1977.
  13. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

    14. Soviet Union

  14. *Benjamin Pinkus The Jews of the Soviet Union: The History of a National Minority, Cambridge, 1988, pp. 1-138.
  15. Zvi Gitelman A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews in Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present, New York, 1988.

Week 5

The Collapse of Democracy in Germany and the Establishment of the Nazi State

  1. *Hajo Holborn A History of Modern Germany, vol. 3, 1840-1945, New York, 1969, chapters, 10, 11,12.
  2. Ian Kershaw Hitler, London 1991.
  3. *Ian Kershaw The Nazi Dictatorship, London, 1985, pp. 1-82.
  4. Martin Broszat The Hitler State, London, 1981, pp. 1-17, 328-61.
  5. Karl Bracher 'The Role of Hitler', in Walter Laqueur (ed.), Fascism. A Reader's Guide, London, 1979, pp. 211-255.

Week 6

Nazi Policy towards the Jews 1933-39

  1. *Yehuda Bauer A History of the Holocaust, chapters 5-6.
  2. *Leni Yahil The Holocaust. The Fate of European Jewry, 1932-1945, chapters 3, 4.
  3. Karl Schleunes The Twisted Road to Auschwitz: Nazi Policy towards the Jews 1933-1939, pp. 62-262.
  4. Avraham Barkai From Boycott to Annihilation. The Economic Struggle of the German Jews 1933-1943, Hanover, NH, 1989.
  5. Michael Burleigh, Wolfgang Wipperman The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945, pp. 44-96.
  6. *Lucy S. Dawidowicz A Holocaust Reader, pp. 35-53, 143-170.

Week 7

The 'Final Solution': Mass Murder

  1. *Yehuda Bauer A History of the Holocaust, chapters 7-10.
  2. Leni Yahil The Holocaust. The Fate of European Jewry, 1932-1945, chapters 9-16,18.
  3. *Michael Marrus The Holocaust in History, pp. 31-51.
  4. *Christopher R. Browning The Path to Genocide. Essays on Launching the Final Solution, Cambridge, 1992 esp. 1-121.
  5. Michael Burleigh, Wolfgang Wipperman The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945, pp. 96-197.
  6. Omer Bartov The Eastern Front, 1941-45. German Troops and the Barbarisation of Warfare, London, 1985, esp. pp. 1-35, 105-56.
  7. Lucy S. Dawidowicz A Holocaust Reader, pp. 55-140.

Weeks 8, 9

Jewish Reactions

  1. *Michael Marrus The Holocaust in History, pp. 108-55.
  2. *Abraham Lewin A Cup of Tears. A Diary of the Warsaw Ghetto, Introduction, pp. 1-54.
  3. Lucy S. Dawidowicz A Holocaust Reader, pp. 143-380.

    4. Compliance

  4. Isaiah Trunk Judenrat. The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi Occupation, New York, 1972, pp. xxv-xxxv, 14-36, 388-575.
  5. *Yehuda Bauer 'Jewish Leadership Reactions to Nazi Policies', in Yehuda Bauer, Nathan Rotenstreich (eds.) The Holocaust as Historical Experience: Essays and Discussion, pp. 173-92.
  6. *Harry Feingold 'Discussion: The Judenra/te and the Jewish Response, ibid., pp. 223-71.
  7. Lucjan Dobroszycki (ed.) The Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto 1941-44, New Haven, 1984, Introduction.

    8. Resistance

  8. *Leni Yahil The Holocaust. The Fate of European Jewry, 1932-1945, chapters 17 (by Yisrael Gutman).
  9. *Yehuda Bauer A History of the Holocaust, chapter 11.
  10. Yisrael Gutman The Jews of Warsaw, 1939-1943, Indiana, 1983, pp. 283-400.
  11. Israel Kermish (ed.) To Live with Honor and Die with Honor, Jerusalem, 1986, pp. 1-67, 431-606.
  12. Reuben Ainsztein Jewish Resistance in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, New York, 1974, pp. 619- 71.

 Week 10

The Bystanders

  1. *Michael Marrus The Holocaust in History, pp. 55-108.
  2. *Yehuda Bauer A History of the Holocaust, chapters 12-13.
  3. Michael Marrus 'The Nazis and the Jews in Occupied Western Europe', Journal of Modern History, 1982, pp. 687-714.
  4. Yehuda Bauer A History of the Holocaust

    5. Germany

  5. Otto Dov Kulka, Aron Rodrigue 'The German Population and the Jews in the Third Reich: Recent Publications and Trends in Research on German Society and the Jewish Question', Yad Vashem Studies, 16, 1984, pp. 421-35.
  6. Ian Kershaw 'The Persecution of the Jews and German Popular Opinion', Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, 1981, 26, pp. 261-98.

    7. France

  7. Michael Marrus, Robert Paxton Vichy France and the Jews, New York, 1981, esp. pp. 233-73, 177-214, 341-272.

    8. Italy

  8. Susan Zucotti The Italians and the Holocaust, 1987.
  9. Jonathan Steinberg All or Nothing. The Axis and the Holocaust, London, 1990, pp. 168-244.

    10. Poland

  10. *Chimen Abramsky, Maciej Jachimczyk, Antony Polonsky (eds.) The Jews in Poland (Basil Blackwell, 1986) pp. 147-89.
  11. *Polish-Jewish Relations during the Second World War: A Discussion,' POLIN, 2, pp. 337-58.
  12. Antony Polonsky (ed.) 'My Brother's Keeper?' Recent Polish Debates about the Holocaust, London, 1990, pp. 1-52, 161-232.
  13. Norman Davies, Antony Polonsky (eds.) Jews in Eastern Poland and the USSR, 1939-46, London, 1991, Introduction, pp. 1- 59.

    14. Hungary

  14. Randolph Braham The Politics of Genocide: The Holocaust in Hungary, 2 volumes, New York, 1981.

    15. Romania

  15. Randolph Braham (ed.) The Tragedy of Romanian Jewry, New York, 1994.
  16. Ilya Ehrenburg, Vassili Grossman (eds) The Black Book of Soviet Jewry, New. York, 1981, pp.77-91.
  17. Dora Litani The Destruction of the Jews of Odessa in the light of Romanian Documents, Yad Vashem Studies, 6, 1967, pp. 135-54.

    18. Ukraine

  18. Taras Hunczak 'Ukrainian-Jewish Relations during the Soviet and Nazi Occupations', in Yuri Boshyk, Ukraine during World War II: History and Aftermath, Edmonton, 1986, pp. 39-57.
  19. Yaroslav Bilinsky 'Methodological Problems and Philosophical Issues in the Study of Jewish Ukrainian Relations During the Second World War', in Howard Aster, Peter Potichny (eds.), Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Historical Perspective, Edmonton, 1988.

Week 11

The Reaction of the Allies

  1. *Michael Marrus The Holocaust in History, pp. 155- 173.
  2. *Leni Yahil The Holocaust. The Fate of European Jewry, 1932-1945, chapters 19, 20, 21.
  3. Walter Laqueur The Terrible Secret: Suppression of the Truth about Hitler's "Final Solution", London, 1980, pp. 1-16, 65-100, 157-208.
  4. Bernard Wasserstein Britain and the Jews of Europe 1939-1945, London, 1979, pp. 134-221.
  5. David Wyman The Abandonment of the Jews. America and the Holocaust, New York, pp. ix-15, 61-208, 311-340.
  6. *David Engel 'The Western Allies and the Holocaust', POLIN, 1, pp. 300-15.
  7. John Conway 'Between Apprehension and Indifference: Allied Attitudes to the Destruction of Hungarian Jewry', Wiener Library Bulletin, 27, 1973-4, pp. 37-48.
  8. Ben-Cion Pinchuk 'Sovietisation and the Jewish Response to Nazi Policies of Mass-Murder', in Jews in Eastern Poland and the USSR, 1939-46, pp. 124-38.
  9. Ben-Cion Pinchuk 'Was there a Soviet Policy for evacuating the Jews: the Case of the Annexed Territories', Slavic Review, volume 39, no. 1, 1980.

Week 12

The Reaction of the Churches and of Western Jews

  1. *Michael Marrus The Holocaust in History, pp. 179-83.
  2. *John Morley Vatican Diplomacy and the Holocaust, New York, 1980, esp. pp. 1-16, 48-70, 195-205.
  3. John Conway 'Records and Documents of the Holy See Relating to the Second World War', Yad Vashem Studies, 15, 1983, pp. 327-45.

    4. The Jews

  4. *Henry Feingold Did American Jewry Do Enough during the Holocaust?, B.G.Rudolph Lectures in Judaic Studies, Syracuse, NY, 1985.
  5. David Kranzler The Brother's Blood: The Orthodox Jewish Response during the Holocaust, New York, 1987.
  6. Haskel Lookstein Were We Our Brother's Keepers? The Public Response of American Jews to the Holocaust, 1938-1945, New York, 1985
  7. Rafael Medoff The Deafening Silence: American Jewish Leaders and the Holocaust, New York, 1987.
  8. Richard Bolchover British Jewry and the Holocaust, Cambridge, 1993.
  9. Dina Porat The Blue and the Yellow Stars of David: the Zionist Leadership in Palestine and the Holocaust, Cambridge, MA, 1990

Week 13

Literary Responses to the Holocaust

  1. *Alvin Rosenfeld A Double Dying. Reflections on Holocaust Literature, Indiana, 1980.
  2. Carolyn Forche (ed.) Against Forgettin. Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness, New York, 1993, pp. 357-403.
  3. David Roskies The Literature of Destruction. Jewish Responses to Catastrophe, Philadelphia, 1988, pp.386-564.
  4. Lawrence Langer (ed.) Art from the Ashes. A Holocaust Anthology, New York, 1995

    5.  *One of the following:

  5. Yitshak Katzenelson "The Song of the Murdered Jewish People" in David Roskies, The Literature of Destruction. Jewish Responses to Catastrophe, pp.531-547.
  6. Andre Schwarz-Bart The Last of the Just
  7. Primo Levi If This Be a Man
  8. Elie Wiesel Night

Week 14 Summing Up

Note: Essential reading is marked with an asterisk (*).