HIS383/REE Spring Life in Extremis: Ghettos in Nazi-Occupied Europe

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1 HIS383/REE Spring 2016 Life in Extremis: Ghettos in Nazi-Occupied Europe Dr. Tatjana Lichtenstein Office Hours: M 10:30 am 12:30 pm in GAR (and per appointment) lichtens@austin.utexas.edu Class meets W 3:00-6:00 pm in WAG 112 Course Description Even before Nazi Germany embarked on its genocide against European Jews in the summer and fall of 1941, the ghettos in Nazi-occupied Poland had become sites of mass death. Between 1939 and 1941, more than 500,000 Jews perished in the ghettos. These sealed-off residential districts were abnormal societies with extreme social differences and unprecedented deprivations as well as the sites of self-help, resistance, and documentation of the German war against the Jews. In this course, we will examine life and death in several ghettos in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. Using scholarly works as well as substantial collections of primary sources, we will study topics such as the ghetto society, the position of Jewish Councils, the significance of forced labor, as well as forms of resistance, self-help, and rescue. In the course of the semester, students will work on an independent research project that will culminate in a product and a class presentation. Background Readings Doris Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust. Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews, : The Years of Extermination. Evaluation Participation 40% Research Project 40% Two Short Reading/Research Assignments 20% Texts 1. Gordon J. Hortwitz, Ghettostadt: Lodz and the Making of a German City (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2010) 2. Emanuel Ringelblum, Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto: The Journal of Emanuel Ringelblum (New York: ibooks, 2006 (originally published 1958)) 3. The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the Łódź Ghetto, edited by Alan Adelson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) 4. Adina Blady Schwajger, I Remember Nothing More: The Warsaw Children s Hospital and the Jewish Resistance (New York: Pantheon Books, 1990) 5. Christopher R. Browning, Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave Labor Camp (New York: Norton, 2010) Readings and links marked with * are available online or through Canvas. I reserve the right to modify readings in the course of the semester. All readings are required. Page 1 of 5

2 Schedule of Classes Week 1/Jan 20 Introduction Readings/Assignments/Project Week 2/Jan 27 Historians and the Ghettos Read Doris Bergen or Saul Friedländer with a focus on discussion of ghettos in occupied Poland. Christopher Browning, Nazi Ghettoization Policies in Poland , in Central European History vol. 19, no. 4 (1986): Tim Cole, Ghettoization, 65-87, in The Historiography of the Holocaust, edited by Dan Stone (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2004). Amos Goldberg, The History of the Jews in the Ghettos: A Cultural Perspective, , in The Holocaust and Historical Methodology, edited by Dan Stone (New York: Berghahn Books, 2012). Zoe Waxman, Testimony and Representation, , in The Historiography of the Holocaust. Week 3/Feb 3 The Warsaw Ghetto Antony Polonsky, Warsaw, in The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe (online) Barbara Engelking, Holocaust and Memory: The Experience of the Holocaust and its Consequences - An Investigation Based on Personal Narratives (New York: Leicester University Press, 2011), (handout). Week 4/Feb 10 The Underground Archive Barbara Engelking and Jacek Leociak, The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to the Perished City (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), Emanuel Ringelblum, Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto: The Journal of Emanuel Ringelblum (New York: ibooks, 2006 (originally published 1958)) (all) Assignment 1a: Select theme or entry from Ringelblum s Notes Page 2 of 5

3 Week 5/Feb 17 Photographing the Warsaw Ghetto Janina Struk, Photographing the Holocaust: Interpretations of the Evidence (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2011), Brad Prager, Rescreening Perpetrator Images: Witnessing the Past in A Film Unfinished and Photographer, , in After the Fact: The Holocaust in Twenty-First Century Documentary Film (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015) Joe J. Heydecker, Photographing Behind the Warsaw Ghetto Wall, 1941, in Holocaust and Genocide Studies vol. 1, no. 1 (1986): View Heydecker s photographs at: _icollectionid=-1 Watch: A Film Unfinished (2013) Assignment 1b due in class (1,000 word essay as a public history piece) Week 6/Feb 24 The Łódź Ghetto Gordon J. Hortwitz, Ghettostadt: Lodz and the Making of a German City (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2010) (all) Watch: Lodz Ghetto (1988) Week 7/Mar 2 Chronicles from the Łódź Ghetto Alexandra Garbarini, Numbered Days: Diaries and the Holocaust (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the Łódź Ghetto, edited by Alan Adelson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) (all) Andrea Löw, Photographing as a Passion and Obsession: Photographs from the Lodz/Litzmannstadt Ghetto, in Central European History 48 (2015): Watch: Fotoamator/Photographer (1998) Week 8/Mar 9 Project Proposal Workshop Proposals will be due to the group by Monday March 7, Page 3 of 5

4 Spring Break March Week 9/Mar 23 Small Town Ghettos, Ghetto Clearing, and Slave Labor Christopher R. Browning, Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave Labor Camp (New York: Norton, 2010) (all) Excerpt from Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: 1992), TBA Week 10/Mar 30 Jewish Ghetto Authorities Engelking and Leociak, The Warsaw Ghetto: A Guide to the Perished City, Calel Perechodnik, Am I a Murderer? Testament of a Jewish Ghetto Policeman (New York: Westview, 1996), xxi-101. David Engel, On the Bowdlerization of a Holocaust Testimony: The Wartime Journal of Calel Perechodnik, Polin 12 (1999): Christopher R. Browning and Yisrael Gutman, The Reports of a Jewish 'Informer' in the Warsaw Ghetto: Selected Documents," In Yad Vashem Studies 17 (1986): Week 11/Apr 6 Resistance Yehuda Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), Adina Blady Schwajger, I Remember Nothing More: The Warsaw Children s Hospital and the Jewish Resistance (New York: Pantheon Books, 1990) (all) Marek Edelman, The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (online) Week 12/Apr 13 Sexual Violence Nomi Levenkron, Death and the Maidens: Prostitution, Rape and Sexual Slavery During WWII, 13-28, in Sexual Violence Against Jewish Women During the Holocaust, edited by Sonja M. Hedgepeth and Rochelle G. Saidel (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2010) Page 4 of 5

5 Kirsty Chatwood, Schillinger and the Dancer: Representing Agency and Sexual Violence in Holocaust Testimonies, 61-74, in Sexual Violence Against Jewish Women During the Holocaust. Helene J. Sinnreich, The Rape of Jewish Women during the Holocaust, , in Sexual Violence Against Jewish Women During the Holocaust. Katarzyna Person, Sexual Violence During the Holocaust: The Case of Forced Prostitution in the Warsaw Ghetto, in Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies vol. 33, no. 2 (Winter 2015): *Assignment 2: Working with survivor testimonies (details to follow) Week 13/Apr 20 Photography in the Łódź Ghetto Guest Dr. David Crew *Readings TBA Week 14/Apr 27 Presentations I (3) Week 15/May 4 Presentations II (2) Assignments Two Short Reading/Research Assignments Public History Project Definitions: 1. Making historical research and documents accessible to a wider public. (TL) 2. Public history describes the many and diverse ways in which history is put to work in the world. In this sense, it is history that is applied to real-world issues. (National Council for Public History) 3. Four key elements often emerge from the discourse of those who identify themselves as public historians: use of the methods of the historical discipline an emphasis on the usefulness of historical knowledge in some way that goes beyond purely academic or antiquarian purposes an emphasis on professional training and practice an aim to deepen and empower public connection with the past (Wikipedia, Public History ) Page 5 of 5