Research in archives across the Former Soviet Union in the past two decades has transformed our understanding of the Holocaust in the USSR. This course will introduce students to this cutting-edge scholarship. We will examine topics such as deportation and evacuation, the development of murder techniques, the treatment of Roma people, the expansion of the Holocaust into the Caucuses, interethnic and national conflicts, postwar trials, and Soviet responses to genocide. All of these wills of course need to be contextualized within the unfolding of the war in Soviet territory. In addition to trying to make sense of the evolution of the war and the Holocaust in the USSR, students will be encouraged to think about how this knowledge impacts on our comprehension of the Holocaust more broadly. Courses and textbooks on the Holocaust typically begin in Germany with the origins of the Nazi Party and move to Poland as the iconic site of the genocide. Integrating the history of the Holocaust in the USSR requires rethinking this paradigm. Course Syllabus

The Holocaust in the Baltic States obliterated a vibrant and diverse Jewish community that had existed for centuries. On the eve of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, approximately 300,000 Jews lived within the borders of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. By the end of 1944, only a few thousand had survived the war. While the destruction of the Jews in the Baltics was top-down Nazi policy, the process of persecution and mass murder was accompanied by widespread local collaboration, thus adding another layer of horror and complexity to the events. Through reading and analyzing key historical documents alongside individual voices of survivors, perpetrators, and rescuers, this course aims to provide a historical and geographic context of the life and death of the Jewish communities in the Baltic States. By examining macro and micro-historical perspectives the course will shed light on the various German forces and local groups that took part in the implementation of the Final Solution in this region and explore the different processes that transformed inter-ethnic relations from neighborly to murderous, thus gain a better understanding of history often overlooked. While the focus on the Baltic States will be thematic, geographical, and chronological, the course will also place the region in its broader East European context. Course Syllabus

*Mandatory Course

The course will examine the development and implementation of the “Final Solution” and various historical theories regarding the Nazis’ decision-making process through reading and analysis of historical literature and some of the key documents from the period. Did Hitler and the Nazi leadership plan to murder the Jews all along, or did they reach this decision at a late date? How and based on what factors were the decision reached? What were the roles of Occupied and Axis societies? What did Jews perceive? The examination will be thematic, geographical, and chronological, and will raise questions regarding the interconnections between different periods, places, and factors that affected policymaking and responses. Course Syllabus

The Nazi rise to power changed the situation of German Jewry dramatically, from being the most prosperous and integrated/assimilated community in Europe to become the first community to experience the Nazi persecution, violent terror, expulsion, robbery, ghettoization, and deportation over a long period before the war. How did they react? How did various groups perceive what was happening and what are the chances? How did the Jewish leadership cope with the crisis? What were their options to emigrate and how did they change along the time? How did they act to survive on a daily basis? How did the new situation shape their Jewish identity and solidarity? What happened to them during the war? How many and who were the survivors and how did they cope with the post-war situation? All these issues and more will be dealt with against the background of the developing Nazi anti-Jewish policy and from first-hand documentation, personal testimonies and correspondence, and by addressing a variety of studies with pluralistic approaches. Course Syllabus

*Mandatory Course

This course will offer an in-depth look at World War II and how it played out in Europe. It will combine military history with the political and social aspects of the war. The course seeks to offer a comprehensive picture of a conflict that claimed the lives of tens of millions of peoples. It will do so by analyzing different perceptions, levels, and layers of the conflict. The course will also touch upon questions of remembrance, justice, and portrayals in popular culture. Furthermore, by including recently discovered footage and other sources from the time, it is hoped that this course will challenge existing trends that put this conflict into a very distant and removed past. Course Syllabus

This course examines the “long road to Auschwitz,” as it is sometimes referred to, or the pre-histories of the Holocaust. It does so from within the context of German history, with a special focus on the colonial and imperial experience. It begins with German nationalism and the creation of the (“Second”) Reich as well as its development and politics. The seminar will examine the development and prevalence of racial theories, especially from the late 19th century onwards and how they were applied to different peoples and parts of the world (including Anti-Semitism and the Aryan theory). It will focus primarily on colonial experiences, cultures of violence before and in World War I as well as the rise of new far-right politics and the Nazis themselves. In the final sections, it will discuss how the colonial experience and the ideas of Lebensraum help us explain the Holocaust. Course Syllabus

*Mandatory Course

*Online Course

In 1939, there were 3.3 million Jews in Poland or about 10% of the total population of the Polish Republic. Polish Jews formed the largest Jewish community in Europe. In 1945, six years later, no more than 50,000 Jews remained alive in Poland. Almost 98.5% of Polish Jewry (excluding the 300.000 who fled the Germans and survived in the Soviet Union) have perished in the Holocaust. A nation rich in history, with its own traditions and language ceased to exist. On September 1st, 1939, the German forces invaded Poland and – before the end of the month– completed the conquest of the country. The course will focus on the initial German policies directed against the Jews and, at the same time, it shall follow the reactions of the Jewish community in the face of new existential threats. The lectures will shed light on the creation of the ghettos, on the strategy of the Jewish leadership and the plight of the Jewish masses.The course will explore the growing German terror and the implementation of the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”- as Germans referred to the policies of mass extermination. The students will become familiar with the planning and the execution of the so-called “Aktion Reinhard”, as well as with the survival strategies pursued later by the Jews who avoided the 1942-43 deportations to the extermination camps. While learning about German perpetrators and Jewish victims, the students will also explore the attitudes of Polish society and the Polish Catholic Church to the persecuted Jews. Although the course is geographically centered on Poland, it will place the discussed events in a broader, European, context. Course Syllabus

*Online Course

In 1939, on the eve of the Holocaust, East European Jewry constituted the most important and influential Jewish community in the world. As a result of half a century of mass migration to the West, up to 90% of world Jewry either lived in Eastern Europe or were children of East European immigrants. This course surveys the establishment, flourishing and destruction of this once vital community in the area known as Galicia, by examining its social, economic, political, religious and cultural history from the eighteenth century – the time of the province's creation – to the Holocaust and its aftermath. While we focus on Galicia, we will regularly place Galicia in its broader East European context, particularly in the final three lectures covering the period after the demise of Galicia as a legal province at the end of the First World War. Course Syllabus

This three-day course aims to introduce the field of Holocaust history through a variety of angles: (a) its course of development over the decades as a result of a variety of factors - political interests and pressures, judicial and restitution procedures, archival accessibility, scholarly methodologies, media representations and more; (b) significant controversies that dominate(d) the field; (c)coping with the challenge of conceptualization; (d) the Holocaust historian's workshop: from raw documents to the shaping of historical interpretation. Course Syllabus.