"There is hope after all…”. Holocaust in diaries and memories

T

Students will visit some museums/memory sites and participate in some events connected to the topic of our course:

Museum of the Former German Kulmhof Death Camp in Chełmno on Ner.

Branch of the Martyrdom Museum in Żabikowo, The Radegast Station Holocaust Monument, Łódź or Museum POLIN in Warsaw

T

Lecture, discussion, presentation, film, rond-table.

(tylko po angielsku) Active participation, final presentation or/and essay

(tylko po angielsku) 1. Situation of Jews in Europe before 1939

2. Antisemitism and persecutions 1933-1945

3. The war in Poland (1939-1945)

4. Ghettos, camps, hidden places, extermination.

5. Study case: fate of the Jews from Lodz

6. History of the Lodz Ghetto: Jews from Poland, Germany, Austria, Czech, Luxemburg and Gypsies from Burgenland in Litzmannstadt

7. Diaries and memories: Oscar Singer, Oscar Rosenfeld, Jakub Poznanski and children diaries: David Sierakowiak, Jehuda Lubinski, Rywka Lipszyc.

8. The Great Shpera, September 1942 in memories and documents.

9. Memory after Holocaust: books, films, photos.

10. Post-memory. Visual art., memory sites, museums, commemorations

T

Students will visit some museums and and participate in some events connected to the topic of our course:

Museum of the Former German Kulmhof Death Camp in Chełmno on Ner.

Branch of the Martyrdom Museum in Żabikowo, The Radegast Station Holocaust Monument, Łódź.

T

Lecture, discussion, presentation, film, rond-table.

Active participation, final presentation or/and essay

"Many horrors were forgotten. Many horrors went unwitnessed. Many horrors were of a kind that those who described them were not believed. But they must remain alive in human memory” – wrote Oscar Rosenfeld, publicist from Vienna, who was deported to the Lodz (Litzmannstadt) Ghetto in 1941 by way of Prague. In his diary (1942-1944) he described terrible hunger and the dehumanization of people but also the beauty and courage of victims, their dreams, believes and optimism. "Jews won't vanish, in the end there is always immediately a beginning, thus eternity, no enemy can destroy us”. During the classes we will study literature (diaries and memories), watch movies and testimonies from survivors and discuss the historical and ethical problems of Holocaust during WW II.

Ervin Staub, The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence, Cambridge University Press, 1989, Browning Christopher, The Origins of the Final Solution, Heinemann: London 2004. Forecki, Piotr (2012), Reconstructing Memory. The Holocaust in Polish Public Debates, Frankfurt am Main et al.: Peter Lang.

Oscar Rosenfeld, In the beginning was the ghetto: notebooks from Łódź, edited and with an introduction by Hanno Loewy, Northwestern University Press, 2002, The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the Lodz Ghetto, ed. Alan Adelson, Julian Baranowski, The Łódź Ghetto 1940-1944. Vademecum, Łódź 2005, Horwitz Gordon, Ghettostadt. Łódź and the Making of a Nazi City, 2008.