Philosophy Department



Philosophy Department Fall Semester 2009

Georgetown University Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10:15-11:30 a.m.

Instructor: LeRoy Walters Phone: 202-687-8099

Office Hours: Tuesdays, 1:30-3:00 p.m., E-mail Address: waltersl@georgetown.edu

or by Appointment

ETHICS AND THE HOLOCAUST

PHIL-439-01

PHIL-639-01

Goals and Objectives

The primary aims of this course are to provide an overview of the Jewish Holocaust that occurred in Europe between 1933 and 1945 and to examine the moral questions raised by the attempt to exterminate the Jewish people. Attention will also be devoted to programs of persecution and murder directed against Poles, the Roma and Sinti (sometimes called “Gypsies”), and people afflicted with genetic disorders, mental illness, intellectual disabilities, or physical handicaps.

We will begin by reading the accounts of two victims of the Jewish Holocaust, Primo Levi from Italy and Dawid Sierakowiak from Poland. Our readings during the subsequent six weeks will provide an overview of Christian anti-Jewish views, Adolf Hitler’s worldview, and major events in the history of the Holocaust. During this survey we will take time to visit the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, a major educational resource in Washington, DC. We will then devote three class sessions to more detailed examinations of selected events between 1938 and 1945. Immediately thereafter, we will have the privilege of speaking with a Holocaust survivor. The next-to-last part of the course will focus on a series of enduring questions that surround World War II and the Holocaust. The final class session will examine Jan Karski’s attempt, in 1942, to inform Western political and religious leaders about the plight of European, and especially Polish, Jews. (Karski is honored by a sculpture near the White-Gravenor Building.)

In each class session we will focus special attention on the moral decisions faced by perpetrators, collaborators, victims, bystanders, resisters, and rescuers during the Holocaust. In some cases we will read and critique the ethical arguments put forward by the people in these various categories. In other cases we will try to discern what moral justifications they would have attempted to provide for their actions or omissions.

Audiovisual materials shown in class or placed on reserve will supplement the readings.

This class is a seminar, so the instructor will seldom do more than frame several issues at the beginning of the class session. The quality of the ensuing discussion will depend primarily on the dedication of each student to reading and assimilating the assigned texts.

Overview

September 3: Session 1: Introduction to the Course

Part I: A Memoir and a Diary

September 8: Session 2: Primo Levi I

September 10: Session 3: Primo Levi II

September 15: Session 4: Dawid Sierakowiak I

September 17: Session 5: Dawid Sierakowiak II

Saturday, September 19: Rosh HaShanah (the Jewish New Year)

Monday, September 21: Eid-ul-Fitr (the end of Ramadan)

Part II: An Overview of the Holocaust

September 22: Session 6: Anti-Jewish prejudice; prejudice against other social groups

September 24: Session 7: Hitler’s worldview; the National Socialist party; the party’s

concentration of political power

Monday, September 28: Yom Kippur (the Jewish Day of Atonement)

Tuesday, September 29: The day after Yom Kippur; no class meeting; please visit the

U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum between the two Thursday

class sessions

October 1: Session 8: Anti-Jewish policies, January 1933-February 1938; eugenic

sterilization; German rearmament

October 6: Session 9: Hitler’s plans, November 1937; the annexation of Austria,

March 1938; the national pogrom of November 1938; the assault on Czechoslovakia, 1938-1939; Jewish responses; international responses

October 8: Session 10: The attack on Poland, September 1939; occupation and

deportation policies in Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Germany, 1938-1941; Hitler’s plans for a western offensive

October 13: Session 11: “Euthanasia”: the murder of people with disabilities,

1939-1945

October 15: Session 12: Germany’s wars against several European neighbors,

May 1940-May 1941; the “Battle of Britain”

October 20: Session 13: The attack on the Soviet Union, June 22, 1941; the closing off

of German emigration; the Wannsee Conference, January 1942

October 22: Session 14: Years of extermination, 1942-1943; the turning points in the

North African and European wars; Allied bombing policies in Europe; European resistance

October 27: Session 15: The final 16 months of the European war, January 1944-

May 1945; the Jews of Hungary

October 29: Session 16: Perspectives on the Holocaust

Part III: A Closer Look at Selected Events

November 3: Session 17: The national anti-Jewish pogrom of November 1938

November 5: Session 18: The Jewish star and initial deportations from Germany and

Austria

November 10: Session 19: The decision to (attempt to) annihilate the Jews of Europe

(and beyond)

Part IV: A Conversation with a Holocaust Survivor

November 12: Session 20: A conversation with a guest speaker

Part V: Enduring Questions

November 17: Session 21: German citizens and the Holocaust

November 19: Session 22: What the Allies knew and when they knew it

November 24: Session 23: Resistance and rescue

Thanksgiving break

December 1: Session 24: The European war and the just-war tradition

December 3: Session 25: An issue or guest chosen by the class

Part VI: Jan Karski: A Profile in Courage

December 8: Session 26: Jan Karski

Textbooks

Yitzhak Arad, Israel Gutman, and Abraham Margaliot, eds., Documents on the Holocaust, 8th ed. (Lincoln, NE, and Jerusalem: University of Nebraska Press and Yad Vashem, 1999)

Doris L. Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust (2nd ed.; Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009)

Steve Hochstadt, ed., Sources of the Holocaust (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004)

Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz (New York: Collier Books, 1993)

Donald L. Niewyk, ed., The Holocaust (3rd ed.; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003)

J. Noakes and G. Pridham, eds., Nazism: A Documentary Reader: 1919-1945. Volume 3: Foreign Policy, War and Racial Extermination (updated ed.; Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2001)

Dawid Sierakowiak, The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the Lodz Ghetto, edited by Alan Adelson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996)

Required Readings

September 3: Session 1: Introduction to the Course

Part I: A Memoir and a Diary

September 8: Session 2: Primo Levi I

Primo Levi, Survival, Preface, poem, and Chaps. 1-8 (pp. 9-86)

Note: There is an excellent online resource available through Lauinger Library entitled Survival in Auschwitz: The Nazi Assault on Humanity (Cambridge: ProQuest, LLC, 2002). This resource is, however, no substitute for reading the entire text of Levi’s book.

September 10: Session 3: Primo Levi II

Primo Levi, Survival, Chaps. 9-17 (pp. 87-173)

September 15: Session 4: Dawid Sierakowiak I

Dawid Sierakowiak, Diary, poem, Foreword, Acknowledgments,

and pp. 3-143.

September 17: Session 5: Dawid Sierakowiak II

Dawid Sierakowiak, Diary, pp. 145-271.

Saturday, September 19: Rosh HaShanah (the Jewish New Year)

Monday, September 21: Eid-ul-Fitr (the end of Ramadan)

Part II: An Overview of the Holocaust

September 22: Session 6: Anti-Jewish prejudice; prejudice against other social groups

Bergen, War and Genocide (2009 edition), Foreword, Preface, map after Preface, and Chap. 1

Primary sources: Hochstadt, Sources, #1-#7 (and accompanying text on pp. 7-8 and 22)

September 24: Session 7: Hitler’s worldview; the National Socialist party; the party’s

concentration of political power

Bergen, War and Genocide, Chap. 2

Primary sources

*Adolf Hitler, Letter to Adolf Gemlich dated September 16, 1919; translated in Noakes and Pridham, Nazism 1919-1945, Vol. 1: The Rise to Power 1919-1934 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1998), #2 and accompanying text, pp. 12-14)

The Program of the National Socialist (Nazi) German Workers’ Party, February 25, 1920

Arad, Documents, #1

*Dedication, Preface, Table of Contents, and Excerpts from Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (1943 English translation), pp. 3-4, 34-35, 51-65, 284-308, and 679 (pp. 34-35 parallel Arad, Documents, #4, in part)

Monday, September 28: Yom Kippur (the Jewish Day of Atonement)

Tuesday, September 29: The day after Yom Kippur; no class meeting; please visit the

U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum between the two Thursday

class sessions

October 1: Session 8: Anti-Jewish policies, January 1933-February 1938; eugenic

sterilization; German rearmament

Bergen, War and Genocide, Chap. 3

Primary sources

The Nuremberg Laws, September 15, 1935

Arad, Documents, #32-#37 (#33 parallels #13 in Hochstadt, Sources; please see Hochstadt’s comments on pp. 45-46)

Jewish responses, a critical Social Democratic response, and an empathic Christian response

Arad, Documents, #38-#39

Hochstadt, Sources, #12 (and accompanying text)

*Elisabeth Schmitz (a Protestant high-school (gymnasium) teacher in Berlin), “Memorandum on the Jewish Question,” September 1933 (translation provided)

October 6: Session 9: Hitler’s plans, November 1937; the annexation of Austria,

March 1938; the national pogrom of November 1938; the assault on Czechoslovakia, 1938-1939; Jewish responses; international responses

Bergen, War and Genocide, Chap. 4, pp. 79-99

Primary sources

The Hossbach Memorandum, November 1937

Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, #503-#504, and accompanying text on pp. 72, 79, and 80

A children’s story, 1938

Hochstadt, Sources, #16 (please try to find additional information about and illustrations for The Poisonous Mushroom on the Web)

Vienna after the Anschluss, 1938

Hochstadt, Sources, #17 (and accompanying text on pp. 56-57)

Immigration policies: the Evian Conference of July 1938

Hochtstadt, Sources, #21 (please see Hochstadt’s comments on p. 69; see also Arad, Documents, #45)

The national anti-Jewish pogrom, November 9-10, 1938

Arad, Documents, #49

Emigration of German Jews encouraged, January 24, 1939

Arad, Documents, #57

Hitler’s “prophecy,” January 30, 1939

Arad, Documents, #59 (parallel in Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, #770)

U.S. State Department immigration policy in February 1939

Hochstadt, Sources, #26 (and accompanying text on pp. 83-84)

October 8: Session 10: The attack on Poland, September 1939; occupation and

deportation policies in Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Germany, 1938-1941; Hitler’s plans for a western offensive

Bergen, War and Genocide, Chap. 5, pp. 101-127 (please study the maps on p. 134 in Bergen and on pp. 644 and 631-632 in Noakes and Pridham)

Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, pp. 142-146 and 314-317

Primary sources

A pre-war pep talk

Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, #541-#542 and accompanying text

The German Blitzkrieg against Poland

Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, #548-#550 and accompanying text

Atrocities committed by the Einsatzgruppen and the German army; protests against the atrocities; and deportations, September 1939-February 1940

Hochstadt, Sources, #28

Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, text on pp. 327-328 and #653-#657

*“A Note of Heydrich’s on the Tasks of the Einsatzgruppen in Poland, July 2, 1940 (translation provided)

Himmler’s and Hitler’s perspectives on the peoples of Eastern Europe

Noakes and Pridham, Nazism. #645, #651 (#651 parallels Arad, Documents, #86)

Hitler’s plans for a western offensive

Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, #554

October 13: Session 11: “Euthanasia”: the murder of people with disabilities,

1939-1945

Bergen, War and Genocide, Chap. 1, pp. 11-13 (please re-read); Chap. 4, pp. 99-100; and Chap. 5, pp. 128-133

Primary sources

Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, #740 and #730-#731, #748-#753 and accompanying text on pp. 412-414

*Paul Braune, Memorandum on “The Relocation of Residents of Healing and Care Facilities for the Sake of Economic Planning” (July 9, 1940)

Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, #757-#759 and accompanying text; #762-#763

Hochstadt, Sources, #34 and accompanying text

October 15: Session 12: Germany’s wars against several European neighbors,

May 1940-May 1941; the “Battle of Britain”

Bergen, War and Genocide, Chap. 6, pp. 135-150

Primary sources

Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, #561-#566 and accompanying text

October 20: Session 13: The attack on the Soviet Union, June 22, 1941; the closing off

of Jewish emigration; the Wannsee Conference, January 1942

Bergen, War and Genocide, Chap. 6, pp. 150-165 and map on p. 166

Primary sources

Policies in the East

Arad, Documents, #170

Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, #814 (parallels Arad, Documents, #171)

Einsatzgruppen reports

Arad, Documents, #177 and #180 (#177 is often called “the first Stahlecker report”; #180 is called “the Jäger report”) (#177 parallels #815 in Noakes and Pridham, Nazism; #180 parallels #817)

The closing off of Jewish emigration

Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, #836 (parallels Arad, #68)

The Wannsee Conference

Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, text on p. 533, #847-#850, and text on p. 542 (parallels in Arad, Documents, #116-#117, and Hochstadt, Sources, #42)

October 22: Session 14: Years of extermination, 1942-1943; the turning points in the

North African and European wars; Allied bombing policies in Europe; European resistance

Bergen, War and Genocide, Chap. 7 and maps in Noakes and Pridham, Nazism on pp. 636-640, 642-643, and 645

Primary sources

The protest of a French Catholic bishop, August 1942

Hochstadt, Sources, #47 and accompanying text

Jewish resistance in the Warsaw ghetto

Arad, Documents, #138-#139

The last leaflet of the White Rose movement in Munich, February 1943

*Inge Scholl, ed., The White Rose, Munich 1942-1943 (1983), pp. 91-93

An excerpt from statistician Richard Korherr’s report in March 1943

Arad, Documents, #158

October 27: Session 15: The final 16 months of the European war, January 1944-

May 1945; the Jews of Hungary

Bergen, War and Genocide, Chap. 8, and map in Noakes and Pridham, Nazism,

p. 641

Primary sources

The July 20th, 1944, attempt to assassinate Hitler

*Fabian von Schlabrendorff, “The July 20, 1944, Plot” [an excerpt from his book, Offiziere gegen Hitler (1946)], in Benjamin Sax and Dieter Kuntz, eds., Inside Hitler’s Germany (1992), pp. 502-510

Heinrich Himmler’s speech in Posen to SS group leaders, October 1943

Hochstadt, #52 (parallels in Arad, Documents, #161, and Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, #642 and 910a)

Adolf Hitler’s political testament, April 29, 1945

Arad, Documents, #72

October 29: Session 16: Perspectives on the Holocaust

Bergen, War and Genocide, Conclusion: “The Legacies of Atrocity”

Essays by Jacob Katz, Ian Kershaw, and Henry Friedlander in Niewyk, Holocaust, pp. 9-55

Part III: A Closer Look at Selected Events

November 3: Session 17: The national anti-Jewish pogrom of November 1938

Arad, Documents, #49 (please re-read)

Arad, Documents, #50-#53

Hochstadt, Sources, #22, #24

*”Hans Berger,” in Monika Richarz, Jewish Life in Germany: Memoirs from Three Centuries (1991), pp. 386-397

*Social Democratic Party in Germany, “Public Reaction to Kristallnacht, in Sax and Kuntz, eds., Inside Hitler’s Germany, pp. 420-421

*Peter Longerich, The Unwritten Order (2003 ed.), pp. 64-67 (a secondary source)

November 5: Session 18: The Jewish star and initial deportations from Germany and

Austria

Arad, Documents, #63, #64, #67, and #68 (#64 parallels Noakes and Pridham, #800; #68 parallels Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, #836)

Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, #777, #801-#802, #828 and text on pp. 509-510, #830, #833, #833a, #834-#835, and #837-#841 (#834 parallels #41 in Hochstadt, Sources)

*Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Friedrich Justus Perels, “Deportation Reports” [from October 1941], in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Works, Vol. 16, Conspiracy and Imprisonment, 1940-1945 (2006), pp. 225-229

*Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness, Vol. 1 (1998), pp. 429-441, 444-445

November 10: Session 19: The decision to (attempt to) annihilate the Jews of Europe

(and beyond)

Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, #806, text on pp.501-503, and #824-826a

*Saul Friedländer, The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 (2007), pp. 272-282, 725-726

*Ian Kershaw, Fateful Choices (2007), Chapter 10 (pp. 431-470, 569-575)

Noakes and Pridham, Nazism, #917-#918

Part IV: A Conversation with a Holocaust Survivor

November 12: Session 20: A conversation with a guest speaker

*Read biographical materials about the speaker.

Part V: Enduring Questions

November 17: Session 21: German citizens and the Holocaust

Essays by Christopher Browning and Daniel Jonah Goldhagen in Niewyk, Holocaust, pp. 76-103.

*Yehuda Bauer, “Daniel J. Goldhagen’s View of the Holocaust,” in Franklin H. Littell, ed., Hyping the Holocaust: Scholars Answer Goldhagen (Merion Station, PA: Merion Westfield Press International, 1997), pp. 61-72 and 171

*Peter Hoffmann, “The German Resistance, the Jews, and Daniel Goldhagen,” in Littell, ed., Hyping the Holocaust, pp. 75-88 and 171-174

November 19: Session 22: What the Allies knew and when they knew it

*Richard Breitman, “German Order Police in the First Phase of the Holocaust: New Evidence from British Intelligence,” in Shlomo Aronson, ed., New Records – New Perspectives ([Sede Boqer, Israel]: Ben-Gurion Research Center, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 2002), pp. 43-47

*Gerhard L. Weinberg, “The Holocaust and Intelligence Documents,” in David Bankier, ed., Secret Intelligence and the Holocaust (New York: Enigma Books, and Jerusalem, Israel: Yad Vashem, 2006), 1-15

*Stephen Tyas, “Adolf Eichmann: New Information from British Signals Intelligence” [in part], in Bankier, ed., Secret Intelligence and the Holocaust, pp. 213-227

*Richard Breitman, “Intelligence and the Holocaust,” in Bankier, ed., Secret Intelligence and the Holocaust, pp. 17-47

November 24: Session 23: Resistance and rescue

Essays by Yehuda Bauer, Michael R. Marrus and Robert O. Paxton, and Michael Phayer in Niewyk, Holocaust, pp. 148-163, 207-217, and 248-260

*Michael R. Marrus, “Pius XII and the Holocaust: Ten Essential Themes,” in Carol Rittner and John K. Roth, eds., Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust (London: Leicester University Press, 2002), pp. 43-55.

Thanksgiving break (no class on November 26th)

December 1: Session 24: The European war and the just-war tradition

*An essay by Jacques Maritain

*Two speeches by Charles Lindbergh

*A letter to Great Britain from Switzerland by Karl Barth

*Two editorials by Reinhold Niebuhr

*A speech on “Obliteration Bombing” before the British Parliament by Anglican Bishop George Bell

December 3: Session 25: An issue or guest chosen by the class

Part VI: Jan Karski: A Profile in Courage

December 8: Session 26: Jan Karski

*Jan Karski, Story of a Secret State, Chap. 29: “The Ghetto”

Course Requirements

The most important requirement for the course is the timely and thoughtful reading of the assigned texts in advance of the seminar session at which they will be discussed.

Each student will be asked to prepare a weekly one- or two-page journal in which he or she reacts briefly to recent or current course readings, notes unanswered questions, and generalizes about the readings and/or topics covered to date in the course. The weekly journals should be brought to each Thursday class session and handed in.

Each student will also be asked to prepare a five-minute autobiographical presentation regarding an important political, cultural, or religious figure and his or her relationship to the Holocaust. Possible candidates for such presentations include Sophie Scholl, Heinrich Himmler, Adolf Eichmann, and Karl Brandt.

There will be two other writing assignments in the course, a mid-semester paper not to exceed 10 double-spaced pages for undergraduates or 15 pages for graduate students. This paper can review a book or article not assigned in the course, critique one or more readings assigned in the course, or discuss a topic. A topic and a list of readings to be used will be due on Tuesday, October 6, and the paper itself will be due on Thursday, October 22.

There will be a final term paper in this course, no more than 15 pages in length for undergraduates or 25 pages in length for graduate students. This paper should demonstrate your ability to think and argue philosophically about an ethical dimension of the Holocaust. The final paper will be due on Thursday, December 17, one week after the beginning of Study Days.

The components of the final grade will be as follows:

Final term paper: 30%

Thoroughness and timeliness of completing reading assignments, as reflected in class participation and journals: 30%

Mid-semester paper: 25%

Autobiographical presentation: 15%

Having encountered and reported instances of plagiarism three times since 2001, I would urge every member of the class to be scrupulous about citing and quoting the work of others. Please review the guidance of the Honor Council’s handbook regarding proper citation of sources. If you complete all assignments on time and submit your own work, you cannot fail this course. If you fail to acknowledge the writings of others properly, both you and I are likely to go through an Honor Council review, and you are at risk of receiving the grade of F for the course.

If you discover that you will need to be absent from a class session, please notify me of that fact in advance. If you find that you are going to have trouble meeting the deadline for a written assignment, please send me an e-mail message in advance of the deadline, and we will try to work out an alternative deadline that is compatible with your current circumstances. Papers that are submitted late without your having made these arrangements in advance will be penalized.

Again, and on a more positive note, the success of this course will depend primarily on your having read and thought carefully about the readings for the week’s seminar session. Please analyze the readings, trying to place them in their historical context. Also, please compare and contrast the primary and secondary sources as you read them.

My hope is that all of us in the course can learn something about what it means to accept moral responsibility, especially when such an acceptance comes into conflict with our own interests or career plans. On the other hand, we will during this course discover how easy it is to become a bystander – never directly harming others but nonetheless remaining silent and doing nothing when we would potentially have been able to help.

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