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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