Honors Holocaust History

Course: 420

Course Description:

This course will explore those events that led to the systematic murders of six million Jews during World War II and created countless other victims during that period. Students will encounter the stories of survivors, witnesses, and rescuers that continue to raise essential questions about the nature of human behavior. The course will explore the consequences of how destructive policies are constructed and implemented and how individuals and communities are affected by malevolent decisions and actions. The curriculum requires extensive reading of primary and secondary sources and will emphasize class discussions. By studying the historical development of the Holocaust and similar examples of genocide, students will be invited to make the essential connection between history and the moral choices they confront in their personal lives. By utilizing sources that illuminate victim experiences, perpetrator perspectives, and bystander responses, the class will investigate the Nazi racial state that systematized mass killings and demanded collaboration and complicity. Finally, the course will examine the memory of the Holocaust in western culture. 

*This course does not count toward the fulfillment of a student’s credit requirement in history.

Textbook/Class Resources:

9780393355468, Hayes, Why?: Explaining the Holocaust, W.W. Norton & Co., 2017

The instructor may also provide an additional resource that would be ordered and paid for, once the class begins. This would be of minimal cost only.