SELCS

Legacies of the Holocaust in Europe


Course code: ELCS4002
Tutor: Professor Mary Fulbrook
Level: advanced
Mode of Assessment: 2 assessed essays of 3000 words each
Term: taught in term 1

Course Description:
In the light of controversies about ‘collective memory’, this course examines diverse legacies of the Holocaust in Europe. It focuses on: different patterns of war-time involvement in the ‘Final Solution’; experiences of post-war ‘return’ or displacement; the politics of history in eastern and western European states; justice and trials; narratives of the past among perpetrators and victims; public and hidden legacies for subsequent generations; rituals of remembrance and sites of memory; and the implications of population mobility and a transnational cultural sphere for an alleged ‘Europeanisation of memory’. Examples are drawn from across Europe, highlighting particularly the Third Reich successor states (Austria, East and West Germany) and the divergent cases of France and Poland, to explore the significance of different war-time and post-war contexts and experiences. The course provides some research training in evaluation of primary sources.

Primary Sources
Selections of primary sources in English will be supplied on Moodle; students are encouraged to explore additional materials in other languages. Sources will include:

  • Diaries, letters, testimonies, eye-witness accounts, memoirs
  • Official sources, political speeches, public debates, media articles
  • Transcripts from war crimes trials
  • Oral history interviews
  • Exhibitions, memorials and physical sites of memory
  • Films, documentaries, works of creative literature

Preliminary reading list
It will be helpful to gain an initial overview of the Holocaust and selected aspects of post-war European history, and some of the wider controversies about legacies of the Holocaust. The following books are suggested as preliminary reading:

  • Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Extermination
  • Ruth Klüger, weiter leben (also in a slightly different English version, Still Alive)
  • Dan Bar-On, Legacy of Silence
  • Tony Judt, Postwar
  • Mark Mazower, The Dark Century
  • Peter Novick, The Holocaust and Collective Memory
  • Mary Fulbrook, German National Identity after the Holocaust
  • Bill Niven, Facing the Nazi Past: United Germany and the Legacy of the Third Reich
  • Henri Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome