Online Readingsfor Module 1
Instructions
On D2L you will find clickable links to the webpages cited below. It will be easier to use the links on D2L than to try and type out the URLS listed below. I have included them in the Course Packet as insurance (if D2L does down during the semester.) I test the links regularly. You may have to clear your browser's history and restart the browser if a link does not work. If the link remains broken, please notify me immediately.
Questions
1. What did Christians, and in particular Christian clergy preach to their followers about the Jews?
2. Take a look at the five different reasons given for the consolidation of Christian antisemitism in the Middle Ages. Why do you think they contributed to the perpetuation of lies about Jews? (You need to use your imagination. The answer is not spelled out in the test. Instead look at the reasons and try to make educated guesses. Americans value this type of assignment for students.)
3. What stereotypes did Jews find in medieval, Christian Europe?
4. Who do you think was responsible for spreading antisemitism in late antiquity and the Middle Ages? (You will need to draw on your notes to class.)
5. Why do you think Christian rulers interested in building up their political power would invite Jews into their territorial states?
6. How did the reliance of Christian political leaders impact antisemitism?
7. During the Enlightenment, how did western European leaders differ from eastern European leaders in terms of policies toward Jews?
8. Which stereotypes emerged in central and eastern Europe in the early modern period?
9. How did political developments in Europe impact Jews (both positively and negatively)?
Online Readings for Module 2
Instructions
On D2L you will find clickable links to the webpages cited below. It will be easier to use the links on D2L than to try and type out the URLS listed below. I have included them in the Course Packet as insurance (if D2L does down during the semester.) I test the links regularly. You may have to clear yourbrowser's history and restart the browser if a link does not work. If the link remains broken, please notify me immediately.
Questions
1. What three trends does one find during and immediately after World War I?
2. What myths were created about Jews during World War I and its immediate aftermath.
3. What were the two sides fighting in World War I called? After you answer the previous question, make a list of the countries belonging to each side.
4. What conditions did the stalemate between the two sides in World War I create?
5. when did the USA enter the war and what caused the country to enter the war?
6. Why was American intervention so decisive for the outcome of the war?
7. What was the impact of the Russian Revolution on the war and on Russia?
8. What happened after the initial successes of the Axis powers in late winter 1918?
9. What does the word "armistice" mean? (Feel free to look the word up in a dictionary, but put the definition in your own words.)
10. What domestic developments in Germany contributed to the country's need for an armistice?
11. What did the armistice provoke in Germany?
12. Why do historians consider World War I one of the most destructive wars in human history? Why were casualties so high?
13. How did the Treaty of Versailles affect Germany?
14. What did the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye result in?
15. Which country lost territory in the Treaty of Trianon and which countries gained territory at the expense of the first country?
16. How did the Treaty of Sèvres and the Treaty of Lausaunnechange the geography of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East?
17. What was the scope of the Holocaust? In other words, how many Jews were murdered? Who did the murders? How many years did the murderous phase of the Holocaust last?
18. How did modern Germansview Jews in a fundamentally different manner from earlier forms of antisemitism that we have studied so far?
19. How did the Nazi Party rise to power?
20. In what country was Hitler born and educated?
21. How does the YadVashem website define the Nazi ideology and what were its main ideas?
22. Why was Nazi state-sponsored antisemitism so much more dangerous to German Jews than earlier forms of antisemitism?
23. Where was the party most active in its early years and where is this German state located in Germany?
24. What was the Beer Hall Putsch and what were the consequences for Hitler and the Nazi Party?
25. What happened to the Nazi Party after Hitler became active in politics again in 1925?
26. Who began to support the Nazi Party during the Great Depression and for what reasons?
27. Why was Paul von Hindenburg so popular in postwar Germany?
28. What reasons can you infer from the biographical sketch of von Hindenburg for his decision to appoint Hitler as chancellor?
29. Once in power, what were Hitler's main goals? And, how did he accomplish them?
30. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum and YadVashem diverge on how they interpret the Nazi Anti-Jewish Boycott of 1 April 1933. How does each interpret the boycott?
31. Who were the SA? Who was the organization's leader? Who eventually felt threatened by the SA and what happened to the organization in 1934?
32. Who were the SS and who was the organization's leader? Into what did the leader of the SS transform the original organization?
33. What role did the Einsatzgruppen play in the Final Solution? What were the origins of the Einsatzgruppen?
Online Readings for Module 3
Instructions
On D2L you will find clickable links to the webpages cited below. It will be easier to use the links on D2L than to try and type out the URLS listed below. I have included them in the Course Packet as insurance (if D2L does down during the semester.) I test the links regularly. You may have to clear your browser's history and restart the browser if a link does not work. If the link remains broken, please notify me immediately.
1. How did Hitler and the Nazi view the Jews?
2. What was Nazi racial policy based on?
3. What became the primary goal of the German state under Nazism?
4. How was the "Law to Prevent Hereditarily Diseased Offspring" an example of euthanasia?
5. How did the Nuremberg Laws define a Jew and a German? What other legal definitions were formalized with the supplemental decree of the Nuremberg Law?
6. What did the German government do during the 1936 Olympic Games with regard to its antisemitic campaign?
7. What other measures did the German government tame in 1936 and 1938?
8. How was the German government able to police its policies regarding marriage and procreation?
9. Why does the US Holocaust Memorial Museum consider Kristallnacht a pogrom?
10. What happened in 1938 to Polish Jewish refugees in Germany? What part did the Polish town of Zbaszyn play in linking the German treatment of Polish Jews in Germany and Kristallnacht?
11. Which Nazi personality took the lead in planning Kristallnacht? Who was he? And, what reason did he give for Kristallnacht?
12. What state-sponsored antisemitic policies were enacted in the aftermath of Kristallnacht?
13. Who was forced to pay for the damages done during Kristallnacht?
14. What was the German policy of Aryanization and consequences did it have for German Jews?
15. Why do historians considered the year 1938 to be a "fateful year"?
16. What new forms of violence were perpetrated against German Jews from 1938 onward?
17. Why do historians consider the Evian Conference as evidence of widespread antisemitism in Europe and the Americas?
18. What did the conference fail to do for persecuted European Jews?
19. What conclusions can you draw about the 32 countries represented at the conference?
20. Despite the conference's many failures what was its one big accomplishment?
21. What happened to efforts in the US Congress to pass legislation allowing approximately 20,000 Jewish children to find refuge in the US?
22. How did Shanghai, China become a refuge for European Jews? What happened to the Jews of Shanghai during World War II?
23. What did Britain did in 1939 regarding its immigration policy for the mandate of Palestine?
24. How does the story of the St. Louis illustrate American responsibility in the Holocaust?
25. How was the German government able to identify and keep track of Jews in Germany?
26. Dachau was the first concentration camps in Germany. What purpose did it serve between 1933 and 1935?
27. Who was the commandant and who assisted him in running the camp?
28. How did Dachau become a prototype of other camps elsewhere in Germany?
29. YadVashem divides the history of German concentration camps into three periods: 1933-36, 1936-1942 and 1942-44/45. Give a short description of what was distinctive about the camps in each period.
30. Why and how did the Nazis persecute the Sinti and Roma?
31. Why and how did the Nazis persecute homosexuals?
32. Why and how did the Nazis persecute the disabled?
33. Why and how did the Nazis persecute Catholics?
34. Why and how did the Nazis persecute Jehovah's Witnesses?
35. YadVashem gives a short description of Walther Funk. How was he implicated in the Holocaust as the German Economic Minister and president of the State Bank?
Online Readings for Module 4
Instructions
On D2L you will find clickable links to the webpages cited below. It will be easier to use the links on D2L than to try and type out the URLS listed below. I have included them in the Course Packet as insurance (if D2L does down during the semester.) I test the links regularly. You may have to clear your browser's history and restart the browser if a link does not work. If the link remains broken, please notify me immediately.
1. How did World War II transform Europe and the world according to the two websites?
2. What did Germany and the Soviet Union agree to in the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact?
3. How did the world react to news of the pact?
4. What did the Soviet Union do after Germany invaded Poland?
5. How was Poland divided up by Germany and the Soviet Union?
6. Why did the German government create the General Government and who was its leader?
7. How did the Germans treat the Polish people in the General Government?
8. How did the Germans treat the Jews in the General Government?
9. How did the state of war affect what the Nazi government could do?
10. Who was Reinhard Heydrich? (There is a lot of information in this document, so try to learn the most important details of his life dealing with the Holocaust.)
11. What were the Judenräte and what purpose did they serve? (Again, there is a lot of information in this document, so try to pick out the important details.)
12. What were the short-term and long-term goals in Heydrich's so-called Schnellbrief?
13. What did the Germans do to Polish Jews as they conquered Poland?
14. What other countries did the Germans capture between September 1939 and June 1941?
15. What did Germany's allies in Southern and Eastern Europe do with regards to Jews in their country?
16. Why did German anti-Jewish policies differ from country to country and, in particular, in Eastern Europe and Western Europe?
17. What were the ways in which the Germans persecuted Jews throughout Europe?
Online Readingsfor Module 5
Introduction
A preliminary note on vocabulary: We often refer to the modern day of Russia by several names in the past: the USSR, the Soviet Union, Soviet Russia and Russia. For our course, every term refers to the same country.
Questions
1. How many Jews did the Germans and their allies murder before the Final Solution?
2. What was the purpose of the Final Solution?
3. What did the code name "Operation Barbarossa" stand for?
4. Why did Hitler order a sneak attack on the USSR? (Use the termLebensraumin your answer.)
5. What does the website mean when it writes that the many Jews were murdered in the first weeks of the invasion of the Soviet Union by happenstance?
6. What did the Einsatzgruppen do in Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland?
7. How did the role of the Einsatzgruppen in the Soviet Union differ from their roles in Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland?
8. Who assisted the Einsatzgruppen in their duties?
9. How many Jews did the Einsatzgruppen murder by the spring of 1943 and how did they murder Jews?
10. Based on your readings about the three sites of massacres, what conclusions can you draw about the Einsatzgruppen and the murder of Jews in the USSR?
11. What did the German government call a halt in the activities of the Einsatzgruppen?
12. What conclusions can you draw about both the actions of Germans and local inhabitants of Baltic States (Lithuanian, Latvia and Estonia) toward the Jews living there?
13. What was the sequence of major German antisemitic activities in Kovno and the Kovno ghetto?
14. What was the sequence of major German antisemitic activities in Vilna and the Vilna ghetto?
15. What was the sequence of major German antisemitic activities in Riga and the Riga ghetto?
16. Compare the sequence of major German antisemitic activities in Vilna and the Vilna ghetto to those in Kovno and the Kovno ghetto (question 13 above). What similarities and differences do you find?
17. What was the FPO? Who was its leader? Why did he turn himself in to the Germans? What actions did the FPO take with regard to their fellow Jews and to the Germans? What did the few surviving members of the FPO do after the final liquidation of the Vilna ghetto?
18. Who was Ion Antonescu and how did his conception of Jews differ from the Nazi conception of Jews?
19. How did Romanian policies in areas it controlled in the Soviet Union (Bessarabia and Bukovina) compare to German policies in areas Germany controlled in the Soviet Union? Explain your comparison.
20. How did Hitler's idea for solving the so-called "Jewish problem" evolve over his lifetime?
21. What role did Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz play in the experimentation of methods for mass murder in the Final Solution?
22. What connection was there between the Final Solution and the T4 Program (Euthanasia Program)?
23. Which two gasses did the Nazis use for the Final Solution? Which did it find more efficient and why?
24. What was the purpose of the Wannsee Conference?
Online Readings for Module 6
Questions
1. What was the role of the Jewish police units? How were they treated by other Jews and by the Germans?
2. Whom did the Germans force to round up Jews in the ghettos and concentration and labor camps for deportation to the death camps?
3. What were the conditions like on the deportation trains?
4. What types of subterfuge did the Germans use to goad Jews to leave for the death camps?
5. What efforts did the German authorities employ to wear down the Jews and what were the results of these efforts?
6. Which death camp opened first? What means did it use for mass murder? How did the process work? How many victims were there (Jews and non-Jews)? How many people survived?
7. What aspects in the history of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka demonstrate the improvisational methods used by German authorities in the Final Solution? What was the driving motive for improvisation?
8. What guiding principles for death camps can you infer from the layout of Sobibor and Majdanek?
9. Describe the extermination process at Sobibor?
10. How effective was the Jewish rebellion at Sobibor?
11. How many victims were murdered at Treblinka? How many months was it in operation? How many victims were murdered on average each month?
12. What elements of subterfuge were used in the extermination process at Treblinka?
13. How did the process at Treblinka differ from the process at Sobibor?
14. How was Auschwitz-Birkenau different from the other death camps?
15. Exactly in what did Dr. Joseph Mengele's function consist at Auschwitz?
16. What roles did the Jewish Sonderkommandos have in the death camps?
17. How did the purpose of German concentration camps change dramatically with the onset of World War II?
18. What was the daily routine like at a concentration camp? In addition to German SS guards, who else ensured a camp's smooth operations?
19. Many Jews resisted against the German by keeping their culture alive as best they could under the horrible circumstance of the Holocaust. This effort was called Amidah after an important Jewish prayer. How did Jews practice Amidah in the ghettos, labor and concentration camps?
20. What role did Jews play in discovering the terrible secret of the Final Solution?
21. What were the three types of armed resistance did Jews employ against the Germans?
22. What role did the remaining Slovakian Jews have in the Slovak Uprising and what were the consequences for them?
23. What were the family camps and where were they located?
24. How did the Germans induce Jews in the Warsaw ghetto to volunteer for supposed "resettlement" (but really transportation to Treblinka)?
25. What was the ZOB? Who was its leader? And, what did it do to rebel against the deportation of Jews to Treblinka?
26. How many Jews fought in the Allied armies in World War II?
27. What motivated the British government to agree finally to the creation of a Jewish fighting force as part of the British army?
28. For many European Jews, what did the saving of other Jews cost them?
29. What was the Allies' highest priority in the war?
30. Describe the may ways that non-Jews helped Jews during the Holocaust?
Online Readings for Module 7
Introduction
The YadVashem website uses the Hebrew "Eretz Israel." It simply means the Land of Israel.
Questions
1. For how long had there been a Jewish presence in Poland? How many Jews were living in the country in 1939?How many Polish Jews survived the Holocaust?
2. Who organized the deportations of Jews in Central and Western Europe? What was his original position on the establishment of a Jewish state? What bureaucracy did he establish in 1938 and what was its purpose? What position was he given in the Reich Security Main Office the following year? What connection did he have with the governments of Germany's allies (with the exception of the allies among the Scandinavian countries)? What was his role after the Wannsee Conference?
3. What patterns do you find in the antisemitic activities of Germany's allies in Western Europe during the war?
4. What patterns do you find in the antisemitic activities of Germany's allies in the Balkans and Slovakia?
5. How did Croatia's treatment of the Jews differ from the other countries in the Balkans and from Slovakia?
6. How did the antisemitic activities under Admiral Miklos Horthy differ from those under the Arrow Cross Party in Hungary?
7. What did the term "liquidation" mean, as in the liquidation of a ghetto?
8. What were the death marches?
9. What happened to the surviving remnant of Jews who returned to their homes in Europe?
10. What were the DP camps? How many were there eventually? And, where were they mostly located?
11. What happened to the vast majority of individuals responsible for atrocities towards Jews or the Final Solution?
12. Which countries led the Nuremberg Trials?
13. What were the three charges at the trials and what did they entail?
14. Who was put on trial in the eleven subsequent trials between 1946 and 1949?
15. What type of welcome did Soviet Jews upon their return home and what was the major reason for this type of welcome?
16. How many Holocaust survivors took part in the waves of illegal immigration to Palestine between 1945 and 1948? How many of them were deported by the British to concentration camps in Cyprus? What can only be the only inference I can draw from the historical record about the attitudes of the British government towards the creation of a Jewish state?
17. What contribution did many survivors give to the State of Israel during its War of Independence?