课程详述

COURSE SPECIFICATION

以下课程信息可能根据实际授课需要或在课程检讨之后产生变动。如对课程有任何疑问，请

联系授课教师。The course information as follows may be subject to change, either during the session because

of unforeseen circumstances, or following review of the course at the end of the session. Queries about the course

should be directed to the course instructor.

课程名称 Course Title

Nazi Germany and the Holocaust: Trauma, Memory and History

纳粹屠犹：创伤、记忆与历史

授课院系

Originating Department

社会科学中心 Center for Social Sciences

课程编号

Course Code

SS120

课程学分 Credit Value

课程类别 Course Type

通识选修课程 General Education (GE) Elective Courses

授课学期 Semester

2021-2022 学年第一学期（秋季）2021-2022 Fall Semester

授课语言

Teaching Language

英文 English

授课教师、所属学系、联系方

式（如属团队授课，请列明其

他授课教师）

Instructor(s), Affiliation&

Contact（For team teaching,

please list all instructors）

Tommaso Pepe 青年会士 Junior Fellow

南方科技大学人文社会科学荣誉学会 Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts,SUSTech

e-mail：tommasopepe.uno@gmail.com

实验员/助教、所属学系、联系

方式 Tutor/TA(s), Contact

无 NA

10.

选课人数限额(可不填)

Maximum Enrolment

（Optional）

11.

授课方式

Delivery Method

讲授

Lectures

习题/辅导/讨论

Tutorials

实验/实习

Lab/Practical

其它(请具体注明)

Other（Please specify）

总学时

Total

学时数

Credit Hours

12.

先修课程、其它学习要求 Pre-

requisites or Other Academic

Requirements

无 NA

13.

后续课程、其它学习规划

Courses for which this

course is a pre-requisite

无 NA

14.

其它要求修读本课程的学系

Cross-listing Dept.

无 NA

教学大纲及教学日历 SYLLABUS

15.

教学目标 Course Objectives

Specifically, this course aims to help the students to:

- Acquire a comprehensive knowledge about the history of the Holocaust, the roots of European antisemitism, and of

the role of antisemitic ideology in Nazi Germany.

- Analyze the role that survivors’ testimonies played the initial transmission of the memory of the Holocaust and

evaluate, from a critically informed standpoint, more recent developments in the cultural memory of the Shoah across a

diversified a range of literary, artistic and media forms.

- Discuss and analyze a variety of primary sources (texts, films, photographs, testimonies, documentaries, historical

documents) to develop a coherent historical argument.

- Interpret the historical legacy of the Holocaust in a global context, recognizing the multiple connections that relate

the history of anti-Jewish persecution and other Nazi crimes against persecuted minorities to contemporary debates

concerning the resurgence of racial and religious hatred, the political use of state-sanctioned violence, the vital role of

peaceful coexistence in a context of growing ethnic, cultural and religious diversity.

16.

预达学习成果 Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course students will achieve the following learning outcomes:

 Acquire a substantial knowledge of the history of the Holocaust through a critical reading of primary sources,

historical documents, survivors’ testimonies, films and documentaries.

 Develop a comprehensive understanding of the historical relevance of the Holocaust in contemporary

collective memory and its multiple connections to a wide range of cultural, political, and social issues of

contemporary relevance.

 Develop the ability to critically evaluate a diversified range of documents and sources (texts, films, testimonies,

photographs) to develop a consistent historical argument.

17.课程内容及教学日历（如授课语言以英文为主，则课程内容介绍可以用英文；如团队教学或模块教学，教学日历须注

明主讲人）Course Contents (in Parts/Chapters/Sections/Weeks. Please notify name of instructor for course

section(s), if this is a team teaching or module course.)

Weekly Schedule

Week 1

Introduction: The Crisis of European Modernity

This introductory class will present an overview of the main topics covered during the course and will introduce some of

the critical terms used throughout the seminar.

Film:

Screening and discussion in class of Alain Resnais, Night and Fog, 1955, 33’.

Part I “Racism, Totalitarianism, Genocide”

Week 2

The Postwar Years and the Rise of Totalitarianisms

This class will offer a brief historical overview of the political crisis that affected continental Europe in the aftermath of

the First World War and, more specifically, Italy and Germany. Considering Italian Fascism as a first case study, we will

analyze some of the key issues related to the construction of a totalitarian society.

Readings:

Hannah Arendt, “On the Nature of Totalitarianism: An Essay in Understanding”, in Essays in Understanding,

1930-1954. Formation, Exile Totalitarianism. New York: Shocken Books, 2005, pp. 328-360.

Gentile, Emilio. “Fascism as political religion.” Journal of Contemporary History 1990, 25, pp. 229-251.

Optional Readings:

Kevin Passmore, Fascism: A Very Short Introduction, ch. 1, “A and not A; What is Fascism?”, pp. 10-33, OR ch.

8, “Fascism, Race and Nation”, pp. 108-122.

Philip Morgan, Italian Fascism, 1919-1945, ch. 3, “The Construction of the ‘Totalitarian’ State, 1925–29”, pp. 96-

124.

Week 3

The Nazi Seizure of Power: from the Crisis of the Weimar Republic to the Fire of the Bundestag

This class will focus on the birth of the National Socialist Party, on the ideological roots of Nazism and its ties with the

Völkisch ethno-nationalism, and the advent of the Nazi rule in Germany. Alongside an overview of the main historical

events that marked Hitler’s rise to power, the class will center on a key question: if Nazism was, since its outset, an

openly violent, racist and extremist political movement, why its rise to power was not stopped?

Readings

Joseph W. Bendersky, A Concise History of Nazi Germany, part 1, “The Origins and Development of Nazism,

1919–1928”, pp. 3-56

Film

A selection from Leni Riefenstahl, The Triumph of The Will, 1935, 114’ (approx. 45’). To be watched before

class.

Optional Readings:

Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretations, ch. 3, “The Essence of

Nazism: Form of Fascism, Brand of Totalitarians, or Unique Phenomenon?”, pp. 36-63.

 Doris Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust, ch. 2 “Leadership and Will:

Adolf Hitler, The National Socialist German Workers’ Party, and Nazi Ideology”.

Week 4

Gleichschaltung and the Construction of the Racial State:

From the Nuremberg Laws to the Kristallnacht

This session will analyze more in detail the development of the racial policies of Nazi Germany, focusing on two crucial

watersheds: the promulgation of the Nuremberg Laws for the protection of German blood in 1935 and the Kristallnacht,

the Night of the Broken Glasses in 1938.

Readings

 Documents in The Nazi Germany Sourcebook: An Anthology of Texts, eds. Roderick Stackelberg and Sally

A. Winkle, London: Routledge, 2002:

"Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring, 14 July 1933"

-"Law for the Protection of German Blood and Honor, 15 September 1935"

 Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial State: Germany,1933-1945, Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1991, Ch. 4 “The Persecution of the Jews”, pp. 75-112.

 Emmanuel Marx, State Violence in Nazi Germany: From Kristallnacht to Barbarossa, London: Routledge,

2020, Ch. 2 “Kristallnach Revisited”, pp. 28-46.

Videotestimonies

 Survivors Remember the Kristallnacht, United States Holocaust Museum and Memorial: testimony of

Susan Warsinger, 8’33, testimony of Rabbi Gerd Jacob Wiener, 8’’49. To be watched before class.

Optional readings:

Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial State: Germany, 1933-1945, ch. 5 "The persecution of

Sinti and Roma", ch. 6 "The persecution of the 'hereditary ill', the 'asocial', and homosexuals", pp. 113-200.

Isabel Heinemann, “Race”, in Shelley Barowski et al., A Companion to Nazi Germany, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-

Blackwell, 2018, pp. 499-518.

Joseph Bendersky, A Concise History of Nazi Germany, part 3, “The Nazification of German Society, 1934–

1938”, pp. 99-149.

Week 5

The Origins of Nazi Genocidal Policies:

Eugenics, Lebensraum, and The War of Annihilation in Eastern Europe

This session of the course will outline the main chain of events that transformed the initial discrimination policies set in

place by Nazi Germany into an outright genocidal project. It will illustrate the link between the euthanasia program and

the implementation of the Jewish extermination and analyze the first phase of the genocide represented by the mass

killings that accompanied the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.

Readings

Excerpt of Minutes of the Wannsee Conference (1942)

Heinrich Himmler, Posen Speeches (1943)

Christopher Browning, “One Day in Jozefow: Initiation to Mass Murder”, in Peter Hayes (ed.), Lessons and

Legacies: The meaning of the Holocaust in a Changing World, Evanston/Ill.: Northwestern University Press,

1991, pp. 196-209.

Bergen, War and Genocide, ch. 4, “Open Aggression: In Search of War, 1938-1939”, ch. 5, “Experiments in

Brutality, 1939-1940: War Against Poland and the So-Called Euthanasia Program”,

Optional Readings

Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution, ch. 1, “The setting”,

pp. 1-22.

Bergen, War and Genocide, ch. 5, “Experiments in Brutality, 1939-1940: War Against Poland and the So-Called

Euthanasia Program”, ch. 6 “Expansion and Systematization: Exporting War and Terror, 1940-1941”

Daniel Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, ch. 1, “Recasting the

View of Antisemitism : A Framework for Analysis”, ch. 2, “The Evolution of Eliminationist Antisemitism in Modern

Germany”, ch. 3 “Eliminationist Antisemitism: The "Common Sense" of German Society During the Nazi Period”,

pp. 27-131.

Week 6

The Urban Dimension of the Holocaust: The Establishment of the Jewish Ghettos

This class will be specifically devoted to the constitution of urban ghettos and will analyze in more detail the history of

Warsaw ghetto as paradigmatic example of the bureaucratic, spatial and geographical complexity of the genocide.

Class discussion will include also an analysis of Roman Polanski’s The Pianist.

Readings

Dan Michman, The Emergence of Jewish Ghettos During the Holocaust, Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 2011, ch. 6 “Ghettos During the Final Solution, 1941-1943: The Territories Occupied in Operation

Barbarossa”, p. 102-122.

Film

Roman Polanski, The Pianist, 2002, 149’’. To be watched before class.

Optional Readings

Alexander Stein, “Music and Trauma in Polanski’s The Pianist”, Psychoanalytic Inquiry. Sep/Oct2007, Vol. 27

Issue 4, pp. 440-454.

Michael Stevenson, “The Pianist and its Contexts: Polanski's Narration of Holocaust Evasion and Survival”, in

The Cinema of Roman Polanski: Dark Spaces of the World, London: Wallflower, 2006, pp. 146-163.

Part II “Testimony and Memory”

Week 7

The Concentrationary Universe: If This is a Man by Primo Levi

Week 7, 8, 9, 10 will be devoted to the reading and commentary of Primo Levi If This is Man. The reading of Levi’s

testimony will be accompanied by a thorough discussion about the origin, structure and functioning of the

concentrationary system.

Readings

Primo Levi, If This is a Man, “Preface”, ch. 1, 2, 3.

Wolfgang Sofsky, The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp, part 1, “Introduction”, pp. 1-45.

Chris Webb, The Treblinka Death Camp: History, Biographies, Remembrance, Stuttgart: Ibidem, 2014, Ch. 5,

“Industrialized Mass Murder: September-December 1942”, pp. 61-77-

Optional Readings

Wolfgang Sofsky, The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp, ch. 5 “Violence and Death”, pp. 127-176.

Marco Belpoliti and Robert Gordon, “Primo Levi’s Holocaust Vocabularies”, in The Cambridge Companion to

Primo Levi, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 51-67.

Michael Tager, “Primo Levi and the Language of Witness”, Criticism, Vol. 35, No. 2, pp. 265-288.

Week 8

If This is a Man and the Ethics of Survival: “Beyond This Side of Good and Evil”

Analysis of Primo Levi’s testimony.

Readings

Levi, If This is Man, ch. 4, 7, 9

Optional readings

Jonathan Drucker, Primo Levi and Humanism after Auschwitz: Posthumanist Reflections, New York: Palgrave

Macmillan, 2009, “Introduction”, pp. 1-14.

Uri Cohen, “Consider If This Is a Man: Primo Levi and the Figure of Ulysses”, Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 18,

No. 2 (Winter 2012), pp. 40-69.

Marie Bard, “ "The gray zone" as a complex of tensions: Primo Levi on Holocaust Survival”, in The legacy of

Primo Levi, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, pp. 212-229.

Giorgio Agamben, Remnants of Auschwitz: The Witness and the Archive, New York: Zone Books, 1998, ch. 3,

“The Muselmann”, pp. 41-86.

Week 9

The (Un)representable Machinery of Death

Analysis of Primo Levi’s testimony.

Readings

Levi, If This is Man, ch. 10, 11, 14

Documentary Sources

Selection of photographs from the Auschwitz Album, available at the Digital Collections of the Yad Vashem.

Four Sonderkommando Photographs, in Georges Didi-Huberman, Images in Spite of All: Four Photographs

from Auschwitz, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.

Optional readings:

Uri Cohen, “Consider If This Is a Man: Primo Levi and the Figure of Ulysses”, Jewish Social Studies, Vol. 18,

No. 2 (Winter 2012), pp. 40-69.

“Four Pieces of Film Snatched from Hell”, in Georges Didi-Huberman, Images in Spite of All: Four

Photographs from Auschwitz, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008, pp. 3-19.

Week 10

Impossible Resistance: The Sonderkommando Revolt at Auschwitz, October 1944

In this class, the reading of the final chapters of Levi’s testimony will be accompanied by a discussion of Laszlo Nemes’

Son of Saul, Point of connection between the book and the film will an analysis of the role played by the

Sonderkommando in the functioning of the camp and the Auschwitz Sonderkommando revolt in October 1944 (referred

by Levi in the last chapters of his testimony).

Readings

Levi, If This is Man, ch. 16, 17.

Film

Laszlo Nemes, Son of Saul, 2015, 107’.

Optional Readings

Jeffrey Wallen, “Facing the Sonderkommando: Son of Saul and the Dynamics of Witnessing”, Holocaust

Studies, 2019.

Week 11

Testimony, Memory, Shame: Postwar Survivor Voices

This class will be dedicated to an analysis of the role that survivors’ testimonies have had in transmitting the memory of

the persecution in the postwar period. It will present a comparison between the cinematic work of Claude Lanzmann

and the documentary approach of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. The discussion will be

accompanied by a critical reflection on the psychological difficulties that survivors had to experience in the postwar

period that will focus in particular on the concept of “shame” elaborated by Levi in The Drowned and The Saved.

Readings

Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988, “Preface”, ch. 3, “Shame”, pp.

1-13, 57-75.

Videotestimonies

Selection from the videotestimonies of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. To be watched

before class.

Film

Selection from Claude Lanzmann, Shoah, 1985, 613’ (approximately 60’). To be watched before class.

We will (re)watch and discuss some videotestimonies and excerpts from Lanzmann’s Shoah in class.

Optional readings:

Raul Hilberg, “Opening Remarks: The Discovery of the Holocaust”, in Peter Hayes (ed.), Lessons and

Legacies. The Meaning of the Holocaust in a Changing World, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991,

pp. 11-21.

Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, Testimony. Crisis of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History,

London: Routledge, 1992, ch. 3, “An Event Without Witnesses: Truth, Testimonial and Survival”, ch. “The

Return of The Voice: Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah”.

Part III – Holocaust Memory in a Global Age

Week 12

The Public Perception of the Genocide in the Postwar Era:

From the Nuremberg Trials to the Report on the Banality of Evil

The class will be devoted to discussion of the evolution of public perception of the Holocaust in the postwar period,

retracing the dynamic of trauma, repression and anamnesis that characterized the public memory about from the early

postwar years to the turning point represented by the Eichmainn Trial in 1961.

Readings:

Michale Bazyler, Holocaust, Genocide and the Law. A Quest for Justice in a Post-Holocaust World, Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2016, Ch. 3, “Prosecution of War Criminal at Nuremberg”, pp. 69-105.

Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, “Introduction: The Excommunication of Hannah Arendt”, pp. vii-xxii,

ch. 8, “The Duties of a Law-Abiding Citizen”, “Epilogue”, 135-150, 253-280.

Visual Documents:

Excerpts of the video recordings of the Nuremberg Trial and of the Eichamnn process (about 20’)

Optional readings:

Sonali Chakravarti, “More than “Cheap Sentimentality”: Victim Testimony at Nuremberg, the Eichmann Trial,

and Truth Commissions”, Constellations, 15,(2), 2008. pp. 223-235.

Week 13

Banalizing the Holocaust? Hollywood Cinema, Humor, and the Limits of Representation

This class will be devoted to a discussion of media representations of the Holocaust and will focus on two extremely

significant examples of cinematic “exploitation” of the genocide: Schindler’s List and Life is Beautiful.

Readings:

Omer Bartov, “Spielberg’s Oskar: Hollywood Tries Evil”, in Yosefa Loshitzky, Spielberg’s Holocaust,

Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997, pp. 41-61.

Casey Haskisn, “Art, Morality, and the Holocaust: the Aesthetic Riddle of Benigni’s Life is Beautiful”, The

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Autumn, 2001), pp. 373-384.

Films:

Steven Spielberg, Schindler’s List, 1993, 195’.

Robert Benigni, Life is Beautiful, 1997, 116’.

Optional readings:

Berel Lang, “The Representation of Limits”, in Saul Friedlander (ed.), Probing the Limits of Representation.

Nazism and the Final Solution, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992, pp. 300-317.

Week 14

Multidirectional Memory: Rethinking the Holocaust in a Global Age

Taking inspiration from Michael Rothberg’s concept of “multidirectional memory”, this class will analyze the impact of

Holocaust memory in relation to other examples of genocidal violence, exploring how the cultural memory of the Jewish

genocide has played a key role in shaping our awareness about other instances of ethnic and genocidal violence. The

class will offer the opportunity to briefly discuss the history of the Shanghai ghetto.

Readings:

Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory. Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Deolonization,

“Introduction”, ch. 1, “At the Limits of Eurocentrism: Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism”, pp. 1-65.

Ben Kiernan, “The Cambodian Genocide, 1975-1979”, in Samuel Tottent, Willima Parsons and Israel Charny

(eds,), Century of Genocide. Critical Essays and Eyewitnesses Accounts, London: Routledge, 2004, pp. 393-

375

Film: Rithy Panh, S-21, The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine, 2003, 101’. To be watched before class.

Optional Film: Terry George, Hotel Rwanda, 2004, 121’. To be watched before class.

Optional readings:

Marcia Reynders Ristaino, Port of Last Resort: The Diaspora Communities in Shanghai, Stanford: Stanford

University Press, 2001, ch. 4, “Nazi Victims Find Refuge”, pp. 98-123.

Deirdre Boyle, “Shattering Silence: Traumatic Memory and Reenactment in Rithy Panh’s S-21: The Khmer

Rouge Killing Machine”, Framework 50(1-2), Spring & Fall 2009, pp. 95–10.

Madelein Hron, “Genres of ‘yet another genocide’: Cinematic Representations of Rwanda”, in Kristi WIlson and

Tomas Crowder-Taraborrelli, Film and Genocide, Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2012, pp. 133-

153.

Week 15

Students Presentations

In this class, students will be given the opportunity to deliver a presentation (5-10 minutes) of a topic of their choice

relative to the themes and questions discussed in the topic. Presentations will be followed by a short Q+A can be linked

to the topic of the final research paper/project.

Week 16

Conclusions: The Holocaust and Crisis of Modernity

The course final discussion will center on the historical meaning of the Holocaust in relation to various interpretations of

modernity as such. Should the Holocaust be considered as a Zivilisationsbruch or, rather, as the product of a

bureaucratic and technological modernity? At the end of the class discussion students will be invited to present their

final paper proposals.

Readings:

Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and The Holocaust, London: Polity Press, 1989, selected paragraphs: “The

Holocaust as the test of modernity”, “The meaning of the civilizing process”, “The modernity of racism”, “The

uniqueness and normality of the Holocaust”, pp. 1-18, 56-61, 83-93.

18.

教材及其它参考资料 Textbook and Supplementary Readings

The course instructor will provide supplementary readings before each session of the lectures

课程评估 ASSESSMENT

19.

评估形式 Type of

Assessment

评估时间 Time

占考试总成绩百分比

% of final

score

违纪处罚

Penalty

备注

Notes

出勤 Attendance

10%

The course allows two or three

unexcused absences

课堂表现

Class

Performance

10%

Participation in class discussion

小测验

Quiz

课程项目 Projects

平时作业

Assignments

Week 15

10%

One final presentation (5-10

minutes) in which students can

present the topic of their final

research paper/project

期中考试

Mid-Term Test

Due on Week 7, 12

and 16

30%

Three short mid-term papers (500-

600 words) concerning topics

discussed in the three course units.

期末考试

Final Exam

40%

At the end of the course, students

are invited to write a research-based

argumentative essay or to develop a

research project in digital format (an

articulated video-essay or digital

project). You are free to approach

the materials covered during the

course from any disciplinary or

critical perspective. The paper

should be double-spaced with a

length of approximately fifteen pages

(3,000 words). Digital projects, to be

discussed with the instructor on a

case-by-case basis, should contain

a textual component of no-less than

2,500 words

期末报告

Final

Presentation

其它（可根据需要

改写以上评估方

式）

Others (The

above may be

modified as

necessary)

20.

记分方式 GRADING SYSTEM



A. 十三级等级制 Letter Grading



B. 二级记分制（通过/不通过） Pass/Fail Grading

课程审批 REVIEW AND APPROVAL

21.

本课程设置已经过以下责任人/委员会审议通过

This Course has been approved by the following person or committee of authority