Studying the Holocaust

Ronnie S. Landau is Director of the British Holocaust Education Project and Member of Faculty at Leo Baeck College, London, where he lectures in modern Jewish history. Former Head of Humanities at the City Literary Institute, he is author of The Nazi Holocaust (1992).

Introduction: The Holocaust as educational theme, The continuing relevance of the Holocaust, The Holocaust as ‘human’ event, The unique and the universal, The central role of questions, Educational conception and approach PART I Readings and exercises 1 The Holocaust—The futility of definition? 2 Obedience to authority 3 Jewish powerlessness and choicelessness 4 The moral responsibility of ‘ordinary’ Germans, The case against Hans Brenner, The case against Dr Ernst Schmid 5 Six million accusers 6 Euphemisms of death: Interpreting a primary source document on the Holocaust 7 Yossel Rakover’s appeal to God (an excerpt) 8 The power of indifference PART II Selected key documents 1 ‘The Racists’ Ten Commandments’ 2 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion 3 The Balfour Declaration 4 Adolf Hitler: A letter on the Jewish Question 5 The 25-point programme of the National-Socialist German Workers’ Party 6 The Nuremberg Laws 7 An eyewitness response to Kristallnacht 8 German Foreign Ministry memorandum on ‘The Jewish Question’ 9 Hitler threatens Jews with annihilation 10 Reinhard Heydrich’s Order 11 The Warsaw Ghetto: The Jewish response 12 The Wannsee Conference 13 The Einsatzgruppen death squads: An eyewitness account 14 Appeal to the outside world 15 Inside the mind of a perpetrator A letter from the Russian ‘Front’ The diary of SS Dr Johann Paul Kremer Heinrich Himmler, Head of the SS Rudolf Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz 16 The victims: Defiant responses 17 Spiritual resistance 18 The psychology of the victim 19 Jewish disbelief at reports of mass annihilation PART III Genocide in the modern era 1 Tasmanian aborigines, 1803–36 2 Armenians, 1915–16 3 Kulaks, 1929–33 4 Roma (Gypsies), 1941–45 5 Bengalis, 1971 6 Hutu of Burundi, 1972 7 Ache Indians, 1968–72 8 Cambodians, 1975–79 9 East Timor islanders, 1975–present Genocide by another name? PART IV Questions, themes and reading lists 1 Historical background and context 2 The Holocaust: A history 3 Themes, issues and protagonists PART V History of the Holocaust: A chronological outline (1933–45) PART VI Reference sections