Nazi Perpetrators and their descendants: How do they remember the Holocaust and the Third Reich?
H&G1-5b-Wed1
Tamar Aizenberg
This course will take place virtually on Zoom. Participation in this course requires a device (ideally a computer or tablet, rather than a cell phone) with a camera and microphone in good working order and basic familiarity with using Zoom and accessing email
October 16 - November 13
During World War II, German and Austrian Holocaust perpetrators both within and outside of Germany were writing contemporaneous letters and diaries to explain and justify their actions. Since the late 1960s and especially since the 1990s, the children and grandchildren of perpetrators have grappled with their knowledge or lack thereof of their family members’ actions. By reading texts and watching documentaries created by perpetrators and their descendants, we will explore how the memory of the Holocaust and the Third Reich has been transmitted over the course of generations in Germany and Austria. We will identify patterns that run through the texts and documentaries, discuss how memories and narratives have been passed down, and consider how perpetrators’ actions continue to influence the lives of their children and grandchildren. Because the perpetrator generation is passing away, it is particularly important to understand how their descendants will choose to remember this history moving forward. In a broader sense, we will also use these materials to understand our responses to contemporary events and to the memory of other conflicts and atrocities.
More facilitated discussion than lecture.
I will provide scanned copies of all book excerpts in PDF form. Participants will have to pay $1-9 to rent each documentary to watch. One documentary is accessible via Amazon without a Prime subscription and the other can be purchased through Vimeo without a subscription.
Approx. 2 hours per week.
Tamar Aizenberg is a PhD candidate at Brandeis in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies. She received her BA in History and Jewish Studies from Williams College and her MA in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis. Her research focuses on the grandchildren of Holocaust survivors and the grandchildren of Holocaust perpetrators. She has taught in Austria through the Fulbright program and has been a teaching assistant and peer research mentor at Brandeis. She also taught a course at BOLLI in Fall 2023 and Spring 2024 on American Jewish Holocaust literature.