The Holocaust was an effort by the Nazi government to exterminate the total Jewish population of Europe. It is a form of genocide but perhaps the most extreme form of genocide. There is a separate talk on that topic which you can listen to if you wish.
This talk will walk you through the Holocaust in eight steps. There is nothing in this talk that is meant to be argumentative. There are complex issues upon which serious scholars may disagree. There are also points upon which there is no disagreement. My goal is to outline those issues for you.
In teaching my class on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict I noticed an interesting pattern: most students, be they Jewish or Palestinian or something else, were able to handle this difficult material with an open mind. But people who were Holocaust-centric in their thinking about Jews, i.e., they saw Jews through the lens of the Holocaust, were sometimes resistant in a way that other students were not. I think this period of history is so traumatically horrible and beyond human comprehension that it is exceptionally stressful to hear someone such as me try to discuss it from an academic perspective, without expressing trauma. On the other hand, students have told me that an academic perspectives is very valuable in helping them think analytically. I hope it works that way for you.
If this topic interests you, you might want to listen to two other podcasts in this series. One is the podcast on genocide, which discusses the range of definitions and cases; the podcast on the Palestinian Refugees of 1948 discusses a different situation.
Are you looking for something to read? Ron Rosenbaum, Explaining Hitler, consists of interviews and profiles of the top Holocaust scholars and how differently they think about what happened and why. Rosenbaum also discusses some of the controversies and issues that are often unclear. (Example: Did Hitler have Jewish ancestry?); Lucy Dawidowicz’s book, The War Against the Jews, is a good single book I found it very helpful. Raul Hilberg’s book, The Destruction of the European Jews, is considered the best single book. It is a shortened version of his multi-volume definitive history; Hannah Arendt’s Eichman in Jerusalem is a classic report on the trial of a top Nazi leader. The excellent film Hannah Arendt shows the vilification directed at this astonishing woman for her report; and The Reader by Bernhard Schlink tells about a simple young woman who got caught up in the conflict without really understanding what the issues were. It was also made into a good film. It raises complex and disturbing issues.
This was a talk delivered to a class in the fall of 2020. I had provided students with a list of names and terms, and with a chronology and some data on the number of Jews who died in different countries. I try to summarize them for those listening.
Welcome to class
Some Terms and Names: Raphael Lemkin, Dr. Kastner; Transfer Agreement; Adolph Eichman; Kristallnacht of 1938; Madagascar Plan; Israel as a “gift” of the Holocaust; Biltmore Conference of 1943; Evian Conference of 1938; Munich Conference of 1938; Wansee Conference of 1941
The music, Stockspeaks, was written by G. Kevin Dewey.