JWST 240 Lecture 1: Holocaust-Notes

• School: McGill University
• Department: Jewish Studies
• Course: JWST 240
• Professor: Dan Heller

Document Summary

Course is about regular, average, everyday people being persecuted and for his family all the while participating in the murder of thousands of jews. A central component of the class is to make the nazi(cid:495)s human: need to learn about their lives before the war. Another is to humanize the victims: reverse the view that these ppl were born condemned to die. We know so much about what happened in wwii, but we know so little about how these ppl lived, their experiences before the holocaust unfolded. The holocaust defied any logic of human decency, which was what made it so terrifying for those who suffered. Jehovah(cid:495)s witnesses, among others: important to determine who falls under the scope of the. Lecture 1: jews, europe and modernity: jewish life in medieval europe, jews, nationalism and the nation-state. Spring of 1936 in the state of grodno, poland. Poland at the time is home to 3 million jews.