Instruction
Approaches to Auschwitz
Choose one, two or three of the following and write a paper that is not less than three full pages and not more than four full pages in total. Be sure it is clear which question(s) you are addressing. You are to use class overheads and other sources on Blackboard, and the book Approaches to Auschwitz only; this is not a research paper. Support your paper by references to the overheads and book. When you do so, put the appropriate page number (or the title of the overhead) at the end of the sentence in parentheses. You do not need to provide any other information in your citations. Be certain to check the rules for papers in paragraph 5 on pages 3 and 4.
1. Was the boy in Son of Saul Saul’s son? If not, explain why Saul was so concerned about giving the boy a proper Jewish funeral?
2. Why didn’t the Jews of Germany see what was coming and leave Germany as soon as the Nazis’ legal restrictions were imposed?
3. Explain Christianity’s relationship with the Jews and argue for or against the premise that Christian anti-Judaism/semitism was a significant factor in the Holocaust.
4. If they knew that mass extermination of the Jews would be committed by the Nazis, would the German people have supported the Nazi Party: More than it did? The same as it did? Less that it did?
5. Why did Hitler decide to invade Russia in Operation Barbarossa even though history and his generals saw it as a possibly disastrous move?
6. What explains the decision by the majority of German university students to strongly support the Nazi Party and government?
7. Why did so many members of the German medical community participate in the Aktion T-4 “euthanasia” program?
8. Knowing full well that they were about to be shot, why didn’t the Jews, especially the males, fight when they were being herded to the pits?
9. Why do some people consider the Jews who worked in the Sonderkommando perpetrators and traitors against their own people? Should they be thought of as perpetrators or as victims?
10. Is there such a thing as “rational” antisemitism?
11. Why is it that Jews were associated with concepts of liberalism, modernity, secularism, and communism?
12. How is it that highly educated people participated easily in the killing?
13. Why the Jews? That is, how do you account for the hatred of the Jews that drove the Nazi perpetrators to kill?