HST2000 Intro to the Holocaust & Modern Genocide

The 20th century earned the tragic moniker as a “century of Genocide.” One of the most well-known tragedies was the Holocaust, the state sponsored murder of six million Jews and millions of other people deemed “undesirable” by Nazi Germany. This course will examine the causes, course, and consequence of the Nazi “Final Solution.” It will discuss the importance of traditional hostility against Europe’s Jewish population, the rise of the Nazi party during the Great Depression, the creation of the death camps, and the liberation of Holocaust survivors. It will also discuss the widespread complicity of German and European society in the murder of millions of people. Beyond an isolated occurrence, this course will explore other cases of mass atrocity to better understand the processes and conditions that bring about genocides like the Holocaust. Other examples will include the Soviet Union, Cambodia, Rwanda, and the former Yugoslavia. This historically based course will examine these atrocities through a multidisciplinary lens, incorporating ideas and research from history, sociology, psychology, and political science.

Prerequisite

None