Instructions provided from professor.
According to historian Peter Hayes:
“We reflexively call the Holocaust unfathomable or unbelievable as a way of distancing ourselves from it and expressing our disgust. Nonetheless, the Shoah is comprehensible in the same way that any other catastrophic human or life experience is: with difficulty, patience, and application to the task.
To say that the subject is incomprehensible is to despair, to give up, to admit to being too lazy to make the long effort, and, worst of all, to duck the challenge to our most cherished illusions about ourselves and each other that looking into the abyss of this subject entails. And the alternative to trying to understand how and why the Holocaust happened is to capitulate to a belief in fate, divine purpose, or sheer randomness in human events.” [1]
Do you agree or disagree with Hayes? Is the Holocaust incomprehensible? Why? Why not? If so, what are the implications for the further study of it in relation to other instances of genocide and mass death? If, on the other hand, the Holocaust is understandable as an historical event is it comparable to similar events like the Armenian, Cambodian or Rwandan Genocides?
A passing essay will incorporate ideas and quotations from our assigned readings and material posted on Canvas, especially Hayes’s book and Yehuda Bauer’s essay “Is the Holocaust Explicable?” (2001) Download “Is the Holocaust Explicable?” (2001). This material must be cited using the Chicago Manual of Style and included in a properly formatted bibliography. For more info on this, consult the Style Guide.
NOTE: There is no rubric for this exam. Nor is there recommended word count; write until you feel you’ve sufficiently answered the question. There’s no right or wrong answer. Think broadly and critically and provide analysis in your essay.
Your completed essay is due by Thursday April, 24. NO EXAMS WILL BE ACCEPTED AFTER THE DUE DATE.
If you have questions about the material, please feel free to contact me. Sorry, since this an exam, I cannot read drafts.
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[1] Peter Hayes, Why?: Explaining the Holocaust. Kindle edition (New York: W.W. Norton, 2017), p. 326, Location 4733.
Article links:
https://psu.pb.unizin.org/holocaust3rs/chapter/5-2-survivor-accounts-witness-the-first-person/
