Module overview
This module will explore contemporary and post-war responses to the Holocaust more than 75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz. We will explore a range of responses to the genocide and look at: diaries, oral histories, literature, film, museums and music. During the module, we will explore the responses of those targeted for genocide and the post-war memory of these events among survivors, in intellectual circles and the political world.
During the first half of the module, we will explore victims' responses. We will focus on victims' experiences of everyday life, including life in ghettos and camps and look at cultural and religious life, efforts to document what they were witnessing, and resistance. In the second half of the module, we will look at some external responses to the genocide, beginning with the Allied responses during the war and later looking at museums and memorials in Europe, Israel, and the United States. We will engage with topics such as the resistance of victim groups, questioning if the Allied government did enough to help, how we commemorate and memorialise a genocide and how this commemoration changes in different countries.