Tatjana Lichtenstein

Please note: “Introduction to the Holocaust” is an upper-division history course with a substantial reading and writing component.

This course on the Holocaust examines the mass killing of Jews and other victims in the context of Nazi Germany’s quest for race and space during World War II.  Using sources that illuminate victim experiences, perpetrator perspectives, and bystander responses, we investigate the Nazi racial state, the experiments in mass killing, the establishment of a systematic genocidal program, collaboration and complicity, resistance and rescue, as well as the memory of the Holocaust in western culture.

Doris Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust (2nd edition)

Marion Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany

Lianna Millu, Smoke over Birkenau

Gitta Sereny, Into that Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

Attendance and Participation: 20%

Tests incl. final exam: 35%

Essays: 45%

One historian has described Poland during the Second World War as “the devil’s playground.” During the war, 1 in 5 Pole died, hundreds of thousands were displaced, entire cities, regions, and communities destroyed. The Germans murdered almost all of Poland’s Jews and made the country the staging ground for the Holocaust. This course examines the occupation of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union and the ways in which this dual occupation impacted people and their communities. We will explore topics such as the social and racial experiments undertaken by German and Soviet authorities; mass displacement and interethnic relations; collaboration and resistance; genocide and ethnic cleansing, as well as the ways in which the memory of the Second World War in Poland has evolved.

Texts (subject to change):
•    Wesley Adamczyk, When God Looked the Other Way: An Odyssey of War, Exile, and Redemption (The University of Chicago Press, 2004)
•    Jerzy Andrzejewski, Holy Week: A Novel of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1945)
•    The Diary of Mary Berg: Growing Up in the Warsaw Ghetto (originally published 1945)
•    Jan T. Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community of Jedwabne, Poland (Penguin, 2000).
•    Jan Karski, Story of a Secret State: My Report to the World (Georgetown University Press, reprint edition, 2013)
•    Halik Kochanski, The Eagle Unbowed: Poland and the Poles in the Second World War (Harvard University Press, 2012)
•    Course reader

Attendance and Participation                30%
Book Essay I                         15%
Book Essay II                        15%
Group Project (Presentation)                40%

Please note: “Introduction to the Holocaust” is an upper-division history course with a substantial reading and writing component.

This course on the Holocaust examines the mass killing of Jews and other victims in the context of Nazi Germany’s quest for race and space during World War II.  Using sources that illuminate victim experiences, perpetrator perspectives, and bystander responses, we investigate the Nazi racial state, the experiments in mass killing, the establishment of a systematic genocidal program, collaboration and complicity, resistance and rescue, as well as the memory of the Holocaust in western culture.

Doris Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust (2nd edition)

Marion Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany

Lianna Millu, Smoke over Birkenau

Gitta Sereny, Into that Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

Attendance and Participation: 20%

Tests incl. final exam: 35%

Essays: 45%

One historian has described Poland during the Second World War as “the devil’s playground.” During the war, 1 in 5 Pole died, hundreds of thousands were displaced, entire cities, regions, and communities destroyed. The Germans murdered almost all of Poland’s Jews and made the country the staging ground for the Holocaust. This course examines the occupation of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union and the ways in which this dual occupation impacted people and their communities. We will explore topics such as the social and racial experiments undertaken by German and Soviet authorities; mass displacement and interethnic relations; collaboration and resistance; genocide and ethnic cleansing, as well as the ways in which the memory of the Second World War in Poland has evolved.

Texts:

•           Wesley Adamczyk, When God Looked the Other Way: An Odyssey of War, Exile, and Redemption (The University of Chicago Press, 2004)

•           Jerzy Andrzejewski, Holy Week: A Novel of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1945)

•           The Diary of Mary Berg: Growing Up in the Warsaw Ghetto (originally published 1945)

•           Jan T. Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community of Jedwabne, Poland (Penguin, 2000).

•           Jan Karski, Story of a Secret State: My Report to the World (Georgetown University Press, reprint edition, 2013)

•           Halik Kochanski, The Eagle Unbowed: Poland and the Poles in the Second World War (Harvard University Press, 2012)

•           Course reader

Grading:

Attendance and Participation                                            30%

Book Essay I                                                                         15%

Book Essay II                                                                        15%

Group Project (Presentation)                                            40%

Bloodlands: Total War in Eastern Europe, 1914-1945

Does war breed war? In this course, we examine the connections between the two most destructive events of modern history, the First and the Second World Wars. Our focus is on Eastern Europe, the lands between Germany and Russia, where utopian racial and social ideologies, new forms of warfare, and the struggle for political domination, played out on the lands and the people that inhabited them with devastating effects.

*Please note: This is not a course in military history; its focus is war and occupation

Texts

Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, War Lands on the Eastern Front: Culture, National Identity, and German Occupation in WWI

Joseph Roth, The Spider’s Web

Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

Wendy Lower, Hitler’s Furries: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields

Catherine Merridale, Ivan’s War: Life and Death in the Red Army 1939-1945

Thomas Blatt, From the Ashes of Sobibor

Course Reader

Grading

Attendance and Participation 20%

Essay I 15%

Essay II 20%

Midterm 20%

Final Exam 25%

Please note: “Introduction to the Holocaust” is an upper-division history course with an intensive reading and writing component.

This course on the Holocaust examines the mass killing of Jews and other victims in the context of Nazi Germany’s quest for race and space during World War II.  Using sources that illuminate victim experiences, perpetrator perspectives, and bystander responses, we investigate the Nazi racial state, the experiments in mass killing, the establishment of a systematic genocidal program, collaboration and complicity, resistance and rescue, as well as the memory of the Holocaust in western culture. 

Texts:

Doris Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust (3rd edition)

Thomas Blatt, From the Ashes of Sobibor: A Story of Survival

Marion Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany

Lianna Millu, Smoke over Birkenau

Gitta Sereny, Into that Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

Grading:

Attendance and Participation: 20%

Tests incl. final exam: 35%

Essays: 45%

One historian has described Poland during the Second World War as “the devil’s playground.” During the war, 1 in 5 Pole died, hundreds of thousands were displaced, entire cities, regions, and communities destroyed. The Germans murdered almost all of Poland’s Jews and made the country the staging ground for the Holocaust. This course examines the occupation of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union and the ways in which this dual occupation impacted people and their communities. We will explore topics such as the social and racial experiments undertaken by German and Soviet authorities; mass displacement and interethnic relations; collaboration and resistance; genocide and ethnic cleansing, as well as the ways in which the memory of the Second World War in Poland has evolved.

Texts:

• Wesley Adamczyk, When God Looked the Other Way: An Odyssey of War, Exile, and Redemption (The University of Chicago Press, 2004)
• Jerzy Andrzejewski, Holy Week: A Novel of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1945)
• The Diary of Mary Berg: Growing Up in the Warsaw Ghetto (originally published 1945)
• Jan T. Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community of Jedwabne, Poland (Penguin, 2000).
• Jan Karski, Story of a Secret State: My Report to the World (Georgetown University Press, reprint edition, 2013)
• Halik Kochanski, The Eagle Unbowed: Poland and the Poles in the Second World War (Harvard University Press, 2012)
• Course reader

Grading:

Attendance and Participation                                     30%

Book Essay I                                                                       15%

Book Essay II                                                                     15%

Group Project (Presentation)                                      40%

Life in Extremis: Ghettos in Nazi-Occupied Europe

Even before Nazi Germany embarked on its genocide against European Jews in the summer and fall of 1941, the ghettos in Nazi-occupied Poland had become sites of mass death.  Between 1939 and 1941, more than 500,000 Jews perished in the ghettos.   These sealed-off residential districts were abnormal societies with extreme social differences and unprecedented deprivations as well as the sites of self-help, resistance, and documentation of the German war against the Jews.  In this course, we will examine life and death in several ghettos in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe.   Using scholarly works as well as substantial collections of primary sources, we will study topics such as the ghetto society, the position of Jewish Councils, the significance of forced labor, as well as forms of resistance, self-help, and rescue.  In the course of the semester, students will work on an independent research project that will culminate in a product and a class presentation.

Texts (subject to change):

G. Hortwitz, Ghettostadt: Lodz and the Making of a German City

B. Engelking, The Warsaw Ghetto: Guide to a Perished City

A. Tory, Surviving the Holocaust: The Kovno Ghetto Diary

E. Ringelblum, Notes from the Underground Archive

A. Schwajger, I Remember Nothing More

Background Readings (prerequisite):

Doris Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust

Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands (select chapters)

Grading:

Participation                      40%

Research Project              30%

Short Essays                       30%

FLAGS:   GC  |  EL

Please note: “Introduction to the Holocaust” is an upper-division history course with an intensive reading and writing component.

Description:

This course on the Holocaust examines the mass killing of Jews and other victims in the context of Nazi Germany’s quest for race and space during World War II.  Using sources that illuminate victim experiences, perpetrator perspectives, and bystander responses, we investigate the Nazi racial state, the experiments in mass killing, the establishment of a systematic genocidal program, collaboration and complicity, resistance and rescue, as well as the memory of the Holocaust in western culture.

Texts:

Doris Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust (2nd edition)

Thomas Blatt, From the Ashes of Sobibor: A Story of Survival

Marion Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany

Lianna Millu, Smoke over Birkenau

Gitta Sereny, Into that Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

Grading:

Attendance and Participation: 20%

Tests incl. final exam: 35%

Essays: 45%

FLAGS:   GC

Description:

This course explores the history and culture of Jews in Eastern Europe.  Focusing on the Jewish societies in the Russian and Austrian Empires, the course seeks to map the Jewish experience from the late 1700s until the first decades of twentieth century through topics such as secularization, urbanization, migration, antisemitism, political movements, and war.  We study the destruction of the Jewish societies in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust as well as Jewish memory and renewal in Eastern Europe since the end of Communism. 

Texts:

Readings (subject to change):

·    Zvi Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001).

·    Henryk Grynberg, The Jewish War and The Victory (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2001).

·    Israel J. Singer, The Brothers Ashkenazi (Orig. 1936, New York: Other Press, 2010).

Grading:

Attendance and Participation                  20%

Midterm                                                      20%

Essay                                                           25%

Final Exam                                                  35 %

Please note: “Introduction to the Holocaust” is an upper-division history course.

This course on the Holocaust examines the mass killing of Jews and other victims in the context of Nazi Germany’s quest for race and space during World War II.  Using sources that illuminate victim experiences, perpetrator perspectives, and bystander responses, we investigate the Nazi racial state, the experiments in mass killing, the establishment of a systematic genocidal program, collaboration and complicity, resistance and rescue, as well as the memory of the Holocaust in western culture.

Texts:

Doris Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust (2nd edition)

Marion Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany

Gitta Sereny, Into that Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

Grading:

Attendance and Participation: 25%

Tests incl. final exam: 35%

Essays: 40%

In Eastern Europe, the Second World War was, as the Czech Jewish woman Heda Margolius-Kovaly remarked, “a war no one had quite survived.”  Wedged between Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Empire, Eastern Europe was the site of unprecedented human and material destruction in the years between 1938 and 1948.  As the staging ground for Hitler’s vision for a new racial order in Europe, the region was devastated by genocide and ethnic cleansing, programs of economic and social exploitation, and warfare.  Using a wide variety of sources, this course will examine the war in Eastern Europe with a particular emphasis on occupation, collaboration, and resistance; the Holocaust; and the connection between ethnic cleansing, population transfer, and the establishment of Communism in postwar Eastern Europe.  Please note: this is not a course in military history

Texts:

Alan Adelson, ed., The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the ?ód? Ghetto (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996)

Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: Harper Perennial, 1998)

Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (New York: Basic Books, 2010)

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)

Readings marked with * can be found in the course packet available at Paradigm Books, 407 W. 24th St. Austin, TX 78705

All readings and other course materials are required

Grading:

Participation                                                               25%

Map Quiz                                                                     5%                

Document Analysis (3 pages)                                       10%    

Essay 1 Diary (3 pages)                                               10%    

Essay 2 Ordinary Men (4 pages)                                    15%    

Essay 3 Terrible Revenge (4 pages)                                15%    

Article Project (4 pages)                                                20%

Please note: “Introduction to the Holocaust” is an upper-division history course with an intensive reading and writing component.

This course on the Holocaust examines the mass killing of Jews and other victims in the context of Nazi Germany’s quest for race and space during World War II.  Using sources that illuminate victim experiences, perpetrator perspectives, and bystander responses, we investigate the Nazi racial state, the experiments in mass killing, the establishment of a systematic genocidal program, collaboration and complicity, resistance and rescue, as well as the memory of the Holocaust in western culture.

Texts:

Doris Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust (2nd edition)

Thomas Blatt, From the Ashes of Sobibor: A Story of Survival

Jan T. Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland

Marion Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany

Lianna Millu, Smoke over Birkenau

J. Noakes & G. Pridham, Nazism 1919-1945: A Documentary Reader vol. 3

Gitta Sereny, Into that Darkness: An Examination of Conscience

Grading:

Attendance and Participation: 20%

Tests incl. final exam: 35%

Essays: 45%

In Eastern Europe, the Second World War was, as the Czech Jewish woman Heda Margolius-Kovaly remarked, “a war no one had quite survived.”  Wedged between Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Empire, Eastern Europe was the site of unprecedented human and material destruction in the years between 1938 and 1948.  As the staging ground for Hitler’s vision for a new racial order in Europe, the region was devastated by genocide and ethnic cleansing, programs of economic and social exploitation, and warfare.  Using a wide variety of sources, this course will examine the war in Eastern Europe with a particular emphasis on occupation, collaboration, and resistance; the Holocaust; and the connection between ethnic cleansing, population transfer, and the establishment of Communism in postwar Eastern Europe.     

Texts

• Alan Adelson, ed., The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the ?ód? Ghetto (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996)
• Lee Baker, The Second World War on the Eastern Front (New York: Pearson Longman, 2009)
• Tadeusz Borowski, This Way for the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen (New York: Penguin Classics, 1976)
• Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: Harper Perennial, 1998)
• Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)
• Optional:Karel C. Berhoff, Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004)
• Electronic Readings:  Material marked with * are available on-line through the course website (under Course Documents).

Grading

• 25%: Participation (incl. final 3 page reflection essay)
• 5%: Map Quiz      
• 5%: Weekly Questions and In-Class Writing
• 10% Document Analysis (2-3 pages)
• 15%: Essay 1 (3-4 peer reviewed/rewriting)
• 20%: Essay 2 (6-7 pages peer reviewed/rewriting)    
• 20%: Essay 3 (6-7 pages)

This course explores the history and culture of Jews in Eastern Europe.  Focusing on the Jewish societies in the Russian and Austrian Empires, the course seeks to map the Jewish experience from the late 1700s until the first decades of twentieth century through topics such as secularization, urbanization, migration, antisemitism, political movements, and war.  We study the destruction of the Jewish societies in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust as well as Jewish memory and renewal in Eastern Europe since the end of Communism.

Course Goals

• Examine the cultures of Jews in Eastern Europe as well as the historical forces that transformed these societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
• Explore a variety of primary source materials and discuss their use as historical evidence
• Write analytical, thesis-driven essays based on close reading of the course materials

Required Course Books

• Zvi Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001).
• Henryk Grynberg, The Jewish War and The Victory (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2001).
• Eva Hoffman, Shtetl: The Life and Death of a Small Town and the World of Polish Jews (New York: Public Affairs, 2007).
• Israel J. Singer, The Brothers Ashkenazi (Orig. 1936, New York: Other Press, 2010).
• Electronic Readings: The YIVO Encyclopedia of the Jews of Eastern Europe.  The YIVO Encyclopediacan be accessed using this link: http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/

Assignments and Grading

• 10%: Attendance and Participation
• 10%: Article Response
• 20%: Midterm
• 25%: Essay
• 35%: Take-Home Final Exam

One historian has described Poland during the Second World War as “the devil’s playground.”  During the war, 1 in 5 Pole died, hundreds of thousands were displaced, entire cities, regions, and communities destroyed.  The Germans murdered almost all of Poland’s Jews and made the country the staging ground for the Holocaust.  This course examines the occupation of Poland by Germany and the Soviet Union and the ways in which this dual occupation impacted people and their communities.  We will explore topics such as the social and racial experiments undertaken by German and Soviet authorities; mass displacement and interethnic relations; collaboration and resistance; genocide and ethnic cleansing, as well as the ways in which the memory of the Second World War in Poland has evolved.

Texts:

Janusz Bardach, Man is Wolf to Man.

Jan T. Gross, Neighbors.

The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the Lodz Ghetto.

Tadeuz Borowski, This way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen.

Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands (excerpts)

Grading:

Attendance and Participation            20%

Book Essay I                        15%

Document analysis I                    10%

Book Essay II                        20%

Document analysis II                    15%

Book Essay III                    20%

This course on the Holocaust examines the mass killing of Jews and other victims in the context of Nazi Germany’s quest for race and space during World War II.  Using sources that illuminate victim experiences, perpetrator perspectives, and bystander responses, we investigate the Nazi racial state, the experiments in mass killing, the establishment of a systematic genocidal program, collaboration and complicity, resistance and rescue, as well as the memory of the Holocaust in western culture. 

Course Materials

Doris L. Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2nd edition, 2009)

Steve Hochstadt, ed., Sources of the Holocaust (New York: Palgrave MacMillan 2004)

Marion A. Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998)

Liana Millu, Smoke over Birkenau (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1986)

Gitta Sereny, Into that Darkness: An Examination of Conscience (New York: Vintage Books, 1983)

Grades

Attendance and Participation                                     15%

In-class test I incl. map quiz                                       10%

In-class test II                                                             10%

Essay I Kaplan                                                           10%

Essay II Millu                                                             15%

Essay III Sereny                                                        20%    

Final Exam                                                                  20%

Introduction to the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe through each of the major disciplines represented in the program: language, literature, anthropology, geography, history, government, sociology, and economics. Core course required for a degree in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies. Meets with SLA 301 and GRG 309. May not be used to fulfill the foreign language requirement for any Bachelor’s degree. Course number may be repeated for credit when the topics vary.

Texts:

1.Slavenka Drakulic, 2005, They Would Never Hurt a Fly, Penguin

2. Heda Kovaly, 1997, Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941-1968. New York: Holmesand Meier

3. Bella Bychkova Jordan and Terry G Jordan-Bychkov, 2001, Siberian Village: Land and Life in the Sakha Republic, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

4. Lydia Chukovskaya, Sofia Petrovna, Northwestern University Press, 1988

5.Additional readings might be recommended for individual lectures.

Grading:

Attendance and participation 40%

Essays 50%

Short Assignments and Event Attendance 10%

This course explores the history and culture of Jews in Eastern Europe. Focusing on the Jewish societies in the Russian and Austrian Empires, the course seeks to map the Jewish experience from the late 1700s until the first decades of twentieth century through topics such as secularization, urbanization, migration, antisemitism, political movements, and war. We study the destruction of the Jewish societies in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust as well as Jewish memory and renewal in Eastern Europe since the end of Communism. 

Course Goals

• Examine the cultures of Jews in Eastern Europe as well as the historical forces that transformed these societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
• Explore a variety of primary source materials and discuss their use as historical evidence.
• Write analytical, thesis-driven essays based on close reading of the course materials.

Required Course Books

• Zvi Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001).
• Henryk Grynberg, The Jewish War and The Victory (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2001).
• Israel J. Singer, The Brothers Ashkenazi (Orig. 1936, New York: Other Press, 2010).
• Course Reader

Electronic Readings

*The YIVO Encyclopedia of the Jews of Eastern Europe.  The YIVO Encyclopedia can be accessed using this link: http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/

Assignments and Grading

• Attendance and Participation 25%
• Midterm 20%
• Essays 30%
• Take-Home Final Exam 25%

**All readings and other course materials are required.**

Course Description

This course on the Holocaust examines the mass killing of Jews and other victims in the context of Nazi Germany’s quest for race and space during World War II.  Using sources that illuminate victim experiences, perpetrator perspectives, and bystander responses, we investigate the Nazi racial state, the experiments in mass killing, the establishment of a systematic genocidal program, collaboration and complicity, resistance and rescue, as well as the memory of the Holocaust in western culture.

Course Books

Gitta Sereny, Into that Darkness

Steve Hochstadt, Sources of the Holocaust

Doris Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust

Grades

Attendance and Participation             20%

Midterm                                          20%

Essay                                              30%

Final Exam                                       30%

This course on the Holocaust examines the mass killing of Jews and other victims in the context of Nazi Germany’s quest for race and space during World War II.  Using sources that illuminate victim experiences, perpetrator perspectives, and bystander responses, we investigate the Nazi racial state, the experiments in mass killing, the establishment of a systematic genocidal program, collaboration and complicity, resistance and rescue, as well as the memory of the Holocaust in western culture.  

Texts

Marion Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair

Gitta Sereny, Into that Darkness

Lianna Millu, Smoke over Birkenau

Steve Hochstadt, Sources of the Holocaust

Doris Bergen, War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust

+ Course Packet

Grading

Attendance 15%

In-class Test I 10%

In-class Test II 15%

Essay 25%

Final Exam 35%

Please see the History Dept (home department) for the course description.

HIS 350L

In Eastern Europe, the Second World War was, as the Czech Jewish woman Heda Margolius-Kovaly remarked, “a war no one had quite survived.”  Wedged between Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Empire, Eastern Europe was the site of unprecedented human and material destruction in the years between 1938 and 1948.  As the staging ground for Hitler’s vision for a new racial order in Europe, the region was devastated by genocide and ethnic cleansing, programs of economic and social exploitation, and warfare.  Using a wide variety of sources, this course will examine the war in Eastern Europe with a particular emphasis on occupation, collaboration, and resistance; the Holocaust; and the connection between ethnic cleansing, population transfer, and the establishment of Communism in postwar Eastern Europe.     

Texts

Alan Adelson, ed., The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the ?ód? Ghetto (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996)

Lee Baker, The Second World War on the Eastern Front (New York: Pearson Longman, 2009)

Tadeusz Borowski, This Way for the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen (New York: Penguin Classics, 1976)

Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: Harper Perennial, 1998)

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)

Optional:Karel C. Berhoff, Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004)

Electronic Readings:  Material marked with * are available on-line through the course website (under Course Documents).

Grading

Participation (incl. final 3 page reflection essay)                    25%

Map Quiz                                                                       5%                 

Weekly Questions and In-Class Writing                                 5%

Document Analysis (2-3 pages)                                         10%             

Essay 1 (3-4 peer reviewed/rewriting)                                 15%          

Essay 2 (6-7 pages peer reviewed/rewriting)                         20%             

Essay 3 (6-7 pages)                                                        20%            

This course on the Holocaust examines the mass killing of Jews and other victims in the context of Nazi Germany’s quest for race and space during World War II.  Using sources that illuminate victim experiences, perpetrator perspectives, and bystander responses, we investigate the Nazi racial state, the experiments in mass killing, the establishment of a systematic genocidal program, collaboration and complicity, resistance and rescue, as well as the memory of the Holocaust in western culture.  

Books

Marion Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair

Gitta Sereny, Into that Darkness

Art Spiegelman, Maus I & II

Noakes & Pridham, Nazism: A Documentary Reader, vol. 3.

Saul Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933-1945

Grading

Attendance 10%

Map Quiz   5%

Midterm 15%

Essay 1 20%

Essay 2 20%

Final Exam 30%

HIS 350L                        Nations and Nationalism in Eastern Europe                        Fall 2010

EUS346/REE335/JS364

Dr Tatjana Lichtenstein

Office: GAR 0.110

Office Hours: Th 2:15 - 4:15 pm

Contact: tatjana.lichtenstein@mail.utexas.edu

Class Meets: W 3:00 – 6:00 pm in GAR 0.132

Course Description

To many, Eastern Europe seems to be a region in perpetual flux – there countries emerge and disappear, borders are defined only to be redrawn, and national identities appear deep rooted yet volatile and unstable.  The complex and changing map of Eastern Europe reflects not only the influence of neighbors competing to dominate the region, but also the powerful role of nationalism in shaping East European societies.  In this course, we consider the complex problem of nationalism and national identities in Eastern Europe.  While nations are often presented as “ancient,” they are in fact quite new.  We will examine how people’s identities and the societies in which they lived came to be constructed as national ones beginning in the mid 1800s.  We will study both how political movements engineered the nationalization of the multicultural societies in Eastern Europe and how this process was continued with much more devastating effects by the self-proclaimed nation states that emerged out of the linguistically and culturally diverse empires in the region, a process that only ended with the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Course Goals

• Examine the emergence of nationalism and the ways in which it transformed Eastern Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
• Explore a variety of scholarly approaches to the study of nationalism
• Write analytical, thesis-driven papers based on close reading of the course materials 

Grading Policy

Participation                                                                         30%

5 x Discussion Questions                                                    5%

Essay 1 Anderson (Sep 8)                                                10%

Essay 2 Livezeanu (Oct 13)                                                 20%

Essay 3 Snyder (Nov 10)                                                25%

Essay 4 Reflection (Dec 8)                                                10%

Texts

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso Books, rev. edition 1991/2006)

Irinia Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000)

Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus,1569-1999 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003)

All readings are required.

Note on Attendance and Participation

Attendance and participation is mandatory for this course.  This means that you are expected to have done all the readings before you arrive in class each Wednesday.  Every class centers on your and your colleagues’ discussion of the readings and the questions they raise.  Your grade – and the success of this class as a whole – thus depends on your commitment to attendance and participation. 

Schedule of Classes

Week 1                                    Introduction

August 25                                    The Road Ahead

Week 2                                    The Modern State & The Idea of Eastern Europe 

September 1            *James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 1-83. 

                                                *Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 1-16.

Week 3                                    Imagined Communities

September 8             Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1991 or later (revised edition)), all.

*Essay 1 due in class (for details on this and other assignments, see instructions page 8-13)

Week 4                                    The Austro-Hungarian Empire and More Approaches

September 15            *John C. Swanson, “The Body of the Empire,” in The Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy, 1867-1918, ed. Kate Parker & Julia Shone (London: New Holland Publisher, 2008), 37-100 (please note: this reading is divided into two separate files on BB).

*Paul Hanebrink, “Sickness of the Empire,” in The Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy, 1867-1918, 176-207.

*Eric Hosbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions,” in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1-14.

*Joanne Nagel, “Masculinity and Nationalism – Gender and Sexuality in the Making of Nations,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 21, no. 2 (1998): 242-269.

*Primary Sources (short):

a) Johann G. von Herder, “Materials for the Philosophy of the History of Mankind,” (1784)

b) Josef Jungmann, “Second Conversation Concerning the Czech Language,” (1806)

c) Daniel Berzsenyi, “To the Hungarians,” (1813)

d) Max Schneckenburger, “The Watch on the Rhine,” (1870)

e) Ernst Renan, “What is a Nation,” (1882) in Nationalism: A Reader, ed. John Hutchinson and Anthony D. Smith (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 17-18.

See also link on nationalism and music in Modern History Sourcebook: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/NATMUSIC.html

Week 5                                    Eastern Europe and the Study of Nationalism

September 22            *Jeremy King, “The Nationalization of East Central Europe: Ethnicism, Ethnicity, and Beyond,” in Staging the Past: The Politics of Commemoration in Habsburg Central Europe, 1848 to the Present, ed. Maria Bucur and Nancy Wingfield (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2001), 112-142.

*Tara Zahra, “Imagined Noncommunities: National Indifference as a Category of Analysis,” Slavic Review 69, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 93-119.

*Pieter M. Judson, Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontier of Imperial Austria (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 19-65.

Week 6                                    National Mobilization in the Habsburg Empire

September 29            *Jeremy King, Budweisers Into Czechs and Germans: A Local History of Bohemian Politics, 1848-1948 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 1-79.

*Keely Stauter-Halsted, “Rural Myth and the Modern Nation: Peasant Commemorations of Polish National Holidays, 1879-1910,” in Staging the Past, 153-177.

Primary Source:

                                                *“Letter Sent By František Palacký to Frankfurt,” (April, 1848)

Week 7                                     The First World War in Eastern Europe

October 6             *Lonnie R. Johnson, Central Europe: Enemies, Neighbors, Friends (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 171-196.

*George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 3-11, 53-106, 126-156.

*Paul Hanebrink, “Transnational Culture War: Christianity, Nation, and the Judeo-Bolshevik Myth in Hungary, 1890-1920,” Journal of Modern History 80 (March 2008): 55-80.

In-Class Film Excerpt: “Racial War on the Eastern Front” (WWI)

Week 8                                    Nationalizing States: Romania After WWI

October 13            Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), all.

*Essay 2 due for peer (see details on submission in instructions)

Week 9                                    Race and Nation

October 20            *Eric D. Weitz, “Race and Nation: An Intellectual History,” in A Century of Genocide (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 16-52.

*Marius Turda, “The Nation as Object: Race, Blood, and Biopolitics in Interwar Romania,” Slavic Review 66, no. 3 (Fall 2007): 413-441.

Claudia Koonz, “More Masculine Men, More Feminine Women: The Iconography of Nazi Racial Hatreds,” in Landscaping the Human Garden: Twentieth-Century Population Management in a Comparative Framework, eds. Amir Weiner (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 102-134.

In-Class Film Excerpt: “Nazi Medicine”

*In-class peer review

Week 10                                    Creating Outsiders: Jews in Eastern Europe

October 27            *Joanna B. Michlic, “The Jews and the Formation of Modern National Identity in Poland,” in Nationalism and Ethnosymbolism: History, Culture, and Ethnicity in the Formations of Nations, ed. Athena S Leoussi and Steven Grosby (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007), 129-142.           

*Yael Zerubavel, Recovered Roots: Collective Memory and the Making of Israeli National Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 3-36.

*Joshua Shanes, “National Regeneration in the Ghetto: The Jewish Turnbewegung in Galicia,” Jews, Sports, and the Rites of Citizenship, ed. Jack Kugelmass (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 75-94.

*Documents from The Jew in the Modern World, ed. Jehuda Reinharz and Paul Mendes-Flohr (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

                                                In-Class Film Excerpt: “Land of Promise” (Palestine, 1935)

*Final, revised essay 2 due in class

Week 11                                    Germans looking East: War and Genocide

November 3            *Doris L. Bergen, “The Nazi Concept of 'Volksdeutsche' and the Exacerbation of Anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe, 1939-45,” Journal of Contemporary History 29, no. 4 (Oct., 1994): 569-582.

                                                 *Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (excerpts)

*Eva Hoffman, Shtetl: The Life and Death of a Small Town and the World of Polish Jews (New York: Public Affairs, 1997), 201-240.

In-Class Film Excerpt: “Germanizing the East”

Week 12                                    Ethnic Cleansing and Nationbuilding

November 10            Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), all.

*Essay 3 due for peer

Week 13                                    When War Ends – Unmixing Eastern Europe

November 17             *Norman Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleaning in Twentieth Century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 108-138.  

*Testimonies in Alfred Maurice de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans (Palgrave Macmillan, 1993), 81-127.

*Tara Zahra, “Lost Children: Displacement, Family, and Nation in Postwar Europe,” Journal of Modern History 81 (March 2009), 45-86.

**In-class peer review of essay 3

Week 14                                    Thanksgiving Holiday

November 24                                     No class

*Final, revised essay 3 due on or before November 24 (hard copies only!)

Week 15                                    Nationalism in Post-Communist Eastern Europe: Yugoslavia 

December 1             *Erik D. Weitz, “National Communism: Serbia and the Bosnian War,” in A Century of Genocide, 190-235.

*Peter Maass, Love They Neighbor: A Story of War (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 1-116.

In-Class Film: “We Are All Neighbors,” Bosnia (1995)

December 8                                    Essay 4 due on or before December 8

Course Policies

University of Texas Honor Code

The core values of The University of Texas at Austin are learning, discovery, freedom, leadership, individual opportunity, and responsibility.  Each member of the university is expected to uphold these values through integrity, honesty, trust, fairness, and respect toward peers and community.  Any student found guilty of scholastic dishonesty may receive an “F” in the course and will be remanded to the appropriate University of Texas authorities for disciplinary action.  For more information, view Student Judicial Services at http://deanofstudents.utexas.edu/sjs.

A Note on the Use of Personal Electronic Devices

Individual students may be directed to turn off personal electronic devices if the devices are not being used for class purposes.  If the student does not comply, the student may be asked to leave the classroom.

A Note on Classroom Behavior

You have the right to learn in every class you attend.  But you have the responsibility to help assure that every other student shares that right.  Specifically:

• Come to class on time.  Do not leave early.  These things are very disruptive.  If you must come late or leave early, let the instructor know in advance and sit near the exit.
• Don't be disruptive during class.  Don't chat with your neighbor.  Don’t use your computer for anything else than taking notes or looking up course readings.
• Don't allow your electronic devices to be disruptive.  Turn off your cell phone, beeper, and watch alarm. 
• Participate.  Don’t let your electronic device act as an inhibitor to class room participation.  If I am not satisfied with your involvement in the class, you might be asked to stop using your laptop or other electronic device.
  

Documented Disability Statement

The University of Texas at Austin provides upon request appropriate academic accommodations for qualified students with disabilities.  For more information, contact Services for Students with Disabilities at 471-6259 (voice) or 232-2937 (video phone).  It is you responsibility to inform me about any accommodations that you might need early on in the semester.

Grading Scale

94-100: A
90-93: A-
87-89: B+
84-86: B
80-83: B-
77-79: C+
74-76: C
70-73: C-
67-69: D+
64-66: D
60-63: D-
0-59:   F

Instructions for Assignments

1. Assignment Overview
2. Instructions for Assignments
3. General Guidelines
4. Peer Review Guidelines

I.         Assignment Overview

Discussion Questions
Length: 3-4 questions
Due: No later than 9 am the morning of our class/ 5 weeks (week 3 not available for discussion q.)

Essay 1            Benedict Anderson: Imagined Communities
Length: 4 pages
Due: September 8

Essay 2            Irina Livezeanu: Cultural Politics in Greater Romania
Length: 5 pages
Due: October 13 (peer) – October 27 (revised final version)

Essay 3            Timothy Snyder: The Reconstruction of Nations
Length: 5 pages
Due: November 10 (peer) – November 24 (revised final version)

Essay 4            Reflection Essay
Length: 3 pages
Due: December 8

  II.                               Instructions for Assignments

Discussion Questions

In the course of this semester you should submit discussion questions for five (5) of the seminar’s fifteen weeks.  You should aim to formulate three to four questions that address themes and questions that you consider particularly important in the readings (see further guidelines below).  Plan to submit your questions no later than 9 am the morning of our class to this email address: lichtens@austin.utexas.edu (please note: this is a different address than my usual one and should only to be used for submission of assignments).

When preparing discussion questions:

1. Once you have read the sources well, think about what you want to get across in the discussion.  How do the sources relate to each other?

1. Ask open-ended questions and keep in mind that good discussion questions go beyond asking people to recall details from the text but require knowledge of the text’s contents to be answered well.  Your questions should elicit answers that are historical and analytical, not simply opinions. For example, a question that points to a possible contradiction within the text and asks your colleagues to assess whether that contradiction undermines the author’s argument could stimulate an informed exchange of views and generate knowledge about the text and the history it treats.  A question that asks how readers feel about some of the issues the author examines would not be likely to accomplish those goals.

Essay 1            Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism.

Length: 4 pages
Due: September 8

This assignment is intended to assist you in the reading and analysis of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities.  Avoid including more than one or two direct quotes as well as excessive paraphrasing.  Rather, use your own words to explain Anderson’s arguments and focus only on the most important aspects (use footnotes to direct the reader to the material you are referencing).  Your work should be based on your reading of the book and your own analysis of it: do not do additional research or use reviews or summaries written by other people.

Answer the following four questions allocating approximately one double-spaced page per question (you can adjust the length of your answers slightly should you find, for example, that the answer to Q 3 requires a bit more space than Q 4):

Q 1: How does Anderson define “nation” and what are its characteristics?

Q 2: What was, according to Anderson, the role of print capitalism for the development of nations and nationalism?

Q 3: Anderson outlines three forms of nationalism: Creole, vernacular, and official nationalism.  Write a paragraph on each form describing its most important characteristics (pay particular attention to who the nation makers are in each instance).

Q 4:  How does Anderson explain the power and popularity of nationalism (“why are people ready to die for their nation”)?

Essay 2            Irina Livezeanu, Cultural Politics in Greater Romania.
Length: 5 pages
Due: October 13 (peer) – October 27 (revised final version)

This assignment is a response to the book by Irina Livezeanu’s Cultural Politics in Greater Romania.  Your work should be based on your reading of the book and your own analysis of it: do not do additional research or use reviews or summaries written by other people.

In five, double-spaced pages, address the following questions:

I. List five useful historical facts you learned from reading this book.  These facts should be straightforward pieces of information that can be stated briefly (point form and with page numbers).  An example might be an important statistic about Romania’s population that you had not known before or the date of a central event in the history of interwar Eastern Europe.

II. Choose a short quotation (two or three sentences) from the book that you consider especially significant.  In a few paragraphs explain how the passage you selected reflects a major argument or central contribution of Livezeanu’s book.  Be sure to provide the quotation and the page on which it appears.

III. Write three to four pages in which you analyze one of the main points of Livezeanu’s book.  Be sure to identify the theme or argument you will discuss and explain how it fits into her work as a whole.  How does she support her claim?  What is noteworthy about the kind of evidence she presents and the ways she interprets it?  Why did this particular aspect of the book strike you as significant?  Avoid overlap between your answer in part II and III.

Essay 3            Timothy Snyder, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999.

Length: 5 pages
Due: November 10 (peer) – November 24 (revised final version)

Following the guidelines posted online (Assignments - Book Review) write a five-page review of Timothy Snyder’s book The Reconstruction of Nations.  Make sure your review is analytical focusing on the author’s thesis and its presentation—a book review is not a summary.  As always, use your words to review the book; do not rely on direct quotations.  Your work should be based on your reading of the book and your own analysis of it: do not do additional research or use reviews written by other people.

Essay 4            Reflection Essay
Length: 3 pages
Due: December 8

In this assignment, you will be asked to write about an aspect of the seminar (all readings, class materials, and discussions) that you found to be particularly important for your understanding of nationalism.  You should choose a specific reading, concept, image, argument, or other course artifact and explain what you think is significant about it and how it has made you think differently or in new ways about nationalism.  You should formulate a clear thesis, and, in three double-spaced pages, make a convincing argument using carefully selected course materials to support your statements. 

III.                        General Guidelines

Format for written assignments

• Typed, double-spaced, 12 point Times New Roman, 1 inch margins, numbered, stapled, and spell-checked
• You must footnote using the Chicago Style (link to online guide is posted under Assignments – Footnotes).  Do not use parenthetical or endnotes!
•  Cover page with your name and essay title.

Submission

• Final, revised versions of essays = hard copies only (your assignment is not considered submitted until you hand in a hard copy!)
• Assignments are due in class
• Late penalty is 3% per calendar day
• Essay no. 2 and 3 are peer-reviewed assignments.  When you submit these assignments, you must provide an electronic copy for me (lichtens@austin.utexas.edu) and a hard copy for your peer reviewer

IV.                        Peer Review Guidelines

Purpose of peer reviewing

• Become a better writer by understanding how analytical essays work
• Working on your peer’s writing will enhance you ability to edit your own
• Will help you effectively revise your draft, creating a better final version of your essay

Steps A through E – from review to final version

A)             Choose a peer and exchange papers

Please Note: You will have a week to review your peer’s essay.  This task is separate from the week’s readings.

B)             What to think about when you sit down to review the essay

1. Start by reading the draft through once, beginning to end, to get a general sense of the essay as a whole.  Do not write on the draft yet.  Use a piece of scratch paper to make notes if needed.

2. After an initial reading, it is sometimes helpful to write a short summary.  A well written paper should be easy to summarize, so if writing a summary is difficult, try to determine why and share that with the writer. 

3. Focus your review on the larger writing issues.  For example, the misplacement of a few commas is less important than the reader's ability to understand the main point of the essay.  And yet, if you do notice a recurring problem with grammar or spelling, especially to the extent that it interferes with your ability to follow the essay, make sure to mention it.

4. Be constructive with your criticisms.  A comment such as "This paragraph was boring" is not helpful.  Remember, this writer is your peer, so treat him or her with the respect and care that they deserve.  Explain your responses.  "I liked this part" or "This section does not work" isn't enough.  Keep in mind that you are trying to help the writer revise, so give him or her enough information to be able to understand your responses.  Point to specific places that show what you mean.  As much as possible, do not criticize something without also giving the writer some suggestion for a possible solution.  Be specific and helpful.

5. Do not focus only on the things that are not working, but also point out the things that are.

[Adapted from Todd Carney, “Peer Review Guidelines.”]

C)            Preparing for the in-class session

In your comments to your peer, you should aim to address the following areas [take careful notes so you remember examples and places you want to discuss with your peer]:

a)     Did the essay have a thesis or a main idea?  Was it logically presented and supported by relevant evidence?

b)    Did the organization of the paper facilitate the development of the main idea and did it have the requisite parts (introduction, body, and conclusion)?

c)     Was the writing style clear?  Were there recurrent problems, such as long, unclear sentences, or incorrect grammar?

d)    What strengths, such as original ideas or insightful observations, did you like and how would you summarize your suggestions for improving the essay?

D)             In-Class review session

1. You will be expected to explain the main idea of the paper you reviewed to your peer (that person’s own thesis)
2. You will be expected to address the four questions above using concrete examples from the paper you reviewed (it is OK to mark up the copy of the essay you have received)
3. At the end of the session, you and your peer will exchange ideas for how you both plan to improve your essays.

E)            The final version of your essay

Once we have completed the peer reviewing, you should have some concrete ideas for how to revise your essay.  You hand in the revised essay on the date specified in the syllabus.

This course contains a Writing Flag.

HIS 362G                                                Jews of Eastern Europe                                    Fall 2010

REE335/JS364                                                                       

Tatjana Lichtenstein

Office: GAR 0.110

Office Hours: Thursdays 2:15-4:15 pm

Email: tatjana.lichtenstein@mail.utexas.edu (preferred)

Phone: 512-475-6171

Class meets TTH 12:30-2:00 pm in JGB 2.102

Course Description

This course explores the history and culture of Jews in Eastern Europe.  Focusing on the Jewish societies in the Russian and Austrian Empires, the course seeks to map the Jewish experience from the late 1700s until the first decades of twentieth century through topics such as secularization, urbanization, migration, antisemitism, political movements, and war.  We study the destruction of the Jewish societies in Eastern Europe during the Holocaust as well as Jewish memory and renewal in Eastern Europe since the end of Communism. 

Course Goals

• Examine the cultures of Jews in Eastern Europe as well as the historical forces that transformed these societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
• Explore a variety of primary source materials and discuss their use as historical evidence
• Write analytical, thesis-driven essays based on close reading of the course materials 

Required Course Books

• Zvi Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001).
• Henryk Grynberg, The Jewish War and The Victory (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2001).
• Eva Hoffman, Shtetl: The Life and Death of a Small Town and the World of Polish Jews (New York: Public Affairs, 2007).
• Israel J. Singer, The Brothers Ashkenazi (Orig. 1936, New York: Other Press, 2010).

Electronic Readings

*The YIVO Encyclopedia of the Jews of Eastern Europe.  The YIVO Encyclopedia can be accessed using this link: http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/

All readings and other course materials are required

Assignments and Grading

Attendance and Participation                                                            10%

Article Response                        (Sep 30)                                    10%

Midterm                                    (Oct 14)                                    20%

Essay Ashkenazi                        (Nov 9)                                    25%

Take-Home Final Exam             (Dec 8)                                      35 %

Please Note:

Instructions for reading primary and secondary sources effectively can be found in the back of this syllabus.

The assignments for this class take a couple of different forms.  There will be one article response, a midterm, one essay, and a take-home final exam (see instructions for the article analysis and essay in the back of this syllabus)

Make sure you have access to the text of the documents assigned.  You might be using them in class and it is important that you have the text in front of you either in a paper copy or on a laptop.

Schedule of Classes

Week 1                          

Aug 26                         Introduction: Syllabus, Assignments, and Readings            

Week 2            

Aug 31                        What is Jewish Eastern Europe?

Eva Hoffman, Shtetl: The Life and Death of a Small Town and the World of Polish Jews, 1-72.

Sep 2                                    The World of East European Jews

*Eli Barnavi, ed., A Historical Atlas of the Jewish People, short texts on Judaism 1-6; 7-14 on Polish Jewry with excellent maps.   

Week 3           

Sep 7                                    The Russian Empire

Hoffman, Shtetl, 73-109.

*“Russia: Russian Empire,” & “Pale of Settlement,” in The YIVO Encyclopedia

*Documents on Jews and the Russian State

Sep 9                                    The Habsburg Empire

*“Galicia,” and “Bohemia and Moravia,” in The YIVO Encyclopedia

*Documents on Jews and the Habsburg state

Week 4

Sep 14                                    Hasidism

                                    Hoffman, Shtetl, 110-158.

*“Hasidism,” in The YIVO Encyclopedia

Sep 16                        Hasidism (contd)

*Documents on Hasidism

Week 5           

Sep 21                        Haskalah – the Jewish Enlightenment

                                    *“Haskalah,” in The YIVO Encyclopedia

Sep 23                        Haskalah (contd)

                                    *Documents on Haskalah

Week 6           

Sep 28                        Antisemitism

In-Class Film: The Longest Hatred (1993)

Sep 30                        Pogroms

                                    *“Pogroms,” in The YIVO Encyclopedia

*Michael Aronson, “The Anti-Jewish Pogroms in Russia in 1881,” in Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russian History, ed. J. Klier and S. Lambroza (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 44-62

*Isaac Babel, “Story of My Dovecote.”

*Haim Bialik, “In the City of Slaughter,” (1903) 

*Article Analysis due (see instructions at the back of this syllabus)

Week 7                       

Oct 5                                    Migration

Zvi Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present, 1-58.

*Mary Antin, The Promised Land, 110-142

Oct 7                                    Urbanization

*Joseph Roth, The Wandering Jews, 1927 (excerpt)

*Roth, Joseph (1894-1939) in YIVO Encyclopedia

Week 8                       

Oct 12                         Modern Jewish Politics

                                    *”Bund,” in YIVO Encyclopedia

*”Zionism and Zionist Parties,” in YIVO Encyclopedia

*Documents on the Bund and Zionism

Oct 14                        Midterm (in class)

Week 9

Oct 19                        Sholem Aleichem’s Tevye

                                    * Aleichem, Sholem in YIVO Encyclopedia

*Sholem Aleichem, Tevye the Dairyman (“Today’s Children,” “Hodl,” Chava”), 36-82.

Oct 21                                    World War I

*“World War I,” in YIVO Encyclopedia

*“Rapoport, Shloyme Zaynl,” (Ansky), in YIVO Encyclopedia  

*S. Ansky, “The Destruction of Galicia: Excerpts from a Diary, 1914-1917, in The Dybbuk and other Writings (New York: Schocken Books, 1992), 171-208.

Week 10                        

Oct 26                                    The Russian Revolution and the Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism

Zvi Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence, 59-71.

*Isaac Babel, “Crossing the River Zbrucz,” in The Complete works of Isaac Babel, ed. Natalie Babel (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2002), 601-611, 203-204.

Oct 28                                    Soviet Utopia?

*Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence, 71-114.

*“Birobidzhan,” in YIVO Encyclopedia

In-Class Film Excerpt: “Seekers of Happiness” (USSR, 1934)

Week 11           

Nov 2                                    Interwar Eastern Europe and Zionism

*Hoffman, Shtetl, 159-200.

Nov 4                                    Zionist Utopia

In-Class Film: “Land of Promise,” (Palestine, 1935)

*Essay on Brothers Ashkenazi due November 9

Week 12                       

Nov 9                        The Holocaust in Eastern Europe  

*”Holocaust: An Overview,” in YIVO Encyclopedia

Hoffman, Shtetl, 201-240

Nov 11                                    War of Annihilation – 1941 and After

Zvi Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence, 115-143

*Vasily Grossman, “Treblinka,” in A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army, 1941-1945, ed. Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova (New York: Panthon Books, 2005), 280-306.

In-Class Film Excerpts: “The Wild East,” Nazis: A Warning from History

Week 13           

Nov 16                                    Testimonies

Henryk Grynberg, The Jewish War, 1-58

*Ida Fink, A Scrap of Time and Other Stories (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1983), 3-10, 35-38, 39-48

Nov 18                        When War Ends

Grynberg, The Victory, 61-153

Hoffman, Shtetl, 241-258.

Week 14                       

Nov 23                                    New Beginnings, Homelands Old and New

                                    Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence, 144-195.

Nov 25                                    Thanksgiving Holiday – No Class

Week 15                       

Nov 30                                    Jewish Life in Eastern Europe Today – Memory and Renewal

Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence, 212-274.

Dec 2                        Last class – reflections and instructions for take-home final

Final Exam

Dec 8                                    Take-Home Final Exam due in my office by 5 pm.

Course Policies

University of Texas Honor Code

The core values of The University of Texas at Austin are learning, discovery, freedom, leadership, individual opportunity, and responsibility.  Each member of the university is expected to uphold these values through integrity, honesty, trust, fairness, and respect toward peers and community.  Any student found guilty of scholastic dishonesty may receive an “F” in the course and will be remanded to the appropriate University of Texas authorities for disciplinary action.  For more information, view Student Judicial Services at http://deanofstudents.utexas.edu/sjs.

A Note on the Use of Personal Electronic Devices

Individual students may be directed to turn off personal electronic devices if the devices are not being used for class purposes.  If the student does not comply, the student may be asked to leave the classroom.

A Note on Classroom Behavior

You have the right to learn in every class you attend.  But you have the responsibility to help assure that every other student shares that right.  Specifically:

• Come to class on time.  Do not leave early.  These things are very disruptive.  If you must come late or leave early, let the instructor know in advance and sit near the exit.
• Don't be disruptive during class.  Don't chat with your neighbor.  Don’t use your computer for anything else than taking notes or looking up course readings.
• Don't allow your electronic devices to be disruptive.  Turn off your cell phone, beeper, and watch alarm. 
• Participate.  Don’t let your electronic device act as an inhibitor to class room participation.  If I am not satisfied with your involvement in the class, you might be asked to stop using your laptop or other electronic device.

Documented Disability Statement

The University of Texas at Austin provides upon request appropriate academic accommodations for qualified students with disabilities.  For more information, contact Services for Students with Disabilities at 471-6259 (voice) or 232-2937 (video phone).  It is you responsibility to inform me about any accommodations that you might need early on in the semester.

Grading Scale

94-100: A

90-93: A-

87-89: B+

84-86: B

80-83: B-

77-79: C+

74-76: C

70-73: C-

67-69: D+

64-66: D

60-63: D-

0-59:   F

Reading Primary Sources

A Brief Guide

How to approach a primary source?

Author

• Who was the author?
• When was it written?  (historical context)

Purpose or Message

• Why was the document produced and why has it survived?
• Is the author simply providing information or trying to lead the audience to a particular conclusion?
• What kind of evidence does the author introduce to support a thesis or a claim in the source?  Why was this evidence chosen?

Audience

• Who was the intended audience for this document? 

Point of View

• All authors have biases, prejudices, and assumptions that influence their perspective or point of view!
• What background factors might influence the author’s point of view?
• Is the author trustworthy?  How do you know?

Tone and Language

• What is the tone of the source?  What is the author’s attitude toward the subject?
• Is there a single tone employed throughout the document or does it vary from part to part?

Significance

• How does the source help explain the event or topic being explored?  Could the event or issue be explained as fully without the document?
• Does the source offer unique insights or alternative information about the topic?
• Is the explanation or interpretation in this document different from others?
• What does it bring to light about a certain historical period or event?

Instructions for Assignments

Format for written assignments

• Typed, double-spaced, 12 point Times New Roman, 1 inch margins, numbered, stapled, and spell-checked
• You must footnote using the Chicago Style (a link to online quick guide has been posted on BB).  Do not use parenthetical or endnotes!
•  Cover page with your name and essay title.

Submission

• Hard copies only (your assignment is not considered submitted until you hand in a hard copy!)
• Assignments are due in class
• Late penalty is 3% per calendar day

Assignment # 1

Article Response Essay

Due: September 30

Length: 3 double-spaced pages

This assignment asks you to analyze Michael Aronson’s article, “The Anti-Jewish Pogroms in Russia in 1881” (can be found in readings for week 6).   

In three, double-spaced pages, address the following questions:

I. List four useful historical facts you learned from reading this article.  These facts should be straightforward pieces of information that can be stated briefly (use point form and provide the page numbers in a parenthesis after each act).  An example might be an important statistic about the presence of police and military in Russian society (you can only use a statistical fact once) or the date for an event noted in the article.  Avoid overlap in your choice of facts.  They goal is to have you distinguish between facts and interpretations.  (20%)

II. Choose a short quotation (two or three sentences) from the article that you consider especially significant.  In one or two paragraphs explain how the passage you selected reflects a major argument or central contribution of Aronson’s study.  Be sure to provide the quotation and the page on which it appears.  (30%)

III. Write several paragraphs in which you analyze one of the main points of Aronson’s article.  Be sure to identify the theme or argument you will discuss.  How does he support his claim?  What is noteworthy about the kind of evidence he presents and the ways he interprets it?  Why did this particular aspect of the article strike you as significant?  What kinds of positions does Aronson seem to be countering or correcting?  Is he convincing?  Why or why not?  (50%)

Assignment # 2

Essay on I.J. Singer’s The Brothers Ashkenazi

Due: November 9

Length:  6 double-spaced pages

This assignment asks you to analyze Israel J. Singer’s The Brothers Ashkenazi (1935) as a historical source.  How does the novel contribute to our understanding of Jewish history in Eastern Europe? 

This is a long and rich novel tracing the history of a Jewish family through the nineteenth to the early twentieth century.  It will not be possible for you to address every point of relation between the novel and the material covered in class.  Rather, you should choose a particular topic and analyze how the author presents it and why (what is his intent).  Possible topics include: Jewish social and economic life, Jewish political ideologies, gender relations, religious practice, relations with non-Jews, and relations among Jews (points of cooperation and conflict).  You should pay attention to the way in which the author depicts how these factors changed over time. 

This is an analytical essay, not a book review or summary.  Do not go into the plot in detail unless it is important for your analysis as a whole.  You should also pay attention to the weaknesses and strength of this novel as a historical source.  That is, how do the author’s biases affect the picture of the Jewish past he is presenting?  Make sure you formulate a thesis (you want to make an argument) and that your analysis supports it using evidence from the novel and course materials (use footnotes to reference your evidence). 

Your work should be based on your reading of the book and your own analysis of it: do not do additional research or use reviews or summaries written by other people.

HIS 350L/EUS346/JS364/REE335                                                                        Spring 2010

 World War II in Eastern Europe

Tatjana Lichtenstein

Office: GAR 0.110

Office Hours: Th 5-7 pm

Email: tatjana.lichtenstein@mail.utexas.edu (preferred)

Phone: 512-475-6171

Class meets Wed 4-7 pm in GAR 2.124

Course Description

In Eastern Europe, the Second World War was, as the Czech Jewish woman Heda Margolius-Kovaly remarked, “a war no one had quite survived.”  Wedged between Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Empire, Eastern Europe was the site of unprecedented human and material destruction in the years between 1938 and 1948.  As the staging ground for Hitler’s vision for a new racial order in Europe, the region was devastated by genocide and ethnic cleansing, programs of economic and social exploitation, and warfare.  Using a wide variety of sources, this course will examine the war in Eastern Europe with a particular emphasis on occupation, collaboration, and resistance; the Holocaust; and the connection between ethnic cleansing, population transfer, and the establishment of Communism in postwar Eastern Europe.     

Course Goals

• Explore the history of World War II in Eastern Europe
• Engage actively with the readings through participation in class discussion, submission of weekly questions in advance of the class, and through in-class writing exercises
• Write analytical, thesis-driven papers based on close reading of the course materials 

Grading Policy

Participation (incl. final 3 page reflection essay)                        25%

Map Quiz                                                                                      5%             (Jan 27)             

Weekly Questions and In-Class Writing                                      5%

Document Analysis (2-3 pages)                                                10%             (Feb 10)

Essay 1 (3-4 peer reviewed/rewriting)                                    15%             (Mar 3)

Essay 2 (6-7 pages peer reviewed/rewriting)                                    20%             (Mar 24)

Essay 3 (6-7 pages)                                                                        20%             (Apr 21)

Course Books

Alan Adelson, ed., The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the ?ód? Ghetto (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996)

Lee Baker, The Second World War on the Eastern Front (New York: Pearson Longman, 2009)

Tadeusz Borowski, This Way for the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen (New York: Penguin Classics, 1976)

Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (New York: Harper Perennial, 1998)

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)

Optional Books

Karel C. Berhoff, Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004)

Electronic Readings

Material marked with * are available on-line through the course website (under Course Documents).

Please Note: A guide to reading primary and secondary sources and formulating discussion questions can be found on pages 11-12 of this syllabus.

 All readings and other course materials are required.

Assignments

The written assignments for this course consist of three analytical essays, one document analysis, and one reflection essay.  In each paper, you will be asked to respond to a specific reading as well as to connect the reading to the broader themes discussed in class.  The due dates are listed above.  The penalty for late essays is 3% per calendar day.  Instructions for all assignments can be found at the end of this syllabus (pages 8-10).

Schedule of Classes

Week 1

January 20                        Introduction to the Course

Introduction to the class, readings, and assignments

In-Class Film Excerpt: The Nazis: A Warning from History (‘The Wrong War”)

Map Quiz Handout

Part 1: Contexts

Week 2

January 27                        Setting the stage for German Expansion in the East (1938-1940)

Baker, The Second World War on the Eastern Front, 3-18 (incl. relevant documents mentioned in the main text)

*Geoffrey P. Megargee, “The Roots of the War of Annihilation,” 1-18, in War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941 (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007)

*“Hitler’s Foreign Policy Program,” 1-8, in J. Noakes & G. Pridham, eds, Nazism: A Documentary Reader, vol. 3: Foreign Policy, War, and Racial Extermination (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2006)

*Excerpt from Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (1925)

*The German-Soviet Non-Aggression Treaty, August 1939 (GHI Document)

Map Quiz

Week 3

February 3                        1941: Operation Barbarossa and the Brutalization of Warfare

Baker, The Second World War on the Eastern Front, 18-56 (incl. relevant documents)

*Karel C. Berkhoff, “Soviet Ukraine and the Soviet Invasion,” in Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi rule, 6-34

*Commissar Order June 6, 1941

*Martin Bormann Minutes from Meeting July 16, 1941

*Indoctrination of the German Soldier: For Volk, Führer, and Fatherland”

*Vasily Grossman, “The Killing Grounds at Berdichev” 1944

Week 4

February 10                        Nazi Rule in Eastern Europe and the End Game (1942-1945)

Baker, The Second World War on the Eastern Front, 57-107 (incl. documents)

*Ilya Ehrenburg, Excerpt from “Kill” (1942)

*William Hoffman, “Diary of a German Soldier”

*Affidavit of SS-Gruppenführer Otto Ohlendorf

*Governor General Hans Frank’s speech to his cabinet, Krakow, 16 December 1941

*Vasily Grossman, “Treblinka” (1944)

Document analysis due

Part 2: Themes

 1: German Colonial Rule

 Week 5

February 17                        General Plan Ost – German Intentions in the East

*“The German Occupation of Poland,” 314-388, in Noakes & Pridham, Nazism: A Documentary Reader, vol. 3.

*“Internal Critique of Nazi Occupation Policy,” 304-308, in Noakes & Pridham, Nazism: A Documentary Reader, vol. 3.

*Karel C. Berkhoff, “Prisoners of War,” in Harvest of Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule, 89-113

2: War and Genocide – The Holocaust

Week 6

February 24                        A New Racial Order: Experiments in Brutality

*“The ‘Euthanasia’-programme, 1939-1945,” 389-440, in Noakes & Pridham, Nazism: A Documentary Reader, vol. 3.

*“The Persecution of the Jews, 1939-1941,” 441-464, & “”The Transition to the Systematic Extermination of the Jews,” 478-501, in Noakes & Pridham, Nazism: A Documentary Reader, vol. 3.

The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the ?ód? Ghetto, Foreword etc, 2-17, 19-74 (1^st Notebook (June 28, 1939-December 31, 1939))

In-Class Film Excerpt: Ghetto Lodz (Alan Adelson, 1999)

Week 7

March 3            Ghettos

The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the ?ód? Ghetto (75-271)

*Dan Michman, “Jewish Leadership in Extremis,” 319-340, The Historiography of the Holocaust, Dan Stone ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004)

In-Class Film Excerpt: Ghetto Lodz (spring 1943 to August 1944)

Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak essay due in class (if you are not ready to submit it in class, then do not come to class)

Week 8

March 10                        1941 and the Final Solution

Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (all)

SPRING BREAK

Week 9

March 24                        Death Camps and Forced Labor

*“The Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942 Concerning the ‘Final Solution’ of the Jewish Problem,” 533-543, & “The Extermination Camps,” 544-600, 610-629 in Noakes & Pridham, Nazism: A Documentary Reader.

Tadeusz Borowski, This way for the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen (all)

Ordinary Men paper due in class

3: Collaboration and Resistance

Week 10

March 31                        Collaboration   

*Benjamin Frommer, “Denouncers and Fraternizers: Gender, Collaboration, and Retribution in Bohemia and Moravia during WWII and After,” 111-132, in Gender and War in Twentieth Century Eastern Europe, eds. Nancy M. Wingfield & Maria Bucur (Bloomington: Inidiana University Press, 2006)

*Jan Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, 1-7, 30-42

In-Class Film Excerpt: The Shop on Main Street (Czechoslovakia, 1965)

Week 11

April 7                        Resistance: Partisans

*“Deportations and Forced Migrations,” & “Toward the End of Nazi rule,” in Karel C. Berkhoff, Harvest of Despair, 253-304

*Ben Shepherd, War in the Wild East: The German Army and Soviet Partisans (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), 108-128, 188-234

In-Class Film Excerpt: War of the Century: When Hitler Fought Stalin (Partisans in Belorussia)

Part 3: End of War and the Memory of World War II in Eastern Europe

Week 12

April 14                        Creating the Postwar Order                       

*“Timothy Snyder, “’To Resolve the Ukrainian Question Once and For All’: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ukrainians in Poland, 1943-1947,” Journal of Cold War Studies vol. 1, no. 2 June 1999): 86-120

*Radio Documentary: “Red Runs the Vistula: The Warsaw Uprising of 1944,” American Public Media/BBC  (about 50 min)

http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/warsaw/

*Stefan Korbonski, ”Warsaw Uprising” (Excerpt from The Underground State: A Guide to the Underground, 1939-1945), 187-193

In-Class Film Excerpt: The Pianist (Roman Polanski, 2002)

Week 13

April 21                        Retribution Against the Germans of Eastern Europe

Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans (all)

A Terrible Revenge paper due in class (if you are not ready to submit, then do not come to class)

Week 14

April 28                        Jews and the End of War in Eastern Europe

*Jan T. Gross, “Introduction,” and “The Unwelcoming of Jewish Survivors,” in Fear: Antisemitism in Poland after Auschwitz: An Essay in Historical Interpretation (New York: Random House, 2006), ix-xv, 31-80.

*“The Victory,” in Henryk Grynberg, The Jewish War and The Victory (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2001), 61-153.

*Piotr Wrobel, “Double Memory: Poles ands Jews After the Holocaust,” East European Politics and Societies vol. 11, no. 3 (Fall 1997), 560-574.

Week 15

May 5                                    WWII and Postwar Communism

*Jan T. Gross, “War as Revolution,” 17-40, in The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe, eds. Norman M. Naimark & Leonid Gibianski (New York: Westview Press, 1997)

*Heda Margolius Kovály, Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941-1968 (Holmes & Meier, 1986), 39-74

*Tony Judt, “From the House of the Dead: An Essay on Modern European Memory,” 803-831, in Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (New York: Penguin, 2006)

Final Assignment due May 12 in my office before 5 pm.

Course Policies

University of Texas Honor Code

The core values of The University of Texas at Austin are learning, discovery, freedom, leadership, individual opportunity, and responsibility.  Each member of the university is expected to uphold these values through integrity, honesty, trust, fairness, and respect toward peers and community.  Any student found guilty of scholastic dishonesty may receive an “F” in the course and will be remanded to the appropriate University of Texas authorities for disciplinary action.  For more information, view Student Judicial Services at http://deanofstudents.utexas.edu/sjs.

A Note on the Use of Personal Electronic Devices

Individual students may be directed to turn off personal electronic devices if the devices are not being used for class purposes.  If the student does not comply, the student may be asked to leave the classroom.

A Note on Classroom Behavior

You have the right to learn in every class you attend.  But you have the responsibility to help assure that every other student shares that right.  Specifically:

• Come to class on time.  Do not leave early.  These things are very disruptive.  If you must come late or leave early, let the instructor know in advance and sit near the exit.
• Don't be disruptive during class.  Don't chat with your neighbor.  Don’t use your computer for anything else than taking notes or looking up course readings.
• Don't allow your electronic devices to be disruptive.  Turn off your cell phone, beeper, and watch alarm. 
• Participate.  Don’t let your electronic device act as an inhibitor to class room participation.  If I am not satisfied with your involvement in the class, you might be asked to stop using your laptop or other electronic device.

Documented Disability Statement

The University of Texas at Austin provides upon request appropriate academic accommodations for qualified students with disabilities.  For more information, contact Services for Students with Disabilities at 471-6259 (voice) or 232-2937 (video phone).  It is you responsibility to inform me about any accommodations that you might need early on in the semester.

Grading Scale

94-100: A

90-93: A-

87-89: B+

84-86: B

80-83: B-

77-79: C+

74-76: C

70-73: C-

67-69: D+

64-66: D

60-63: D-

0-59:   F

Instructions for Assignments

Format for written assignments

• Typed, double-spaced, 12 point Times New Roman, 1 inch margins, numbered, stapled, and spell-checked
• You must footnote using the Chicago Style (style sheet will be posted on the course website).  Do not use parenthetical or endnotes!
•  Cover page with your name and essay title.

Submission

• Hard copies only (your assignment is not considered submitted until you hand in a hard copy!)
• Assignments are due in class
• Late penalty is 3% per calendar day
• Essay no. 1 and 2 are peer-reviewed assignments.  When you submit these assignments, you must provide a copy both for me and your peer reviewer (you will be assigned a peer reviewer in class)

Assignment # 1

Document Analysis

Due: February 10, 2010

Length: 2-3 pages

This assignment asks you to read a primacy source and analyze its content and significance.  The document in question is the so-called “Jäger Report.”  Imagine you are a historian who comes across this document in the archives.  You begin the process of figuring out what the significance is of the evidence you have before you.  Here are some questions that should help you in your analysis:

1. Who was the author and when was it written?  Who do you think is the recipient? Why was the document produced?
2. What is the content of the document?  What does the information contained in the document tell you about events that have already taken place and ones that are unfolding?
3. What do you learn about the author from the document?  What are his motivations for producing the document?   

When doing this assignment it is important that you read the document very closely.  Pay attention to dates and to shifts in emphasis.  The details are very significant when reading sources like this one.  In order to discover the document’s many layers, you will have to read it several times and work closely with the text when undertaking your analysis.  Your work should be based on your reading of the source and your own analysis of it: do not do additional research or use reviews or summaries written by other people.

Assignment # 2

Essay no. 1

Due: March 3, 2010

Length: 3-4 pages

This assignment is a response to The Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak: Five Notebooks from the ?ód? Ghetto.  What do we learn about life in the ghetto from reading Dawid’s diary?  Drawing on examples from the diary discuss one of the following themes in a 3-4-page essay:  strategies of survival; resistance; food and social control; and social divisions within the ghetto and their significance (these are merely suggestions.  If there is another theme from the book that you would like to focus on for this assignment you can do so although you should have your idea approved by me in advance of writing the essay).  Your work should be based on your reading of the book and your own analysis of it: do not do additional research or use reviews or summaries written by other people.

Once you have completed your essay, consider the following questions and bring your answers to class:

1. What did you find most surprising about Dawid’s experiences?
2. What are the strengths and limitations of his diary as a historical source?

Submission: 

Bring two hard copies of your essay to class, one for me and one for your peer reviewer.

Assignment # 3

Essay no. 2

Due: March 24, 2010

Length: 6-7 pages

This assignment is a response to the book by Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland.  Your work should be based on your reading of the book and your own analysis of it: do not do additional research or use reviews or summaries written by other people.

In six to seven, double-spaced pages, address the following questions:

I. List five useful historical facts you learned from reading this book.  These facts should be straightforward pieces of information that can be stated briefly.  An example might be an important statistic about the German Order Police in Poland that you had not known before or the date of a central event in the history of the Holocaust.

II. Choose a short quotation (two or three sentences) from the book that you consider especially significant.  In one page explain how the passage you selected reflects a major argument or central contribution of Browning's book.  Be sure to provide the quotation and the page on which it appears.

III. Write four to five pages in which you analyze one of the main points of Browning’s book.  Be sure to identify the theme or argument you will discuss and explain how it fits into Browning’s work as a whole.  How does he support his claim?  What is noteworthy about the kind of evidence he presents and the ways he interprets it?  Why did this particular aspect of the book strike you as significant?  What kinds of positions does Browning seem to be countering or correcting?  Is he convincing?  Why or why not?

Submission: 

Bring two hard copies of your essay to class, one for me and one for your peer reviewer.

Assignment # 4

Essay no. 3

Due: April 21, 2010

Length: 6-7 pages

In his study of ethnic cleansing in Europe, the historian Norman Naimark noted about the expulsion on Germans from Poland and Czechoslovakia following World War II:

“In some fashion, then, it is fair to say that the Germans reaped what they sowed.  That so many lives were lost and ruined in the ethnic cleansing of the Germans from East Central Europe should be attributed, in the final analysis, to the hatred wrought by Nazi policy in the region.” 

Drawing on Alfred-Maurice de Zayas’ A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, as well as other course materials discuss Naimark’s assertion.  Do you agree or disagree?  Your work should be based on your reading of the book and other course materials and your own analysis of it: do not do additional research or use reviews or summaries written by other people.

(Source: Norman M. Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth Century Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 136)

Assignment # 5

Reflection Essay

Due: May 12, 2010

Length: 3 pages

In this assignment, you will be asked to state your informed opinion about the significance of the study of the Second World War in Eastern Europe for your understanding of history more broadly.  While I am asking for your opinion, I want you to form one based on the course readings and discussions we have had in the course of the semester.  You should use these materials as evidence to support your statements.  In a three-page essay reflect on the following questions:

1.  What aspect of World War II covered in this seminar did you find to be the most interesting?  Explain why. 

2.  Do you think the study of WWII in Eastern Europe can provide us with universal insights (not dependent on time and place) into human behavior or were people’s responses dependent on their specific contexts?  Explain why.

Reading Primary Sources and Sources

&

Preparing Discussion Questions

A Brief Guide

How to approach a primary source?

Author

• Who was the author?
• When was it written?  What is the context for the production of the document?

Purpose or Message

• Why was the document produced and why has it survived?
• Is the author simply providing information or trying to lead the audience to a particular conclusion?
• What kind of evidence does the author introduce to support a thesis or a claim in the source?  Why was this evidence chosen?

Point of View

• All authors have biases, prejudices, and assumptions that influence their perspective or point of view!
• What background factors might influence the author’s point of view?
• Is the author trustworthy?  How do you know?

Audience

• Who was the intended audience for this document? 

Tone and Language

• What is the tome of the source?  What is the author’s attitude toward the subject?
• Is there a single tone employed throughout the document or does it vary from part to part?

Significance

• How does the source help explain the event or topic being explored?  Could the event or issue be explained as fully without the document?
• Does the source offer unique insights or alternative information about the topic?
• Is the explanation or interpretation in this document different from others?
• What does it being to light about a certain historical period or event?

How to approach a secondary source?

• Begin by reading the introduction and conclusion.
• Understanding the thesis and the major conclusions drawn from the study will act as a spine holding together all the information you are about to receive in the main body of the text.  You can also think of the introduction and the conclusion as a road map guiding you through the facts and evidence being presented.
• Evaluate the arguments and the evidence critically—is it convincing why or why not?
• Read for historical context i.e. learn about the past
• Read for historiographical context i.e. understand how interpretation of the past have evolved

When preparing discussion questions:

1. Once you have read the sources well, think about what you want to get across in the discussion.  How do the sources relate to and/or contradict each other?
2. Think about the types of sources we are reading.
3. Ask open-ended questions and keep in mind that good discussion questions go beyond asking people to recall details from the text but require knowledge of the text’s contents to be answered well.  Your questions should elicit answers that are historical and analytical, not simply opinions. For example, a question that points to a possible contradiction within the text and asks your colleagues to assess whether that contradiction undermines the author’s argument could stimulate an informed exchange of views and generate knowledge about the text and the history it treats.  A question that asks how readers feel about some of the issues the author examines would not be likely to accomplish those goals.

HIS 362G                                         
Spring 2010

Eastern Europe in the 20^th Century

Tatjana Lichtenstein

Office: GAR 0.110

Email: tatjana.lichtenstein@mail.utexas.edu (preferred)

Phone: 512-475-6171

Class meets Tuesdays and Thursdays 3:30-5:00 pm in BUR 112

Course Description

In the twentieth century, Eastern Europe, a region which stretched from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Balkans in the south, became the site of many of Europe’s fiercest military and ideological struggles.  In this period, the people of Eastern Europe experienced not only the horrors of two destructive world wars, but also the collapse of four empires, the rise of independent nation-states, the emergence of communism and fascism, the killing and relocation of entire populations, the establishment of socialist states, and the attempts to overcome the division between Europe’s East and West towards the end of century.  In addition to secondary readings, wee will be exploring this turbulent period in the history of Eastern Europe through documents, memoirs, journalistic essays, and film.    

Course Books

• Slavenka Drakuli?, How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed (New York: W.W. Norton, 1992)
• Heda Margolius Kovály, Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941-1968 (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1997)
• Joseph Rothschild and Nancy M. Wingfield, Return to Diversity: A Political History of East Central Europe since World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007)
• Joe Sacco, Safe Area Goražde: The War in Eastern Bosnia, 1992-1995 (Fantagraphics Books, 2002)
• Gale Stokes, ed., From Stalinism to Pluralism: A Documentary History of Eastern Europe Since 1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996)
• Sylvia Welner and Kevin Welner, Small Doses of Arsenic: A Bohemian Woman’s Story of Survival (Hamilton Books, 2005)

Electronic Readings

Readings marked with * can be found on the course website on Blackboard (under Course Documents). 

Please Note:  Each week the assigned readings are organized into secondary and primary readings (see explanation below).  These labels are meant to help you plan your work and do not denote which reading is more important.   

secondary readings = background readings (secondary source materials)

primary readings = documents produced either at the time of a certain event or by people who experienced such events or episodes in the past (primary source materials)

Both secondary and primary readings are required.

On-Line Resources

• Integrated History: An Online Archive of Primary Sources on the History of East-Central Europe for Educators, Students and Scholars

http://www.einaudi.cornell.edu/europe/integrated_history/index.asp

• Making the History of 1989: The Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe

http://chnm.gmu.edu/1989/

Assignments

The written assignments for this course consist of three short essays.  In each essay, you will be asked to respond to specific questions about the reading as well as to connect the reading to the broader themes discussed in class.  The due dates are listed below.  The penalty for late essays is 3% per calendar day.  Instructions for all three assignments can be found at the end of this syllabus (pages x-x).

Grades

Class Attendance and Participation (10%)

Map Quiz (5%)                                                                                                             Feb 2

Response Essay (2 pages) (10%)                                                                                     Feb 11

In-Class Midterm (10%)                                                                                                Mar 9

Kovály Essay (3 pages) (20%)                                                                                     Apr 8

Drakuli? essay (3 pages) (20%)                                                                                     Apr 20

Final Exam (25%)                                                                                                            

Schedule of Classes

Week 1

Jan 19                                    Introduction: Readings and Assignments

Jan 21                                    Eastern Europe Before WWI: Empires, States, and Peoples

secondary readings

*Maps Handout (these maps also the basis for the upcoming map quiz)

primary documents

*Harry De Windt, “Through Savage Europe,” 1907

Week 2

Jan 26                        World War I in Eastern Europe

secondary readings

*Lonnie R. Johnson, Central Europe: Enemies, Neighbors, Friends (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 171-182

primary readings

*Fritz Kreisler, “Four Weeks in the Trenches,” 1915

Jan 28                        Dislocations and revolutions

secondary readings

*Lonnie R. Johnson, Central Europe: Enemies, Neighbors, Friends, 182-196

primary readings

*American Jewish Relief Committee, “Report on Postwar Poland,” 1919

*Lewis Namier, “The Case of Bohemia,” 1917

Week 3

Feb 2                                    The End of War: Peace Settlements

secondary readings

Rothschild & Wingfield, Return to Diversity: A Political History of East Central Europe Since World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 1-18 (“The Interwar Background”)

primary readings

Sylvia & Kevin Welner, eds., Small Doses of Arsenic: A Bohemian Woman’s Story of Survival (Hamilton Books, 2005), vii-viii (preface), 3-27

*“Czechoslovak Declaration of Independence Communicated to Washington, October 18, 1918” (From: Documents on the Founding of Czechoslovakia, 1918-1924)

Map Quiz

Feb 4                                     Minority Questions

secondary readings

Paul R. Magocsi, Historical Atlas of East Central Europe (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1993), 130-133 (Poland and Czechoslovakia), 134-137 (Hungary and Romania), and 138-141 (Yugoslavia)

primary readings

*R.J. Kerner on Conditions in Slovakia Part I & II, March 2 & March 1, 1919

Week 4

Feb 9                                    The New National Order Underway

secondary readings

*Re-read: Paul R. Magocsi, Historical Atlas of East Central Europe, 130-133 (Poland and Czechoslovakia)

primary readings

Small doses of Arsenic, 29-49

Feb 11                                    The New National Order Underway, II

secondary readings

* Re-read: Paul R. Magocsi, Historical Atlas of East Central Europe, 134-137 (Hungary and Romania), and 138-141 (Yugoslavia)

primary readings

Small Doses of Arsenic, 51-66

Small Doses of Arsenic Essay Due

Week 5

Feb 16                        People without States – Roma and Jews

secondary readings

*Isabel Fonseca, Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and their Journey (New York: Vintage, 1995), 83-112 (“Hindupen”)

*Paul R. Magocsi, A Historical Atlas of East Central Europe, 107-110

*“Yiddish: The Dialect of Ashkenazi Jewry,” in A Historical Atlas of the Jewish People, Eli Barnavi, ed. (New York: Schocken Books, 1992), 192-193

Feb 18                        Authoritarianism in Eastern Europe

secondary readings

*Stephen Fischer-Galati, “Sources of Authoritarianism in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe,” 64-73, in Authoritarianism and Democracy in Europe, 1919-1939: Comparative Analysis, eds., Dirk Berg-Schlosser & Jeremy Mitchell (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002)

Week 6

Feb 23                        Anti-Communism and Antisemitism

primary readings

*Excerpt, “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”

*Excerpt, Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (1925)

Feb 25                        World War II in Eastern Europe

secondary readings

Rothschild & Wingfield, Return to Diversity, 19-59 (“World War II”)

primary readings

*J. Noakes & G. Pridham, Nazism: A Documentary Reader, vol. 3: Foreign Policy, War, and Racial Extermination (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2006), 1-8 (“Hitler’s Foreign Policy ‘Programme’”) & 135-136 (“Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact” (doc 543))

*Docs 3-11, in Lee Baker, The Second World War on the Eastern Front (Harlow: Pearson Logman, 2009)

Week 7

Mar 2                                    War and Genocide: The Holocaust in Eastern Europe

secondary readings

*J. Noakes & G. Pridham, Nazism: A Documentary Reader, vol. 3, 441-467 (“The Persecution of the Jews, 1939-1941”) & 483-501 (“The Role of the Einsatzgruppen and Police Battalions”)

*Christopher R. Browning, “One Day in Józefów: Initiation to Mass Murder,” in Art from the Ashes: A Holocaust Anthology, ed. Lawrence L. Langer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 95-105

In-Class Film Excerpt: The Pianist (dir. Roman Polanski, 2002)

Mar 4                                    Death Camps and Forced Labor

secondary readings

*J. Noakes & G. Pridham, Nazism: A Documentary Reader, vol. 3, 544-600, 627-629 (“The Extermination Camps”)

primary readings

*Tadeusz Borowski, “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen,” 29-49, in This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen (New York: Penguin Classics 1976)

Week 8

Mar 9                                    In-Class Midterm (materials from week 1 through 7)

Mar 11                        Axis Allies and the Jewish Question

secondary readings

Rothschild &Wingfield, Return to Diversity, 30-34, 45-55 (reread)

SPRING BREAK

Week 9

Mar 23                        Local Collaboration

secondary readings

*Jan T. Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (New York: Penguin, 2001), 1-7, 30-42 

Mar 25                        The Memory of Collaboration and Resistance

secondary readings

*Tony Judt, “The Past Is Another Country: Myth and Memory in Postwar Europe,” in The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath, eds., István Deák, Jan T. Gross, and Tony Judt (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 293-323

primary readings

Small Doses of Arsenic, 66-76

In-Class Film Excerpt: The Shop on Main Street (Czechoslovakia, 1965)

Week 10

Mar 30                        The End of War – Ethnic cleansing and Retribution

secondary readings

*Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans (New York: Palgrave, 1986), 39-80, 89-128 (“War and Flight” & “Expulsion and Deportation”)

primary readings

Heda Margolius Kovaly, Under A Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941-1968, 5-51

Apr 1                                     New Boundaries and Beginning of the Cold War 

secondary readings

Lonnie R. Johnson, Central Europe, 223-248 (“Spheres of Influence II: East and West, or ‘Yalta Europe’”)

primary documents

Gales Stokes, From Stalinism to Pluralism, 12-27, 28-42

Heda Margolius Kovaly, Under a Cruel Star, 52-92

Week 11

Apr 6                                    The Socialist Order

secondary readings

Rothschild & Wingfield, Return to Diversity, 61-99 (“The Communists Come to Power”)

primary readings

Gale Stokes, From Stalinism to Pluralism, 43-56

Heda Margolius Kovaly, Under a Cruel Star, 93-125

*M. Szymczyk, “Report on Young Women Workers in Poland,” 1952

Apr 8                                    Disciplining the Communist Bloc: Yugoslavia and Show Trials

secondary readings

Rothschild & Wingfield, Return to Diversity, 101-117 (“The Dialectics of Stalinism and Titoism”)

primary readings

Gales Stokes, From Stalinism to Pluralism, 57-65, 66-77

Heda Margolius Kovaly, Under a Cruel Star, 126-192

Kovaly Essay due

Week 12

Apr 13                        Resistance and Collaboration under Socialism

secondary readings

Rothschild & Wingfield, Return to Diversity, 118-152 (“The Revenge of the Repressed”)

primary documents

Gale Stokes, From Stalinism to Pluralism, 80-93, 100-106, 122-134, 156-174

Apr 15                        Everyday Life in Eastern Europe

secondary readings

*Essay on everyday life from “Making of 1989”

primary readings

*“Birth and Death in Romania,” New York Review of Books, October 23, 1986 (Making of 1989)

*“Vacations under Socialism,” (Romania, Making of 1989)

*“Women’s Reflections on Food Rationing in the 1980s,” (Romania, Making of 1989)

*“Women’s Reflections on Marital Relations under Socialism,” (Romania, Making of 1989)

*“Women’s Reflections on Work and Gender Relations under Socialism,” (Romania, Making of 1989)

Slavenka Drakuli?, How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed (all)

Week 13

Apr 20                        The Collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe

secondary readings

Rothschild & Wingfield, Return to Diversity, 181-209 (“The Various Endgames”)

primary readings

Gale Stokes, From Stalinism to Pluralism, 188-203, 214-215, 242-253, 256-272.

*Documents on the revolution in Czechoslovakia (From: The Making of 1989)

Drakuli? Essay due

Apr 22                         New Beginnings

secondary readings

*Tina Rosenberg, The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts After Communism (New York: Vintage, 1995), 3-42 (Czechoslovakia)

*Timothy Garton Ash, History of the Present: Essays, sketches, and Dispatches from Europe in the 1990s (New York: Random House, 2001), TBA

primary readings

*Vaclav Havel, “Independence Day Speech, 1990,” (Czechoslovakia, Making of 1989)

Week 14

Apr 27                        The Breakup of Yugoslavia

secondary readings

*Norman M. Naimark, “The Wars of Yugoslav Succession,” 139-184, in Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth Century Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002)

primary readings

Gale Stokes, From Stalinism to Pluralism, 273-288 (“The Collapse of Yugoslavia”)

*Excerpts from Children of Atlantis: Voices from the Former Yugoslavia (Budapest: CEU Press, 1995)

*Slavenka Drakuli?, “Overcome by Nationhood,” in Balkan Express: Fragments from the Other Side of War, TBA

Apr 29                        Intimate Enemies

primary readings

Joe Sacco, Safe Area Gorazde: The War in Eastern Bosnia, 1992-1995 (all)

In-Class Film Excerpt: We Are All Neighbors (Bosnia/Britain, 1993)

Week 15

May 4                                    Becoming One Europe?

secondary readings

Rothschild & Wingfield, Return to Diversity, 211-243 (“The Return to Europe”)

In-Class Film Excerpt: Return to Europe (Erste Stiftung, 2008)

May 6                                    Exam Review

Course Policies

University of Texas Honor Code

The core values of The University of Texas at Austin are learning, discovery, freedom, leadership, individual opportunity, and responsibility.  Each member of the university is expected to uphold these values through integrity, honesty, trust, fairness, and respect toward peers and community.  Any student found guilty of scholastic dishonesty may receive an “F” in the course and will be remanded to the appropriate University of Texas authorities for disciplinary action.  For more information, view Student Judicial Services at http://deanofstudents.utexas.edu/sjs.

A Note on the Use of Personal Electronic Devices

Individual students may be directed to turn off personal electronic devices if the devices are not being used for class purposes.  If the student does not comply, the student may be asked to leave the classroom.

A Note on Classroom Behavior

You have the right to learn in every class you attend.  But you have the responsibility to help assure that every other student shares that right.  Specifically:

• Come to class on time.  Do not leave early.  These things are very disruptive.  If you must come late or leave early, let the instructor know in advance and sit near the exit.
• Don't be disruptive during class.  Don't chat with your neighbor.  Don’t use your computer for anything else than taking notes or looking up course readings.
• Don't allow your electronic devices to be disruptive.  Turn off your cell phone, beeper, and watch alarm.
• Participate.

Documented Disability Statement

The University of Texas at Austin provides upon request appropriate academic accommodations for qualified students with disabilities.  For more information, contact Services for Students with Disabilities at 471-6259 (voice) or 232-2937 (video phone).  It is you responsibility to inform me about any accommodations that you might need early on in the semester.

Grading Scale

94-100: A

90-93: A-

87-89: B+

84-86: B

80-83: B-

77-79: C+

74-76: C

70-73: C-

67-69: D+

64-66: D

60-63: D-

0-59:   F

Instructions for Assignments

Format for written assignments:

• Typed, double-spaced, 12 point Times New Roman, 1 inch margins, numbered, stapled, and spell-checked
• You must footnote using the Chicago Style (style sheet will be posted on the course website).  Do not use parenthetical or endnotes!
•  Cover page with your name and essay title.

Submission:

• Hard copies only (your assignment is not considered submitted until you hand in a hard copy!)
• Assignments are due in class
• Late penalty is 3% per calendar day

Assignment # 1

Essay

Due: February 11, 2010

Length:  Two, double-spaced pages

Sylvia and Kevin Welner, eds., Small Doses of Arsenic: A Bohemian Woman’s Story of Survival (Hamilton Books, 2005) 

Small Doses of Arsenic is the memoir of Ton?a nee Drbohlavová, a woman born in Bohemia in 1905.  Her recollections about her life are captured in a series of letters that she sent to her son who immigrated to the United States in 1969.  She wrote the last letter shortly before she passed away in 2001. 

Question for Analysis:

In chapters 1 through 6 (3-66) Ton?a describes her childhood and youth.  What do we learn about the times in which she lived?  Drawing on examples from these chapters write a two-page paper in which you address a particular theme such as education, work, family life, illness and death, religion, the significance of social divisions, gender roles (these are merely suggestions if there is another theme from the book that you would like to focus on for this assignment you can do so).   

Once you have completed your essay, consider the following questions and bring your answers to class:

1. What did you find most surprising about Ton?a’s experiences so far?
2. What are the strengths and limitations of her memoir as a historical source?

Assignment # 2

Essay

Due: April 8, 2010

Length: Three, Double-spaced pages

Heda Margolius Kovály, Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941-1968 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1997)

Questions for Analysis:

1. According to Kovaly, how did the experiences of Czechs under Nazi occupation shape their responses to Communism after the war?  How does she show connections between those two sets of events in her own life and in the attitudes and actions of those close to her?  Does she depict the transition to Communism as a dramatic transformation of life in Czechoslovakia or as in key ways continuing developments from the period of the war?

1. On page 62, Kovaly writes, “Sometimes evil intensions produce good results and good intensions produce the exact opposite—everything depends on the context.”  What is she referring to?  What does this statement reveal about her view of human nature and her understanding of history?  Do you think she is right?  Why or why not?  

Assignment # 3

Essay

Due: April 20, 2010

Length: Three, Double-spaced pages

Slavenka Drakuli?, How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed (New York: W.W. Norton, 1992)

Question for Analysis:

Some scholars argue that it was the inability of the Communist regimes to provide their populations with basic amenities and consumer goods that first and foremost eroded their political legitimacy with ordinary men and women in Eastern Europe.  Drawing on Slavenka Drakuli?’s memoir, How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed, discuss the validity of this argument. 

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