220130 Complicity in the Holocaust. A European Perspective (GSH) (WiSe 2023/2024)

What did it mean to be accomplices during the Holocaust? What different roles can be identified in the wide area between perpetrators and victims, and what can their historical and moral significance be? What did it mean to act as collaborators, cooperators, denouncers, bystanders? Last but not least, is it possible to analyse the topic of complicity from a European perspective, and if so, how?

In this seminar, we will address the conceptual and theoretical aspects of the analysis of complicity in the first block (October 21 and 22, 2023). In the second block (November 4 and 5, 2023) we will focus on various case studies from selected countries. On the one hand, we will deepen our knowledge of Nazi Germany as initiator of the annihilation of the European Jews, thereby looking at both its mechanisms of power and the role of its so-called "majority population" in the Holocaust as a "social process". On the other, we will take other spatial perspectives into account, and critically reflect on the significance that the specific contingencies of each territory, as well as the historiographical and memorialistic traditions of such territories can have on the study of complicity.

The seminar texts will be in English, and the discussions will also be held entirely in English. However, students will have the option of taking the (oral) examination in English or German - in the language in which they feel most comfortable.

The introductory meeting is scheduled for 9 October 2023, 10-12am.