Beyond Borders: Jewish Survival during the Holocaust

Catalog description

What role did geography and terrain play in how Jews responded to the persecution carried out by the National Socialist regime and its collaborators from 1933-1945? We will examine the physicality of space including ghettos, hiding spaces and architectural structures, as well as physical landscapes and killing fields. At the core of these modules is how geography was integral not only to persecution in the Holocaust but also to Jewish responses and survival. The module takes an interdisciplinary approach and utilizes materials from a variety of disciplines including history, language arts, and the humanities. Each week we also examine excerpts from the recorded and written accounts of Holocaust survivors to discover how individuals, families and communities responded to Nazi persecution. Historical film footage, photographs, and documents are also used to contextualize how Jews demonstrated agency in midst of an unprecedented genocidal campaign that swept across Europe and extended into the former Soviet Union, Scandinavia, and North Africa.