The Holocaust in the Soviet Union: History and Memory

Catalog description

This course explores the early phase of the Final Solution plan as it crystallized in the Soviet Union, popularly known as the Holocaust by Bullets. Beginning with the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, signed by Nazi Germany and the USSR in August, 1938 and concluding with the allied victory over the Nazis in May, 1945, we will learn about the Holocaust within the boundaries of the Soviet Union (both the pre- and post-1939), on the impact that it had both on Soviet society and its Jewish minority, and on the enduring legacy it had throughout the Cold War era. We will conclude with the war in Ukraine and explore the extent to which the Holocaust, in today's Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet satellites, still validates the words of William Faulkner, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."