Genocide in the Modern World

Course Questions

• Why does genocide take place – the causes?
• Who participates in genocide? Why some and not others?
• What is evil?
• What is good?
• What can be done?

Course Requirements

• Four short papers and one report on a topic of your choice. No tests or quizzes.
• Most important your informed and thoughtful participation in class discussions. This is a discussion class and all of your insights are necessary.

­Class Topics

• What is genocide?
• What is a holocaust? The UN laws
• The roots of anti Semitism in Germany
• The roots of anti-Semitism in Germany
• Obedience to authority
• Hitler’s rise to power
• Hitler’s rise to power and world view _ Mein Kampf
• Hitler’s rise to power – Triumph of the Will
• The Nazi Party
• Legal persecution of the Jews – when the legal becomes illegal
• Deportation – the ghettoes - Neighbors
• The ghettoes
• Mobil killing squads – Ordinary Men
• Resistance
• Origins of the Final Solution, The Eternal Jew
• Nazi Doctors
• The SS and SS Leadership – Eichmann in Jerusalem

Shindler’s List in the evening

• The Camps
• The Camps – Treblinka
• Man’s Search for Meaning
• Man’s Search for Meaning
• Why was it not stopped?
• A brief historical overview of Rwanda
• Origins of the Rwandan Genocide – Holocaust or Genocide?
• What caused the genocide? History, The Hutu Power Movement, Politics
• What caused the genocide?
• Who participated and why?
• Who participated and why?
• The methodology of the genocide?
• Resistance – The Hotel Rwanda
• Why was it not stopped?
• The role of organizations – The churches, businesses, governments
• A brief historical overview of Cambodia
• Origins of the Cambodian Genocide – Holocaust or Genocide?
• What caused the genocide? History, Pol Pot and Marxism
• What caused the genocide?
• Who participated and why?
• Resistance – The Killing Fields
• The methodology of the genocide?
• Personal Responsibility – the lessons Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed
• Forgiveness – The Sunflower
• International Law and responsibility
• What do we stand for?
• Personal Responsibility in a dictatorship