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