Holocaust Literature and Remembrance

This course is divided into sections that focus on individual survivor testimonies as well as selected media portrayals.  In teaching the Holocaust, it's tempting to provide the most striking narratives, the ones that feel the most unbelievable because the Nazi atrocities truly were unbelievable in scope and cruelty.  However, it's important that the narratives we share are true.  It's important that we don't allow the myths of the Holocaust to degrade our memory of the reality of what happened.

Following the recommendation from Luke Berryman's article, the majority of sources are narratives by witnesses and survivors — materials that are centered on factual observation rather than imaginative interpretation.  For the few works of fiction or dramatization, the works are chosen because they accurately represent very specific events surrounding the Holocaust.