Why study the Holocaust? One, it seems to me, glib answer is to learn from it and avoid such things ever again. I'm afraid this is not altogether convincing. I do not believe that the Holocaust presents us with simple lessons, that if we do this, then such and such is going to happen. All historical events are distinct, individual. So why do it? My answer to this is because we learn something about humanity. I cannot think of another subject which would raise fundamental questions about who we are as human beings as the events which occurred between 1939 and 1945. What I have in mind is that what would you have done? What would I have done? To this, of course, there is no answer because we never know. We will never know which one of us would have been good concentration camp guards. As our moral good fortune, nobody in this room was ever tried, I'm sure. I myself have not been tried. It's a difficult subject, the Holocaust, because there is so much emotion connected to it, one has to be so careful, one has to walk on eggshells not to hurt feelings because it raises such fundamental issues. What are we left with, my answer would be, is familiar wisdom. Wisdom, which is not the same as lessons, wisdom seems to me simply means that we learn more about the human condition, about the world in which we live. Now, does it assure that we are going to make wiser decisions? Can we take it for granted that therefore, in the future, people will not do such things as the Nazis? I'm afraid I'm not optimistic but it might be. It might be that if people are wiser, because learn more about humanity, they might act somewhat differently, and that's good enough. There's another reason, and I bring this up with some embarrassment, another reason for learning about the Holocaust. I bring it up with some embarrassment because it's not something that the historian can, or should, talk about. Namely, we owe it to the victims to know what happened to them. Why? I don't know, I cannot answer but the least we can do for them is not to turn our eyes away because it's too unpleasant. >> When Peter talks about we owing to the victims, part of every civilized culture is some way of dealing with the last generation. We bury them, we erect gravestones, we erect memorials and this raises the question historians don't want to talk about, which is memory. What we remember them and historians and memory and memorialization are not quite together. There's wonderful book by Yosef Yerushalmi, he called Zakhor, which quotes the Ten Commandments, or the Zakhor and other parts of the Hebrew text. >> What is the relationship of memory and history? That's an issue for you and it's maybe that literature is closer to this question of memorialization. By the way, look around yourselves and all the memory. >> Memory, history, memory, history. >> Look at all the memorials that are in Santa Cruz. Go across the street from the main post office, and you'll see a memorial for the Santa Cruzans who fought and died in World War I, and World War II. Where else are there memorials? One of the things that has happened is that there are many Holocaust memorials and one of the questions is are these to ask, in Germany, for example, for forgiveness for what was done? Is that what memorials are for? Is this also to ask what the Jews were like before? When I was first in Israel visiting my cousins who had fled from Germany, a West German TV crew was there. Remember, there were two Germanys at the time, in 1969. They were filming my cousins who had escaped and they were going to have a TV program in West Germany called Where Have All Our Jews Gone? I said, the Germans are doing this? These were the Jews who escaped but the others? How does one memorialize people and what does that mean in terms of a culture and a civilization? One of the things that Elie Wiesel is doing is the title of a talk I'm going to give later, somewhere else, he's accounting for Auschwitz and the end of liberal European culture. Many other of the writers we are reading will be telling you that that European culture ended with the crematorium. Some will say that Western European culture ended that had begun with Socrates and with the Hebrew Bible, and that we are in a different world since then. I know none of you were born in 1945 but Peter is 178 years old, and I'm 76. >> [LAUGH] >> We remember, something different happened after Word War II. >> It is not true that old age brings wisdom. >> [LAUGH] >> But you are the heirs of the old and the new and you will have to decide which and how and what, and there are movies like The Book Thief. There are all kinds of things that are talking about what happens to a culture when there is a huge break in the culture. There's all kinds of science fiction about that, which you read and who knows how many internet programs. We're going to be talking about history, and about literature, and about film. We're going to be reading history, reading literature, reading film, and we're going to be talking about these issues. As far as I can tell, there are as many seats in the room as there are students, so that I wanna say that if you're here now and you haven't yet signed up, you're in the class. You should try to go on and register in the class because apparently, people have left who had registered, or they're still asleep or whatever. So there should be enough room for all of you and I will give you permission codes on Wednesday, if you need them, if the computer will not let you sign up. You must sign up for a section and the problem of sections is, you must get into an open section. So I hope that will work for all of you. These are issues that are worrisome, etc.. This is also a course that fulfills several different kinds of requirements, including requirements for the Jewish Studies major and we'll be glad to talk them and of course, other kinds of requirements. This is also a course that we hope will raise major questions that will continue through your other courses. How many of you are first year students? How many are second year? Third year? Fourth year? >> How many of you are transfer students? A word about the situation in the room. There are some cameras here. There's also a camera in the back. The camera in the back is videotaping the class for class purposes. The cameras in the front are there because this will be a MOOC. It was already a Massive Open Online Course in different format, with different assignments, and you are required to tell your parents and your friends that come the summer, they must sign up on Coursera to take this course and you will give them a test. That was, of course, a joke but how can you tell? There will be cameras here, and various other people doing this and you will see different kinds of activities. I want now to look at a poem in the back of the syllabus with you. Before I do that, I want to ask if you have any questions. Question? So you looked at page three, and you saw Dry Tears, by the way, you're to finish reading Dry Tears this week and the Bauer that's listed, by Yehuda Bauer, you're gonna start reading and keep reading. This week, your work has started and find yourself a study partner, a [FOREIGN].
