The Holocaust in the USSR

Following the trials of the immediate postwar, and the Historikerstreit of the 1980s, the study of the Holocaust has another significant turn with the opening of the Soviet archives beginning in the 1990s. The Holocaust in the USSR expands our knowledge of the catastrophe, situating the latter phases of emblematic extermination camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau against a longer continuum of personalized, individual violence. The “Holocaust by Bullets” as coined by Father Desbois has parallels to other colonial violence and further explains the genocidal process from dehumanization to militarily crafted murder to institutions of extermination. This course specifically addresses the Holocaust in the USSR with a focus on historical research methods, expanded victim groups, testimony, archival research, denial, and rigorous historiographical grounding. Materials include testimonies from the USC Shoah Foundation and Fortunoff Archives, historiographical surveys like Wachsmann’s KL and Friedländer’s Years of Extermination, and important books with new turns in Holocaust scholarship specifically on the USSR like Lower’s Hitler’s Furies and Snyder’s Black Earth. Our class will be supplemented by field trips to YIVO, the Bukharian Jewish Center, and the Museum of Jewish Heritage, giving students hands-on experience with archival materials and research methods. Together, diverse research methods and materials present students with a more complete understanding of the Holocaust and an excellent foundation to continue research in atrocity studies.