Coming to Terms with the Holocaust, Part 5: Eyewitnesses to the Holocaust

About this course:

In this course, we explore—through their own words—the experiences and consciences of Nazi perpetrators, bystanders, and Jews condemned to the ghettos and the death camps. We begin with the letters and diaries of men who served on the front lines of the murder units. Then we look closely at a representative German village which drove out its Jewish residents and residents' recollections of their home. We explore the thinking of descendants of the leaders of the Reich about the crimes their parents and grandparents committed. And we close with a study of the rise and fall of Vilnius, Lithuania; the one-time Jerusalem of Europe.