HU Credits: 2

Degree/Cycle: 2nd degree (Master)

Responsible Department: The Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry

Semester: 2nd Semester

Teaching Languages: Hebrew

Campus: Mt. Scopus

Course/Module Coordinator: Dr. Raz Segal

Coordinator Email: raz.segal@gmail.com

Coordinator Office Hours: Monday, 11:00-12:00

Teaching Staff:
Raz Segal

Course/Module description:
The seminar will address the persecution, the deportations, and the mass murder of Jews in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Greece, focusing in particular on the context of World War II and the multi-layered mass atrocities that occurred in the Balkans. We will ask new questions on the period of the war and the Holocaust and explore new directions of research beyond the more common frame of the German-occupied territories in Poland and the Soviet Union. Each session will deal with methodological and historiographical issues concerning the relations between Jews and their neighbors in the broader context of interethnic relations, especially in the region’s borderlands; the ways in which government systems (authoritarian, fascist, totalitarian), political ideologies, and occupation regimes facilitated or sometimes prevented mass violence; the links between the various genocides and mass atrocities; and civil wars. We will also examine the people who took part in the violence – those in official positions as well as ordinary men and women – and we will ask specifically about the role of the “bystanders” who challenge the tripartite division between perpetrators, victims, and people who allegedly remained uninvolved. The discussion in each class will be based on critical reading of current scholarship and primary sources such as reports and correspondence of governrment offices, personal diaries and letters, photos, and postwar testimonies.

Course/Module aims:
The course aims to raise new questions in the study of the Holocaust and World War II through discussions of recent scholarship. The course moves the focus from the German-occupied territories in Poland and the Soviet Union to the states allied with Nazi Germany in the Balkans; and offers analyses that place the persecution and mass murder of Jews in those states within the broader contexts of war, mass violence, and interethnic relations from the late nineteenth century.

Learning outcomes - On successful completion of this module, students should be able to:
(1)Discuss pieces of scholarship by raising at least three questions about main arguments, research approaches, primary sources, and issues of methodology
(2)Connect central processes in the history of Europe from the end of the nineteenth century until the beginning of the twenty-first century to events during World War II
(3)Compare between events by tracing the shifting meanings of central research categories in the scholarship on the Holocaust and World War II
(4)Analyze historical events beyond their known results
(5)Write a seminar paper that offers in-depths reading of primary sources in light of current scholarship

Attendance requirements(%):
100

Teaching arrangement and method of instruction: Discussion in class on the reading material

Course/Module Content:
(1) The study of mass violence in the Balkans in World War II in broad historical frames
(2) The Balkans in the modern period: from empires to nation states
(3) Between world wars? The possibilities of the 1920s and 1930s
(4) Mass violence and mass murder in “Greater Romania” during World War II
(5) Transylvania: the clash between “Greater Romania” and “Greater Hungary”
(6) Fascism and murderous Croatian nationalism
(7) The German occupation of Serbia and the “final solution”
(8) Salonika, 1918-1945
(9) Mass robbery and mass violence in the Balkans
(10) Jews and non-Jews in multiethnic, multi-religious and multi-lingual borderlands
(11) Civil wars: nationalism, Communism, and the politics of a new world (dis)order
(12) Bystanders, collaboration, antisemitism: research categories in a complex world
(13) The Holocaust in modern history

Required Reading:
Week 1: The study of mass violence in the Balkans in World War II in broad historical frames
Biondich, The Balkans, chapter 1, pp. 1-44

Week 2: The Balkans in the modern period: from empires to nation states
Biondich, The Balkans, chapter 2, pp. 45-94

Week 3: Between world wars? The possibilities of the 1920s and 1930s
Theodora Dragostinova, “Speaking National: Nationalizing the Greeks of Bulgaria, 1900-1939” Slavic Review 67 (1) (2008), 154-181

Week 4: Mass violence and mass murder in “Greater Romania” during World War II
Vladimir Solonari, “An Important New Document on the Romanian Policy of Ethnic Cleansing during World War II,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 21 (2) (2007), 268-297

Week 5: Transylvania: the clash between “Greater Romania” and “Greater Hungary”
Holly Case, Between States: The Transylvanian Question and the European Idea during World War II (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), chapters 1 and 5, pp. 9-66 and 175-198



Week 6: Fascism and murderous Croatian nationalism
Emily Greble Balić, “When Croatia Needed Serbs: Nationalism and Genocide in Sarajevo (1941-1942),” Slavic Review 68 (1) (2009), 116-138
Alexander Korb, “Understanding Ustaša Violence,” Journal of Genocide Research 12 (1-2) (2010), 1-18

Week 7: The German occupation of Serbia and the “final solution”
Walter Manoschek, “The Extermination of the Jews in Serbia,” in Ulrich Herbert (ed.), Nationalist Socialist Extermination Policies: Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies (New York: Berghahn Books, 2000), 163-185

Week 8: Salonika, 1918-1945
Mark Mazower, Solinica, City of Ghosts: Christian, Muslims, and Jews, 1430-1950 (New York: Vintage Books, 2006), part 3, pp. 275-428

Week 9: Mass robbery and mass violence in the Balkans
Mary C. Neuberger, Balkan Smoke: Tobacco and the Making of Modern Bulgaria (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013), chapter 5, pp. 134-166
Gábor Kádár and Zoltán Vági, “’Solving the Jewish Question’ versus the ‘Interests of Production’: The Economic Aspects of the Hungarian Holocaust,” in Judit Molnár (ed.), The Holocaust in Hungary: A European Perspective (Budapest: Balassi Kiadó, 2005), 518-532

Week 10: Jews and non-Jews in multiethnic, multi-religious and multi-lingual borderlands
Raz Segal, “Imported Violence: Carpatho-Ruthenians and Jews in Carpatho-Ukraine, October 1938-March 1939,” Polin: Studies on Polish Jewry 26 (2013),
Diana Dumitru, “Constructing Interethnic Conflict and Cooperation: Why Some People Harmed Jews and Others Helped Them during the Holocaust in Romania,” World Politics 63 (1) (2011), 1-42

Week 11: Civil wars: nationalism, Communism, and the politics of a new world (dis)order
Stanley G. Payne, Civil War in Europe, 1905-1949 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), part 3, pp. 193-224

Week 12: Bystanders, collaboration, antisemitism: research categories in a complex world
David Engel, “Away from a Definition of Antisemitism: An Essay in the Semantics of Historical Description,” in Jeremy Cohen and Moshe Rosman (eds.), Rethinking European Jewish History (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2009), 30-53
Tim Cole, “Writing ‘Bystanders’ into Holocaust History in More Active Ways: ‘Non-Jewish’ Engagement with Ghettoization, Hungary 1944,” Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History 11 (1) (2005), 55-74
Timothy Snyder, “Collaboration in the Bloodlands,” his response in a review forum about his book Bloodlands, in Journal of Genocide Research 13 (3) (2011), 339-352

Additional Reading Material:
Required reading:

Mark Biondich, The Balkans: Revolution, War, and Political Violence Since 1878 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011)

Course/Module evaluation:
End of year written/oral examination 0 %
Presentation 0 %
Participation in Tutorials 7 %
Project work 60 %
Assignments 33 %
Reports 0 %
Research project 0 %
Quizzes 0 %
Other 0 %

Additional information:
Course requirements:
Every student should submit three response questions on each session’s reading. The questions should focus on analytical issues open to debate and discussion, not summarize the articles or chapters. Response questions should be sent to me via email (as attachments) no later than 10:00pm on the day before class. Please state your name, date, and the response question number (by weeks) at the top of your response.

Final papers: every student should email me no later than the fifths week of the course to set a time for a meeting about the final paper. After meeting with me, every student should submit a proposal (around 2 double-spaced pages) for seminar papers (around20 pages, double-spaced, font 12) or shorter papers (around 10 pages, double-spaced, font 12). Seminar papers should focus on primary sources, such as testimonies, official correspondence, photos, personal letters, or diaries. A proposal should include a research question, the relevant sources to address it, and an initial bibliography.