The Third Reich & The Holocaust, Week Eight: Liberation, Trials, & Aftermath

Over the course of this semester, our study of the Holocaust began with a Band of Brothers clip of the liberation of Dachau. At the time, I wanted to get the feel of seeing the camps for the first time like those Americans did and then grow the class around how it happened, why, the legacy of the holocaust. This first clip, is mostly stuff we've covered but puts it firmly into our timeline here at the end.

What is the Holocaust Part 7/7: Perfecting Industrial Murder (1942-1945)

As the Allies move east, and the Soviets move west, the camps were liberated. So the question of "Now what?" moves through the masses of displaced people.

Holocaust Survivors: First Steps in the DP Camps and New Beginnings

After liberation and the end of the war, Germany was divided up by the Allies, but what happened to the leaders of the Nazis? The Nuremberg Trials.

What Happened at the Nuremberg Trials?

One of the largest areas of academic study of the Holocaust is human healing, memory, and the roles people played in the inception of Nazi ideology to genocide. There are two terms that came with this study in regards to Germans and Nazis: collective guilt versus individual responsibility. Many times history is just as guilty of handing out judgement based on culture and ethnicity as the Nazis or other groups that categorize broadly. The collective guilt in reference to this section of history says that no matter what role a German played-- perpetrator or bystander or even actively resistant-- the guilt belongs to society as a whole. Individual responsibility leaves it to what it says, the individual. But the problem many faced was a marshland of accusations-- some claiming they were resistant to save face or coming out against Nazism after its fall. Typically, most historians fall back on collective guilt in regards to the Holocaust-- whether "fair" or not. I can see the merits of both trains of thought, but in this aftermath, it was clear that shame and guilt should be applied broadly to make sure it never happened again. I think of the moment when Eisenhower forced the citizens of towns near concentration camps to walk through the terrors, to witness the bleakness of humanity's lowest point. It was unfathomable to suggest that these people had no idea what was happening.

These photos are of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, located in Berlin, Germany. It is designed to look orderly, but once you move into the blocks, it becomes disorientating.The further in you walk, the taller the blocks become giving you the feeling that you are lost within order. 

As a result of assigning collective guilt, the shame of the Holocaust has come down through the descendants of the perpetrators and the victims, casting a shadow even today.

How Germany Grapples with its Dark Nazi Past

The Third Reich and the Holocaust are part of the German conscience today. This next clip is of Flula Borg on the Conan Show. We began the clip at 0:50 and watched to the end. It's interesting to see how the taint of that history stays with the younger generations. This clip is from last summer.

Flula Borg's Favorite Action Film is Die Hard- Conan on TBS

We made it to the end. We've spent time on the details, on the human elements, and the infinite number of why's. What do we do with this information? Should we do anything with it? Antisemitism and Nazism are not dead. Genocide is rampant around the world, and neo-Nazism is on the rise.

Elie Wiesel, the author of this semester's book closes the class out.

Elie Wiesel: Universal Lessons