UC Santa Barbara > History Department > Prof. Marcuse > Courses > Hist 133d > Jan. 2010 Introductory Survey
Screenshot of form questions 3, 4, 5

The Holocaust in German History, 2010:

Introductory Survey

compiled for UCSB Hist 133d

by Professor Harold Marcuse
(homepage)

page begun Jan. 23, 2010; last update: 1/23/10
Word Association:
Genocide
Word Association:
Holocaust
Prior Study
Books &
Films
Reasons for
Taking
Comments for
Professor
Links

Background (back to top)

  • In most of my classes I conduct various surveys to determine
    • how much students know
    • what preconceptions they have
    • why they are taking the course, and
    • what they are interested in learning in it.
  • The results of the 6 questions on this year's survey are below.
    39 students     took it, of 44 enrolled and 60 present on the first day.
  • The survey was conducted on feedbackfarm.com. (the link is to the results page of this survey, and probably won't work except for me)

Word Association: Cases of Genocide (back to top)

1) When the professor asked you to list examples of genocide, what did you write down in class? (One term per line, please)

I compiled these into a list and sorted them, aggregating similar items. This was not a very efficient way to do it, since feedbackfarm puts all the answers on one line and I had to enter paragraph marks before sorting. 39 respondents listed 105 items (39x3=117). Here is the result:

  • 22 Nazi/Holocaust/Jews
  • 19 Rwanda
  • 17 Armenia
  • 17 Darfur/Sudan
  • 7 Bosnia/Serbia/Kosovo/Albania
  • 5 Native American/Trail of Tears
  • 4 Kurds/Iraq
  • 3 Australia
  • 3 Cambodia
  • 3 Soviet/Ukraine/Gulag
  • 2 Palestine
  • 1 each
    Africa
    African-American slave trade
    Tibet

Association with "Holocaust' (back to top)

2) When the professor asked you to list some images/people/places/events that occurred to you when you heard the word "Holocaust," what did you write down? (One term per line, as many as you wrote down)

Again, I compiled these into a list and sorted them, aggregating similar items. Here is the result (227 items total, so about 6 each; 6 x 39 = 234):

  • 33 Hitler
  • 18 Auschwitz
  • 13 Anne Frank
  • 13 concentration (labor/death) camps
      6 individual camps: Belsen, Buchenwald, 2 Dachau, Majdanek, Treblinka
  •   9 gas chambers/ovens
  • Actions
    death, destruction, extermination, isolation, 5 starve/hungry, sterilization, torture
    3 mass killing, murder
    propaganda, 2 resistance (Jewish, Denmark)
  • Events
    5 Kristallnacht
    4 World War II
    D-Day, Stalingrad
  • Groups
    3 Gypsies
    3 Homosexuals
    3 mentally ill/disabled
    2 family
    Aryan race, Gestapo, SS, bystanders
  • Iconic Images
    Arbeit Macht Frei, Auchwitz Gate
    blood, dead/burning bodies, bones, cattle cars, graves slave suit, swastika, tattoo
  • People
    8 Himmler
    3 Eichman
    3 Elie Wiesel
    2 Schindler
    3 Stalin
    2 Primo Levi
    2 Mengele
    Goebbels, Hess, Mussolini, Amon Goeth
  • Places
    Europe
    9 Germany
    5 Poland
    2 ghettos
  • Other Things (book, film emotion,...)
    Mein Kampf
    Life is Beautiful
    numbers
    fear

Prior Study of the Holocaust or Genocide (back to top)

3) Have you studied the Holocaust or genocides before? (check all that apply)

  •   6=10% Yes, I've taken a full course
  • 18=29% I've done a unit in a high school course, or at another school
  • 20=32% I've done some self-study (books, films)
  •   4=  6% There is a Holocaust survivor in my family
  • 14=23% No, I've taken no courses

Books and Films on the Holocaust that you've seen (back to top)

4) What books and films about the Holocaust or German history have you seen? Please list the first ones (up to seven) that you think of, one per line.

20 students responded here; 2 couldn't remember anything specific. There were 132 items, so each of the 18 remembered on average 7 items!

  • Films (77 total)
    • 18: Schindler's List
    • 11: Anne Frank (those who named "Diary" are listed under books)
    • 8: Pianist
    • 7: Inglorious Basterds (2009 revenge phantasy)
    • 7: Life is Beautiful (Italian comedy)
    • 4: Boy in Striped Pyjamas (2008 release)
    • 4: Valkyrie (2008 release, German resistance)
    • 2: Devil's Arithmetic
    • 2: Escape from Sobibor (Optional film in my in Hist 2c)
    • 1 each:
      • Band of Brothers
      • Behind Enemy Lines
      • Black Book
      • Daniel's Story
      • Das Boot
      • Defiance
      • Downfall
      • Mein Kampf
      • QB VII
      • Reader
      • Saving Private Ryan
      • Sophie Scholl
      • Sophie's Choice
      • Uprising
  • Books (45 total)
    • 12: Night
    • 10: Diary of Anne Frank
    •   2 each:
      • Drowned & Saved
      • Escape from Sobibor + From the Ashes of Sobibor
      • Man's Search for Meaning
      • Maus
      • Number the Stars
    • 1 each:
      • Fateless
      • Final Journey
      • Freedom Writers
      • I Have Lived a Thousand Years
      • In My Hands
      • Naked Among Wolves
      • Nazi Officer's Wife
      • Ordinary Men
      • Stones in the Water
      • Survival in Auschwitz
      • This Way to the Gas, Ladies & Gentlemen
      • Those who save us
      • Woman in Berlin

Requirement Reasons for Taking Course (back to top)

5) Are you taking this course to fulfill any of these requirements? (Check all that apply.)

  • 20=41% History major units
  • 13=26% Not taking it because of requirements, or only secondarily 
  •   8=16% GE Area E
  •   4=  8% GE European Traditions GE writing
  •   3=  6% GE Writing
  •   1=  2% GE depth (School of Engineering)

total of 49 (so 10 checked more than one)

Specific Comments -- Topics you want to learn about? (back to top)

6) Optional: do you have any comments for the professor? Any topics that you especially want to see covered in this course? (Note: this survey is anonymous)

20 students responded

  1. nothing in particular. The class already seems extremly interesting!
  2. Really excited about taking this class. Interested in why the Germans started and intentions to Holocaust. Interested in the survivors from the Holocaust. Interested in the different camps and how each one operated. Interested in those Germans who were against the camps and Hitler's ways. What did the Germans who were against Hitler do. How did the people in camps survive. What other types of poeple were in the camps that are not really known.

  3. To gain even more knowledge about the Holocaust and the reasons behind it. I would like to learn more about the people affected more than just Hitler and Germany, more about Poland, the Russians, and strategies people used to get out and around it.
  4. I really hope we cover a lot of material on the actual history of the holocaust and hope we do not hit on WWII.
  5. I am very interested in the effects of the Holocaust on Europe once information about the camps and what really happened became available to the public.
  6. I'm not a history major, but have always had an interest in taking more history classes. I don't have the same background as other students in the class, but I work hard and am interested in learning a lot in your class. Thank you for trying to accommodate the crashers.
  7. I hope to find out more about the world power/economic/health models that were developed by Hitler's party and the masses that followed them.
  8. I want to learn more about the Germans and how and why did the situation escalate so much. I also want to better understand why people allowed the holocaust to occur.
  9. I would like to know more about the Armenian genocide.
  10. I would really just like to go very in depth in this part of History. It is probably the only thing that really interested me in any of the History classes I have ever taken. I would really like to find out about the survivors and their experiences through this whole thing.
  11. I want to look into memoirs and also do an in depth study of German history prior to the Holocaust to understand how Hitler was able to accomplish the Holocaust.
  12. I would be interesting in learning more about the comparison of the Holocaust to other Genocides that have happened through history which are less infamous, and why, and less studied.
  13. Since I am the grandchild of survivors, I know their story very well and it personally. I would be interested in hearing about other peoples stories from the perspective of the grandchild. And see if they were affected by it as much as I was.
  14. I would like to cover the causes to the holocaust.
  15. Foreign involvement and general history/ideology in germany at the time.
  16. I would really like to learn about other genocides that have taken place around the world.
  17. I would like to know more about the assassination attempts on Hitler.
  18. The effects after the Holocaust ended, what happened to this dislocated people and how were people reintroduced back into their lives previously or what kind of changes did they undergo once they went home from the concentration camps as well as other after math of the events.
  19. How the Poles and the Germans memorialize the Holocaust? How do survivors respond to what Levi calls the Gray Zone? Can victims be perpetrators? How does a nation willingly succumb to committing the horrors that now define Nazi Germany? How has the Holocaust become the epitome of all genocides? What does that mean for other genocides that do not follow the same course of action as the events that lead to the Holocaust? (Does this mean others are less legitimate or less important?)
  20. maybe how the holocaust affected other countries, not just those that are involved. possibly underground resistance during the holocaust would be something really cool to look at.

Links (back to top)

Other course surveys I've given with results posted on the web
Page created Jan. 23, 2010; updated see header
back to top, to Hist 133d homepage, to Prof. Marcuse's homepage