Hist 33D, Lecture 10:
Role of Science (role in Religion)

• Review: EIEIO
• Film clip: "Selling Murder" (14 mins.)
• Role of science (use eieio)
• Announcements (journals due Thu/Tue)
• Role in  religion (Christianity, Judaism)

Last Thursday

• Question: What factors played a role in causing  the Holocaust? In allowing  it to happen?
  In general, what things play a role in allowing and making historical events happen?
• Answer: 5 broad categories, interconnected:
  • Economic factors (Marxism: these underlie all others)
  • International factors (diplomacy, intervention)
  • Elites (behavior of groups w/ special access to power)
  • Ideology/Information/Media: perception of the world
  • "Opposition": people, human agents

EIEIO "Theory" (diagram from last time)

Today's Question(s)

• What role did science play incausing  the Holocaust?
  In allowing  it to happen? (precondition)
• [What role did religion play? (see textbook)]
  How has "Auschwitz" been explained by religions?

Film Clip (14 mins.)

• "Selling Murder" by Michael Burleigh (essay in his Death and Deliverance, 1994)
  • Discovery channel, May 1993
• Propaganda films:
  • 1935: for Nazi party members and sympathsizers
  • 1937 "Victims of the Past" shown in cinemas
  • 1939 "Existence without Life," commissioned by T4 staff after gassings
    this is the selection we will watch, plus 2 mins. of interviews today
  • 1941 "I Accuse": feature film, 18 mio. Viewers
• Hadamar (near Frankfurt); [Hannah in TV miniseries Holocaust ]
• Orderly Paul Reuter, survivor Elvira Manthey
• Aktion "T4" from address in Berlin: Tiergartenstrasse 4
• While watching: note EIEIO factors mentioned

Role of Science (medicine)?

• In museums we visited? In readings? (textbook 167, 186f) NONE.
• Economics
• International connections
• Elites
• Ideology, knowledge
• Opposition

Announcements

• Videos now in Kerr Hall
• Journals due this Thursday with 5 entries, or next Tuesday with 6
• Checks for drivers who gave me gas receipts:
  after class, or during office hours (need your car license plate number)
• Question: how is German class going?
• Final exam options? (midterm evaluation on Thu)
• pass out Q2 and journals

Religion: Christianity

• Role of religious institutions in Holocaust
  • Churches: textbook pp. 215-221
• Role of Holocaust in Christian theology
  • Christian antisemitism overlaps racial antisemitism
  • Nature of God: 2 visions; no grave consequences
    "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"
    "Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do."

Religion: Judaism

Judaism (9 positions)
• Question of theodicy
• Just punishment for past sins
• Vicarious atonement (for sins of others)
• Test of faith (Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac)
• Inscrutable mystery, transcends human understanding
• God turned away temporarily
• God is dead
• Ultimate human  evil
• Affirmation of Jewish survival (human agency)

Wednesday evening, 5-7pm

• Film "Escape from Sobibor," 120 mins.
  • With Alan Arkin and Rutger Hauer
  • 1987 made-for-TV movie
• Uprising in extermination  camp, Oct. 1943:after  Warsaw ghetto and Treblinka
• Survivor Thomas "Toivi" Blatt (Santa Barbara, LA Museum of Holocaust)
• Ca. 350 escapees, 90-100 survived until end of war

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