Prof. Marcuse, UCSB Hist 33D,
L 13: The End of the Holocaust
(Nov. 7, 2002)

Last Lecture: Ethics (L 12)

Questions: What motivates people to do good (or evil)?
[How do people decide what is the "right" thing to do?]

Answer:

Their "moral horizon" (3 stages after Kohlberg)
1. Pre-conventional (egocentric)
2. Conventional (primary group; law-and-order)
3. Post-conventional (universal perspective)

Stages of Moral Consciousness (after Kohlberg, Habermas)
scanned from Juergen Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (MIT Press, 1995, 166f). (presentation at a 1997 scholarly conference, where I discussed this)

Stages of Moral Consciousness table, page 1Stages of Moral Consciousness table, page 2

Professor's see-saw model

See-saw model of the moral balance of society

Pernkopf's Atlas: Ethics of Choice

Pernkopf's Atlas, 1989 ed., figure 336Perkopf 1989 ed., figure 336, detail of EndtreSSer's signature

Let's assume: political prisoners were executed in Vienna, and their corpses given to Pernkopf's team of artists to dissect for making the illustrations. And some of those artists were proud members of the Nazi party and SS (Erich Lepier put a swastika after his name; Karl Endtresser used the SS runes in his signature--they've been airbrushed back to normal in current editions of the atlas).
If using the illustrations in this atlas can save lives today, should we use it?

Today's Question

How did the Holocaust come to an end?

The trajectory of genocide

11 months later

Fortunes of War

Chaos at the end

Dachau statistics

HALF of all (registered) deaths occurred in last 6 months before liberation.
1933-1944: average 4/day; 1945: more than 100/day
1940-1943: 1000-3000 deaths per year (only twice more than 400/mo.)
1944:   403 in October,
             997 in Nov.
          1,915 in Dec.
          2,625-3,977 Jan.-Apr. 1945

Several slides were shown:

Map of concentration camps in 1930s
Map of camps in 1944, showing proliferation of subcamps
Map showing front lines in 1944-45, and evacuation marches from Auschwitz
Scene at Maidanek at liberation in July 1944
Civilians being led through Auschwitz, Jan. 1945

Announcements I

Announcements II

Announcements III

Impacts (see textbook! [Landau, chap. 10])


created Nov. 9, 2003 by H. Marcuse
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