2.3.3 Changing demographics

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Do curso por University of California, Santa Cruz

Holocausto: A Destruição dos Judeus Europeus

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University of California, Santa Cruz

Holocausto: A Destruição dos Judeus Europeus

126 ratings

The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry is an adaptation of an on-campus course that has been co-taught by Murray Baumgarten, Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature (Literature Department), and Peter Kenez, Professor Emeritus (History Department), for over 20 years at UC Santa Cruz. In this course, you will explore the Holocaust from the overlapping perspectives of literature and history—through memoirs, historical documents, poetry, documentary footage, filmic representations, and novels. You will expand your knowledge of the literature of the Holocaust, Eastern and Western European Jewish communities, the origins and development of antisemitism, the establishment of labor and extermination camps, resistance movements, and the Holocaust as a problem for world history. There is more than one way to take this course: You can complete all of the activities (and earn a Verified Certificate) or only the activities that are most interesting to you. Whatever you choose to do, we encourage you to find a havruta (a study partner) in your community or in the Coursera community so that you can experience the course in a more interactive and meaningful way.

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Prelude to the Holocaust

In this module Profs. Baumgarten and Kenez discuss the changing demographics and political landscape of early 20th century Eastern Europe, Jewish identity, the Bildungsroman, Silvano Arieti’s The Parnas, Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz, Aharon Appelfeld’s Badenheim 1939, and Elie Wiesel’s Night.

2.3.1 Jewry of the Russian Empire18:11

2.3.2 The Russian state16:05

2.3.3 Changing demographics9:21

2.3.4 Pogroms in the Russian Empire and the USSR13:48

2.3.5 Jewish identity7:08

Conheça os instrutores

Murray Baumgarten
Distinguished Professor of English & Comparative Literature
Literature
Peter Kenez
Professor Emeritus
History

This is a process in which most

countries go through.

Namely, there is first a decline in mortality and

the birth rates remain the same.

And consequently, the population greatly increases.

And then, once you reach a certain stage of development, then the birth rates

also decline and the population stabilizes at a much higher level.

Now, what I am saying that this with the Jews occurred at an earlier stage

than with the rest of the population of the Russian Empire.

So this is really an extraordinary phenomenon that there were so many Jews.

Well, hygienes and where you see marrying at an early age and

when the Jewish women would have ten,

twelve children, and they had a better chance of

survival than their Ukrainian fellow citizens.

And consequently, the demographic growth was even greater.

All over the Russian empire in the course of the 19th century

the demographic growth is very significant, among Jews even more so.

So what was Jewish response to all that?

It seems to me there were three possible responses.

One, assimilation was not a possibility.

Assimilation, acculturation was not a possibility.

One possibility was, that was the best, immigration.

And this what the largest number, that is

from the rest of the empire, Ukrainians and Latvians and Albanians

also participated in this mass movement into the New World.

Among Jews, it was much, much higher percentage.

And the reason for this is obvious, because they were indeed

ruthless cosmopolitans, as the anti-Semites called them.

And they did not feel themselves to have any obligations to the Russian state.

And they did not feel themselves at home.

Now, the interesting thing is that among emigres,

among immigrants who came to the United States, for example,

the proportion of Jews who returned was much smaller

than the proportion among Ukrainians and Hungarians, Czechs, and what have you.

That is Jews were more likely to stay rather than go back.

They had less attraction to return.

So this is one possibility which was widely used.

And it made a great deal of difference.

That is, when you think about the current American Jewry,

the great majority of that Jewry has its background in the old Russian Empire.

I mean, obviously, some Jews came from Germany, and Hungary and what not.

But the bulk of it, when you really scratch it a little,

you will find the grandfather who came from the old Russian Empire.

That's how American Jewry was born.

The other possibility was Zionism.

Now, the interesting thing it seemed to me that Herzel wrote his book,

published his book, I think, in 1894, Der Judenstaat.

Zionism in them, which was not called Zionism, preexisted Herzel,

in as much as there was a recognition that we have no future here and

in we should then have a choice in going to Palestine.

Very few took advantage of this because of the difficulties.

That is, Zionism became a much more serious force

in the first decade of the 20th century in the Russian Empire

than it would be in Western Europe, for again for obvious reasons.

However, this was a relatively small number of people.

The third possibility was to find salvation in Marxism,

socialism, the promise that the Marxist

socialism would supersede national prejudices and

[INAUDIBLE] create the socialist state.

In that socialist state, there will be no anti–Semitism.

And so it's not surprising that a much larger percentage of the Jews

chose this route than non-Jews.

Now, this is very significant because in the Bolshevik and

in the Menshevik, the Mensehvik's mother at socialist.

In the leadership there were a disproportionate number of Jews.

And consequently, it allowed the Nazis, and not only the Nazis, but

the surrounding population to equate Bolshevism and Judaism.

This is immensely significant,

immensely significant to understand Nazi success.

The Nazis genuinely made no distinction between Bolshevism and Judaism.

A Jew was a Bolshevist.

We'll kill commissars and Jews, to get ahead of my story.

Now, you and I know that most Jews were not Bolsheviks,

and most Bolsheviks were not Jews.

But nonetheless, the equation,

it's very significant.

So the Jews had a major role to play in establishing

the first Russian Socialist Party.

They were, however, very quickly,

they were excluded in '93 in as much as the Jews asked for,

that is Jewish socialists, asked for

autonomy in organizing Jewish workers.

And that made a great deal of sense since these Jewish workers could be reached

only in Yiddish because most of them did not speak Ukrainian or

Russian or what have you.

However, the socialist leadership, Bolsheviks and

Mensheviks, and many of these leaders themselves were Jewish,

were unwilling to grant that autonomy for Jewish self-organization.

And consequently, what was created, a Jewish socialist movement, the Bund.

The Bund, which retained an existence in a more or

less significant fashion,

even after the demise of the Tsarist Empire.

In the case of Poland, Bundist publications

continued to appear up to very recently.

And so, there was Jewish socialism.

That is, many of the Jews were simply part of the Bolshevik or

Menshevik parties, while other Jews were part of this

autonomous, Jewish socialist movement, the Bund.

All right.

In case of economic downturn, and

in times of great upheaval, social and otherwise,

there's a rise of antisemitism that's not good for the Jews.

And consequently,

by the second half of the 19th century, we see a series of pogroms.

Now, what is a pogrom, and how do we envisage a pogrom?

It's more or less unorganized attack on Jewish families,

on occasion including murder and rape and

taking of property, looting Jewish businesses.

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