Scheduled for Maymester 2025, JWST 300: “Jewish Life and the Holocaust: Germany, Lithuania, and Poland” will travel to a number of age-old cities and towns of Jewish culture in Europe. Throughout our travels, we will trace the stories of once flourishing communities in addition to the history of the Holocaust.

In Berlin, we will explore neighborhoods once home to centuries of Jewish life as well as those now housing the more recent arrival of new Jewish immigrants to this haunted city. The German capital was a hub of Jewish business and wealth at the same time it housed many poor Jews whose lives were nothing like the myths of Jewish power spread by Nazi propaganda. This city is a prime place to explore the highs and lows of Jewish history right alongside the locations in which Nazi leaders thought up and spread those lies.

The Berlin of today and that of the years before 1933 also stand out as centers of LGBTQ life, culture, and identity. Our trip will discuss the lives of bi, gay, lesbian, and trans Germans as they lived before the Nazis and what happened to them in the years after 1933. The diversity of Berlin offers sites to consider all the chosen victims of Nazism, from Jews to the Roma and Sinti, Jehovah’s Witnesses, those with disabilities and others. Making ample room for all these peoples is a primary goal of this course.

Our trip will next take us to a city known today as Vilnius, Lithuania. Once called Vilna, or “the Jerusalem of Lithuania,” this hallowed city was home to Jewish thinkers, religious leaders, linguists, and countless other unforgettable cultural figures. Of course, this same place bore witness to atrocities on an immense scale at the hands of German military forces and their local helpers. We will analyze the hard realities of these events and take stock of what remains today.

Next, our trip takes us to Warsaw, Poland, a city formerly home to the world’s largest urban Jewish population. From our base in the modern capital of Poland, we will walk the former streets of the Warsaw Ghetto and take day trips to such places as Auschwitz and Treblinka. All three of these locations, and several others, will allow us space to consider the full range of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust. How everyday people acted, reacted, and pushed back will always be at the forefront of this course.

At every stop, our course investigates how the Holocaust is remembered and forgotten, as well as how young Germans, Poles, Lithuanians, and today’s reemergent Jewish populations address this terrible past. 

This is a journey that ranges from scenes of beauty to the depths of depravity.  We feel that all of it is incomparable and unforgettable, and we look forward to learning with you along the way.

Instructors: Chad Gibbs and Ashley Walters

Those interested should contact Professor Chad Gibbs at gibbsc@cofc.edu