Holocaust Reflection AP European History/Tepovich

Please select 1 of the following questions to answer after listening to our guest speaker on Monday. Consider what you learn from his experiences, the reading by Hannah Arendt and your general understanding of European history to date to provide specific details and examples in your response.

1.  WWII and the Holocaust represent one of the darkest periods of human history. Think about the ideas we leaned about in the Enlightenment and consider the idea that the philosophes believed that faith in science, logic and rational thinking would lead to human progress. What happened in the 20th century to that belief and those ideals?

2.  Voltaire wrote, “History doesn’t repeat itself; man always does.” The theme of man’s cruelty toward man is one that we have encountered many times in this course. After this period, the rallying cry was “never again!” however we have seen many more genocides occur in recent history. Why do you think such cruelty and inhumanity occur?

3.  In exploring the reasons the Bulgarians worked to save the Jews in their population, writer Tzvetan Todorov writes, “It seems that once introduced into public life, evil easily perpetuates itself, whereas good is always difficult, rare and fragile.” Do you agree that evil can become ordinary and goodness is unique? How do you explain the heroic acts, large and small, of those individuals who defied the Nazis and tried to protect the Jews?

4.  Many people lost faith in God after the Holocaust. Similar to other historical time periods, people felt God could not exist if such pain and suffering also existed. Explore the role of religious faith during WWII and the Holocaust. What happened to the ideas of Christianity that relate to love and humanity? What happened to Holocaust survivors’ faith? How does this coincide with the general feelings towards religion in the modern age?

5. The word banality means unoriginal and the thesis of Arendt’s book introduced the expression and concept "the banality of evil”. Her thesis is that Eichmann was not afanaticorsociopath, but merely an ordinary person who accepted the premises of hisstateand therefore participated with the view that his actions werenormal. If this is the case then how do your respond to Hannah Arendt’s final quote on handout? Do you believe evil is unoriginal? How is this banality of evil a result of the totalitarian state?

Your response is due on Friday April 4th- One page minimum