Records and Voices

Your starting point

Explain how antisemitic ideology and state action violated rights, while examining Jewish documentation and agency.

The Holocaust was the persecution and genocide of Europe’s Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies and collaborators. Six million Jewish people were murdered. Nazi authorities also persecuted and murdered other groups. Antisemitism was central to the targeting of Jews, and government institutions translated prejudice into exclusion, dispossession, deportation, and mass murder. Jewish people had varied families, beliefs, work, and communities before and during persecution; they must not be reduced to the categories imposed by perpetrators.

The 1935 Nuremberg Laws removed rights through racist definitions of belonging. The January 1942 Wannsee Conference coordinated implementation of mass murder already underway; it was not the beginning of antisemitism or the first decision to persecute Jews. Perpetrator records can document policies and institutional participation, but their language may disguise violence and must be critically examined.

Jewish people also documented their own lives and experiences. Emanuel Ringelblum and other contributors developed the Oneg Shabbat archive in the Warsaw ghetto, collecting testimony and many kinds of records. This inquiry asks you to examine sources and explain mechanisms of persecution and documentation. There is no reenactment, victim roleplay, survival challenge, or score attached to suffering. The task is careful historical explanation with respect for the people represented.

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