Guest Lectures: CENS 303-Representations of the Holocaust 
Uma Kumar invited Prof. Peter Suedfeld, Dean Emeritus of Graduate Studies and Professor Emeritus of Psychology, as well as Prof. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young to speak to the CENS 303B course on “Literary Representations of the Holocaust.”
Prof. Suedfeld, a Holocaust survivor himself, spoke about his life before and after the Holocaust and shared his research on survivors as well.
Prof. Winthrop-Young spoke to students about Christopher Browning’s book Ordinary Men.
Student Reflections
“What immediately struck me about Professor Suedfeld’s lecture was the fact that he was such a small child at the outbreak of World War II and during his subsequent concealment at a Catholic orphanage in 1940s Budapest. We all experienced moments of childhood anxiety (where did my mother go? Will she be back soon?), but to hear of those moments translated into the atmosphere of the Holocaust made for a truly heartbreaking lecture.
However, Professor Suedfeld had such a penchant for illuminating the stories he shared that it was a very enjoyable lecture as well; there were many humorous anecdotes peppered throughout that really emphasized the unique humanity inherent to every survivor story. It is for that reason that it is so important to learn about as many survivor experiences as possible – so that one can be aware of at least tiny sliver of the human experience in a historical period of study that can be overwhelming and monolithic.”
Keith Brown, CENS 303B-201
“I was most impressed by Prof. Suedfeld’s ability to rebound from his horrifying childhood experiences by performing extraordinarily well in academics. I was also impressed by his courage to tackle the issue of the effect of the Holocaust on the academic and professional achievement of survivors in his medical research. Through his research I think that he has helped to advance our understanding of the post Holocaust experience of survivors and by extension the experience of survivors of other tragic events.”
Andre Tate, CENS 303B-201
“Attending the lecture given by Dr. Peter Suedfeld was a valuable learning experience, different from any other I have encountered in my schooling thus far.
The contrast from learning about the Holocaust through the medium of literature was both refreshing and educational. While his lecture was informative, it was perhaps more inspiring for me. Dr. Suedfeld’s ability to confront his heartbreaking past and share it with us is a real testament to his remarkably courageous character.
I am very grateful for having the opportunity to attend his lecture; unlike literature, this form of representation will not exist forever. As a result, the information my classmates and I were able to retain is crucial in keeping the story of the Holocaust alive as we move forward into the future.”
Gurinder Cheema, CENS 303B-201
“What impressed me the most about Peter Suedfeld was his sense of humor, his wit, and the fact that he continued to study the Holocaust after the war had ended and contributed to the academic literature on the long term psychological effects of the Holocaust on the survivors. It is remarkable that after going through such atrocities, trauma and loss, Peter was able to persevere and become very successful in both his career and family life. It is always an inspiration to hear the stories of survivors who against all odds, survived and prospered.”
Lyore Friedman, CENS 303B-201
“In his guest lecture for Professor Uma Kumar’s CENS 303 course on Representations of the Holocaust, Professor Geoffrey Winthrop-Young addressed the question of why German soldiers did or did not participate in mass executions during the Second World War in a style I found to be refreshingly structured and thorough.
His lecture was particularly compelling due to the generous consideration given to several competing theories before ultimately ruling them out in favour of shame culture as the most plausible explanation, which was an unfamiliar but thought-provoking concept to my mind. The talk was persuasive and fluid, building logically to the final and somewhat unpredictable conclusion in a manner that was easy to follow, yet still allowing for student opinion and useful, small-group discussions.
While fifty minutes is scant time to devote to a subject so vast – and it was clear that the surface had only been scratched – Professor Winthrop-Young nonetheless managed to present a surprising amount of information concisely and comprehensively, and I enjoyed his fast-paced style of lecturing as it complemented an already intriguing topic.”
Clare Gerein, CENS 303B-201
“Professor Winthrop-Young gave an excellent and energetic on Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men, a book about the psychological factors that compel normal people to commit abhorrent acts of murder, contributing to the Holocaust, when they are placed into unique circumstances. Professor Winthrop-Young emphasized that the men examined in Browning’s book were not radical and young SS-men, but older family men and blue-collar workers who volunteered for Nazi Germany’s reserve Police Battalions, which operated in already-occupied regions, specifically to avoid being sent to the Eastern Front and thus be forced to shoot and kill the enemy.
The main compelling factor, according to Browning and assented to by Professor Winthrop-Young, was not propaganda, hatred of their Jewish victims, or a deference to higher authorities – it was peer pressure. When operating in a hostile territory, isolated and confined to their unit, the men of Reserve Police Battalion 101 rationalized their actions by convincing themselves that, if they were to opt out of the killing, their comrades – often peers from their hometown – would have to do more shooting. In this moral vacuum the humanity of the victims was not considered – the moral cohesion of the unit (often buttressed by alcohol consumption) was paramount.
Professor Winthrop-Young thus emphasized that, since the ultimate influential factor of the unit’s actions was derived from interpersonal social-psychological relations and not outside propaganda or authoritarian influence, the conduct of Reserve Police Battalion 101 was not a unique creation of the Nazi system, and thus could (and does) manifest itself in other societies and time periods – truly a chilling conclusion.”
Keith Brown, CENS 303B-201
“Towards the end of the term in Dr. Uma Kumar’s “Representations of the Holocaust” class, Dr. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young tackled a question that we had been attempting to answer throughout the whole course: Why did the Germans do it? Why did they participate in the massacre of millions of Jews and others declared undesirable by the Third Reich?
Peer pressure, said Dr. Winthrop-Young. Supplemented by a chapter from Christopher Browning’s Ordinary Men that describes the first massacre by German Nazi mobile units in Poland, Dr. Winthrop-Young’s lecture was aimed at explaining the participation of a whole mass of German men at the frontlines of the Holocaust, their behavior being based not on senior officers’ fearsome authority or other circumstances particular to Nazi Germany but on ordinary human psychological mechanisms, recognition of which “breaks down the barriers between them and us”, Dr. Winthrop-Young asserted.
Browning’s chapter reports many men claiming to have been repulsed by the indiscriminate, systematic execution of men, women and children they themselves were carrying out. Dr. Winthrop-Young called historians out on mistaking post-fact self-evaluation as objective, positing instead that the men were “having their cake and eating it too”. In light of the fact that there exists no report in the entire literature of the Holocaust of any SS man, policeman or other Nazi officer refusing his orders more than once or twice, or of the reluctant men attempting to protest or dissuade their peers from following orders, Dr. Winthrop-Young illustrated the difference between “I’m not participating because this is wrong” and “I’m not participating because I am a wimp”. Where the former is a clear refusal to go along with a morally deplorable action, the latter is a reinforcement of the prevalent value system by declaring oneself weak while lauding the strength of one’s peers in overcoming their human emotions for the sake of higher necessity, in this case a genocide. The Holocaust was therefore, by necessity, conducted through a culture of shame.
Listening to Dr. Winthrop-Young, the class was completely enthralled as they watched him debunk dominant misconceptions and consistently bring them to an understanding of the Nazi-German’s perspective, which was not too different from yours or mine when they went along with a murderous value system instead of taking the chance to truly not participate. He brought the point home in our minds of what any of us are capable of when we begin to dehumanize the Other, or when we become indirectly complicit in acts of injustice simply by not speaking up.
It is a frightening thought, to think of the Nazis shooting men, women and children and making selections for gas chambers, and knowing that they were as ordinary as any one in the audience that morning. That morning, not only did he explain the German perspective during the Holocaust, he offered what was to me the most important reason to remember this criminal event, that any one of us is capable of the same.”
Maryam Naqqas, CENS 303B-201
