Answer one of the following two essay questions. Please make sure to answer all parts of the question. This is an open-book exam. You may consult your notes, readings etc. I encourage you to discuss the questions together. However, I expect you each to write your own essays in your own words. Upload your answers to the dropbox by May 21st at 11:59 pm. If you email me your answer early, I will do my best to comment on it so that you can improve it. However, I will not accept any more revisions or extensions past May 21st at 11:59 pm, since I need to submit grades.
In 2002, the left-liberal Zionist Israeli writer Amos Oz wrote that as a university student in Vilna (then in Poland) in the 1930s, his father heard antisemitic students chant, JEWS TO PALESTINE. In our time, Oz noted, the chant has transformed into “JEWS OUT OF PALESTINE.” The message to Jews, noted Oz, was “Don’t be here and don’t be there. That is, don’t be.”
In both Poland of the 1930s and the United States of 2024, university campuses were centers of antisemitic demonstrations, chants, and call for anti-Jewish boycotts. Compare the antisemitism of Poland in the second half of the 1930s with that in America today. In what ways were they the same and what ways are they different? How did Polish antisemitism of that era impact upon Polish behavior during the Holocaust? What suggestions do you offer your current generation of American Jews to try to avoid the fate of their Polish-Jewish predecessors?