Module Directory

On Holocaust Memorial Day in January 2026, Germany’s most important commemorative sites and museums published an open letter in which they called upon big tech firms to act against AI generated material and images regarding the Holocaust. This module examines the History and Memory of the Holocaust. In the first half of the module we will focus on the unfolding of the Holocaust as part of Nazi extermination policies, on its victims, perpetrators and bystanders. We will look at deportations, ghettos and death camps and how historians have interpreted the important points within Nazi policy leading to places like Auschwitz. In the second half of the module, we will concentrate on the memory of the Holocaust including the often misleading online information provided by right-wing populists and Holocaust deniers. We will work together with an external community partner the Wiener Holocaust Library (the world’s oldest Holocaust library and research centre in London) and a leading organisation in Holocaust education on group projects that allow students to create their own Holocaust related project that will add to the resource material other can engage with when wanting to find out about the Holocaust. In this way, students of this module will first learn new skills and topics and then put these into practice to work on a task set by the Wiener Holocaust Library. In doing so, students will become Holocaust educators themselves as their assessment will add to the material available for Holocaust education.

The aims of this module are:

• To introduce students to key works that enable them to understand the history and the memory of the Holocaust.


• To provide students with an understanding of the role of Holocaust memory and commemoration in the postwar world.


• To enable students to engage with key debates concerning the history and memory of the Holocaust.

By the end of this module, students will be expected to be able to:

1. Demonstrate a comprehensive knowledge of the history of the Holocaust.


2. Critically evaluate primary and secondary sources regarding the Holocaust and be able navigate where to find reliable information.


3. Work in small groups on a project set and developed with an external partner (The Wiener Holocaust Library)

Transferable skills including, managing time and deadlines; working independently and as a member of a group; working with external community partners on a project; clearly communicating complex ideas to a public audience.

Syllabus information: This is a 10-week module

The History of the Holocaust

• Introduction: Antisemitic policy & persecution in Nazi Germany 1933-1939


• The Second World War and the Radicalisation of Nazi Policies


• Deportation and Ghettos: Eastern Europe and historians’ interpretations on the Holocaust


• Perpetrators and Bystanders: Police Battalions, Medical Staff and Administrators


• Death Camps and other Sites of Mass Killing


• Victims and Survivors: Testimonies and Eyewitness Accounts (This session links history and memory as many Holocaust survivors stated that they wanted to write down their experiences for other, especially pupils, not to forget what has happened.)


• Commemorating the Holocaust in postwar Europe


• Postmemory: Remembering the Holocaust in families and communities


• The Holocaust in Archives and Museums: Session with partner organisation The Wiener Holocaust Library and introduction to the group projects and tasks students can select from. These tasks will be set by the module directors together with the experts Dr Peter Morgan and Dr Elise Bath from The Wiener Holocaust Library.


• The Holocaust, Knowledge, Misinformation and Education in Modern Britain

This module will be delivered via:

• One 2-hour workshop per week over 10 weeks. The workshops will vary each week. At the beginning of the module, they will follow a lecture plus seminar style, but there will also be weeks in which the workshop will be conducted by our external partner (The Wiener Holocaust Library) and in which students work together in groups.

 Students are expected to undertake the reading before classes and be prepared to engage in discussion.