Speaker

Tonight for class we heard from Dr. Peter Fritzsche who's a professor at a school in Illinois and he talked about the Holocaust and the role of the German people and how they were treated/acted during the Nazi rule. It was a very interesting to see his thoughts and perceptions of how the Germans thought they were victims too.

He discussed how the German people felt as though they were suffering during this time as well. Germans were devoted to do whatever they needed for their country and this is why they were able to still kill innocent women and children because it acted as justification for their own situation. this entire situation can be compared to our current situation in the United states with the War in Iraq. The United states was not only split when it came to election time but our decision to elect George W. Bush led to this country still being split on his decision of sending troops to Iraq but now that we have soldiers over there our country needs to be supportive and realize that those are innocent people who are risking their own lives for OUR country. What is the difference between what occurred in Germany in the 1930's and todays world. Is this war really necessary? What are we going to achieve out of it? How many people are going to die before it is over? These are all questions that could have been asked before the Holocaust happened. What is the difference when any war happens two countries are going into battle and only one is going to come out on top.

Political Emancipation in Europe

Jews should not be banned from entering the country and having some type of citizenship. We can see the progress they are making during this time towards making jews "legal" in a sense. The jews could be naturalized or granted citizenship. Some people believed that there was no way jews could assimilate so there was no reason to accept them into their countries and cultures. They thought that jews would never be as good as non-jews morally and culturally.
Katz talks about how make ashkenazic jews are conspicuous because of the way they dress, their beards and their way of speech (yiddish) which acted as a barrier for jews to be accepted by christians. Jews also had an accent when using the german language and this can be compared to the way US citizens compare peoples accents in the north vs the south. But this plays no role in whether people from the south are citizens of the US because they sound different. Although we have our stereotypes due to their accents it still doesn't change their citizenship.
In any given country a community can have control over its members which means they can possibly influence a persons religion, education, morals, laws and sometimes marriage. You being a part of this community is completely voluntary and in the jews case it was but they were paying taxes in their community and not always to the country they were in. So the french nation came up with an idea to get rid of the communal autonomy and now each jew would individually become a citizen to the country they were living in. This meant that they would now have to follow the laws of that country and have no more obligation to their jewish community if they didn't want to. It just made the country come together as one and not separate the jews from everyone else.