Lecture 1 - Introduction to Holocaust history

The first online session of the Neshama project was dedicated to an introduction to the history of the Holocaust. Led by Hubert Strouk, Head of the Education Department at the Shoah Memorial, this session provided young ambassadors with the historical and geographical framework needed to understand what the term Holocaust means and what the genocidal process involved.

Teaching the history of the Holocaust is no simple task. The events, actors, and national contexts involved are numerous, and the implementation of anti-Jewish persecution and genocide varied across Europe depending on each country’s relationship to Nazi Germany. In this introductory session, Hubert Strouk helped participants grasp this complexity while also highlighting the importance of terminology, historical scale, and the progression from antisemitic prejudice to mass extermination.

By tracing the development of hatred against Jews in Europe, the gradual exclusion of Jewish populations, and the stages leading to the “Final Solution to the jewish question,” the session offered students a clear entry point into one of the most complex chapters of twentieth-century history. It laid the groundwork for a deeper understanding of the Holocaust as both a historical event and a European process of radicalization, persecution, and destruction.

Session date : 05/06/2025 - 12:00 pm (Paris Time Zone)

LECTURE 1 : Introduction to Holocaust history

Led by Hubert Strouk, Head of the Education Department at the Shoah Memorial, this session provided young ambassadors with the historical and geographical framework needed to understand what the term Holocaust means and what the genocidal process involved

Learning objectives

This session was designed to give participants a first set of reference points for understanding the Holocaust in its historical context. It also aimed to strengthen their ability to identify the key stages of persecution and to use the appropriate terminology when discussing this period. Another objective was to show that the Holocaust cannot be understood through a single narrative, as its implementation varied across countries and evolved over time. The session encouraged students to approach the subject with historical accuracy, while also developing a broader awareness of how genocide unfolds.

Content

  1. Vocabulary and key terms
    • Genocide, Shoah/Holocaust, “Final Solution,” concentration camp, killing center, Dachau, Auschwitz-Birkenau
  2. Main questions
    • How did hatred of Jews develop in Europe, especially in Germany, during the 1930s and the Second World War?
    • How was the “Final Solution” implemented across Europe?
  3. Origins of persecution
    • Nazi vision of the world
    • Antisemitism
  4. Jews in the inter-war period
    • Jewish populations in Europe before the war
    • Diversity of Jewish life and conditions
    • Migrations from Eastern to Western Europe
  5. From legal exclusion to first persecutions
    • Nuremberg Laws, 1935
    • Propaganda
    • Organized violence and Kristallnacht, 1938
  6. 1939–1941: expulsion, detention, and ghettoization
    • Madagascar Plan
    • Internment camps in Western Europe
    • Ghettoization in Central and Eastern Europe
  7. 1941: radicalization
    • The war of extermination
    • Mobile killing operations
  8. Industrialization of murder
    • Census and identification of Jews
    • Yellow star
    • Round-ups, dispossession, internment, deportation
    • T4 program

    • Killing centers

      9. Auschwitz

      • Auschwitz I
      • Auschwitz II / Birkenau
      • Visual analysis of photographs and convoy images

      10. The toll of the Holocaust in Europe

      • Overall human cost of the genocide.

Lecturer : Hubert STROUK

Function of the speaker : Head of Education department at the Shoah Memorial (Paris)
Hubert STROUK

An agrégé professor, teacher, and trainer in history and geography for the French National Education system for nearly 25 years, Hubert Strouk is now head of the educational department at the Shoah Memorial. He is particularly interested in the challenges of transmitting the history of the genocide of the Jews. He has taken part as a lecturer and trainer in several seminars abroad. His work mainly focuses on the different forms of antisemitism, past and present.

For the past two years, he has been involved in a training program for guides at memorial sites dedicated to the genocide perpetrated against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Finally, as part of temporary exhibitions, he has conducted research on the history of sport in the 20th and 21st centuries and authored Vel d'Hiv: History and Impact of a Speech, published by Éditions Hermann in 2025.