There are two non-graded writing assignments for this course.  The first is on Elie Wiesel’s book Night.  (Parameters for this assignment are below.)  The second is a paper on your choice of one of the following possibilities: a specified Cultural Film & Lecture Series screening and lecture; a one-time screening of Claude Lanzmann’s documentary Shoah; and a visit to a Holocaust museum or memorial site.

The Assignment on Night  - due in class on February 6
Elie Wiesel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his memoir Night, on Dec. 10, 1986.  This book, first published in 1958, is a harrowing account of life in the Nazi death camps.  However, the book isn’t wholly about his own experiences; rather, it bears witness to the demise of many Holocaust victims.   

Every incident in Night actually occurred. Weisel’s initial version was written in Yiddish and was about 800 pages in length; the English translation of the French version of those experiences is considerably shorter, less than a hundred and fifty pages. Wiesel retells his story in the first-person, with spare, matter-of-fact language, yet the outcome is moving and poetic.

Your Assignment
The symbolic representations of light and darkness are almost universal: Societies around the globe see light as symbolic of goodness, godliness, knowledge and purity, while darkness is associated with ignorance, bleakness, evil, and death. 

Write two to three pages (typewritten and double-spaced) on the many uses of darkness in Night, e.g., blackness, fog, smoke, darkness, night (as in the title), etc.  Why are there so many terms for darkness employed here?  What do they symbolize?  Are they effective in getting across Wiesel's delineation of evil?

Make sure your paper conforms to the directions provided here. (These guildelines for writing papers are written for film analyses but you can apply most of the rules to this assignment.) Also, be sure to hand it in on time.  While there will be no grade assigned to this paper, if you do not hand it in, you will receive a negative mark against your final grade in the course.

You then have your choice of one of the three assignments below:

 The Assignment on Hotel Rwanda - due in class on February 20
On Monday, February 12, at 7 PM in the Connelly Center Cinema, the Cultural Film & Lecture Series will be hosting a screening of Hotel Rwanda, with an accompanying lecture, about the 1994 massacre of nearly a million Tutsis by their rivals, the Hutus. (Admission is $3.50 for students with ID.)

Your Assignment
It is hoped the films studied in this course will grant you greater understanding of films about all atrocities.  In that vein, while Hotel Rwanda is not about the Holocaust, apply what you’ve already learned vis à vis Holocaust films to the slaughter in Rwanda.  Consider the following issues:

•  How does the director, Terry George, personalize the events through visual, narrative, and/or aural mechanisms? If he uses a microcosm, does it manage to project the horror of the terror?
       

•  The Hutus refer to the Tutsis “cockroaches,” which is reminiscent of the Nazis calling Jews as “vermin.”  How do the Hutus genocidal practices differ from the Nazis’?
       

•  A native of Belfast, George is a former journalist who was imprisoned twice as an IRA operative involved in terrorist activities.  He ended up leaving Ireland in order to, in his own words, “escape the Troubles...and establish a new life.”  Some of his work previous to Hotel Rwanda also deals directly with the conflict in Northern Ireland, including 1993’s In the Name of the Father, another real-life story about a man who was imprisoned for 14 years for an IRA bombing he didn’t commit.  Do you think George’s own experiences in a divided society (as well as his film work which portrays them) are an asset here?  What about the fact that he is a white European filming a story about an African massacre?

The Assignment on Shoah - due in class on April 24
Shoah, the title of Claude Lanzmann's landmark documentary, is the Hebrew term for "chaos" or "annihilation."  (It is also the word Israelis use to refer to the Holocaust.)   Unlike most films detailing events of the Holocaust, Lanzmann's film does not present old newsreel footage or coverage of war crimes trials, and there are only a handful of interviews with survivors.  Instead, the filmmaker, who spent six years simply looking for eyewitnesses in preparation for making this documentary, concentrates on people, most of whom are either German or Polish,  who participated in the Germans' plans to make Europe free of Jews. 

Your Assignment
Address the following questions: 

•  Given your course of study so far, do you agree with Marcel Ophuls, the French filmmaker who made the noted Holocaust documentary The Sorrow and the Pity, that Shoah may be "the greatest documentary about contemporary history ever made...the greatest film...ever seen about the Holocaust."  For instance, do you feel that Lanzmann's film, with its concentration on personal testimonies, effectively paints a picture of what occurred in the camps and on the trains going to them?  If so, why?  If not, do you think another style of documentary, e.g., one with archival footage of skeletal victims and carnage, is better at portraying the horror of the Nazis' efforts?  Or is a feature film, such as Schindler's List, more compelling, perhaps because it tells a story rather than just retelling events?
   
•  It's been said that Shoah has a cyclical structure, moving from interviews to empty fields to train tracks and back again.  How does this cyclical style of editing, along with the length of the film itself, reinforce the notion of the Holocaust as a longstanding series of repeated events? 
   
•  In addition, what the film have to say about memory?  

The Assignment In Which You Visit a Holocaust Site - due in class on April 24
This involves a visit to a Holocaust site or sites, on line or, preferably, in person.  A list of on-line Holocaust sites that i have prepared may be found here.