The College of the Liberal Arts offers a variety of embedded courses to Penn State students. Embedded courses are short-term international experiences linked to semester-long classes with related course content.
Students enrolled in FR/JST 197 France and the Holocaust in Film and Literature had the opportunity to travel to Paris during spring break. Willa Z. Silverman, the Malvin E. and Lea P. Bank Professor of French and Jewish Studies, teaches the course and led the trip, which focused on France’s involvement in the Holocaust.
France’s involvement in the Holocaust is not typically taught in schools in the United States. Between 1942 and 1944, approximately 76,000 Jews in France were deported to concentration and extermination camps. France also housed concentration camps just outside of Paris as well as in other parts of France. While these were not extermination camps, many Jews died there, and the majority were ultimately deported to Auschwitz, where they perished.
While on the trip, the students heard stories from three of the approximately 15 Auschwitz-Birkenau survivors still well enough to share their stories today.
Read the rest of the feature by Jessica Lawson here.