this is a reflective essay. Summary essays are easier, and you will need some summary in this essay, but reflective essays are harder. Don’t just summarize. Instead, reflect on what you have experienced and what you have gained or lost in the process.

your essay should draw upon the first four weeks of our course. The academic word for this is synthesis. Call upon more than one week or one reading or one film to inform your essay. Bring ideas together. Synthesize them.

Choose one:

At which point could the German people/leadership have shifted course away from the Nazi rise to power? And what would that decision/action have been? In other words, what was a turning point that was not taken that could have prevented the Nazi rise, and why are you choosing that turning point instead of other possible turning points?

Of everything that happened and was believed after 1914, which factor was most important among many others for the Nazi rise to power? Examples include but are not limited to the rise of nationalism, Armenian genocide, longstanding Antisemitism, economic crisis, political instability, and/or the Treaty of Versailles.

Besides Adolf Hitler and his most senior advisors, who are personally responsible for the events which set the stage for the Holocaust? Or, were normally good people caught up in much larger historical forces which make them not responsible for their inactions, actions, and/or beliefs?

A prayer is a service of the heart, both in this world and directed outward. Imagine you are living in Europe in August of 1939. Put yourself in that time and place. Then, write a prayer. Draw upon our resources from the first four weeks of our course to inform your prayer. What is its purpose? What does it ask? What does it offer? What does it hope to change?