The Holocaust of European Jewry in World War II prompted an array of literary responses of various genres and languages which constitute now one of the most important textual canons of the 20th century. In this course, we will read the works of this canon and examine them in their cultural, historical, and aesthetic contexts. Among the questions to be investigated are: what is the difference between texts written during the war and in its immediate aftermath and the later epochs? How did representing the catastrophe of such magnitude on page impact on the very idea of literature and its capabilities? What is the relationship between Holocaust works and the earlier Jewish literature of destruction as well as the other genocides and atrocities? The writers include Avraham Sutskever, Tadeusz Borowski, Primo Levi, Vasily Grossman, Boris Slutsky, Uri Zevi Greenberg, Charlotte Delbo, Imre Kertesz, Friedrich Gorenstein, Katsetnik, Anatoly Kuznetsov, Saul Bellow.