'Holocaust' courses for Welsh college

The Holocaust is to become the subject of a formal university course for students at a Welsh college, writes Roger Dobson.

Sixty years after the setting up of the first Nazi concentration camps, the University of Wales at Lampeter is launching what is believed to be the first course of its kind.

It will be taught by Jewish scholar Rabbi Dan Cohn Sherbok, who has been appointed professor of Judaism in the theology department, and will look at all aspects of the Holocaust, its effects and repercussions.

The college in west Wales expects the course to be one of the most popular in the coming academic year among students of history, English, philosophy and theology. The college has one of Britain's biggest religious studies centres with four professors.

Professor Paul Badham, head of the department, said: "The course will tell the story of the extermination of the Jews in Europe and relate the background and history of anti-Semitism of which this was the climax."