Clark University - Clark News winter 2005
Being there (winter 2005)
Undergraduates go beyond the classroom to learn about the Holocaust and genocide
By Anne Gibson
Most students learn about history and world events from textbooks and lectures, sitting in a classroom far removed in time and space from the people and places involved. This approach makes it difficult for many students to connect with—or care about—the past, and to appreciate how the past affects the present.
This is not the case for Clark students studying the Holocaust and other genocides. Thanks to learning opportunities such as the Prague/Terezín Program and summer internships, undergraduates study these catastrophic events where they happened and, in some cases, learn from the victims. These up-close-and-personal experiences are another example of active learning at Clark—when students take learning into their own hands and work to create positive change in the world.
"These programs provide students with different ways of knowing about the human capacity for evil," says sociologist Shelly Tenenbaum, director of the undergraduate Holocaust and Genocide Studies Concentration. "When students work with the court system to help build a postgenocidal society in Rwanda, study at Terezín or catalog and index Holocaust survivors' video testimonies, they understand genocide in a very different way than when they sit in the classroom."
The Holocaust in Prague and Terezín
Students in the Prague/Terezín Program, an undergraduate program administered by Clark's Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, spend five weeks studying the history of Central European Jewry from the Middle Ages through the Holocaust, pre-World War II Prague and life in the concentration camps. A week of intensive study in the United States prepares students for travel to Europe, where they visit one major concentration camp such as Sachsenhausen or Auschwitz and then stay in Prague and the Terezín Memorial, once used by the Nazis as a transit camp for Jews and now restored as an educational center for visitors from around the world. Students meet with witnesses to the Holocaust, attend lectures and visit concentration camps, cemeteries, synagogues and museums. The program takes place after the end of the regular academic year, and participants receive one course credit.
"Being there at Terezín, it's real, it's right in front of you," says chemistry major Tabitha Hargrove '06, who participated in the program in 2003. "That really brought the Holocaust home to me."
Alicia Chou '06, a biochemistry major, agrees. "History has always been something that was hard for me to connect to," she explains. "You don't really get as much out of a book as I think you do when you actually go to places where these things happened. Then you have to connect with it."
All of the 2003 Prague/Terezín Program participants wanted to add to their knowledge of the Holocaust, but their visit to the Czech Republic fulfilled other needs as well. Ian McAuley '06, a management major, wanted to learn more about the Czech Republic, the country of his mother's family. Jessica Kolton '05, a history major who plans to devote her life to studying and educating people about the Holocaust, wanted to see for herself the places that played such an important role in her Jewish heritage. Hargrove and Chou wanted to take a break from their science courses to study something completely different.
Prague/Terezín Program Director Tatyana Macaulay takes pride in the diversity of students who participate. "This course offers a unique opportunity for students who would otherwise not study the Holocaust," she says. "We welcome students from all majors, and of all backgrounds. Each person enriches the group with her or his interests and cultural background."
The next program is scheduled for May 2005 and will also take students to Kraków, Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Justice after genocide
The undergraduate Holocaust and Genocide Studies Concentration (HGS) also funds summer internships that have enabled students like Sara Brown '05, Claude Kaitare '05 and graduate student Naama Haviv '00 to implement Clark's mission to create positive change in the world while learning. In recent years, Clark students have embarked on extraordinary internships related to the Holocaust and genocide.
Brown, for example, spent seven weeks this past summer working with the Alternatives to Violence Program (AVP) in Rwanda. AVP partners with the government's Gacaca courts, a local system of traditional justice. Brown's task was to define "genocide" and incorporate it into a training manual for all Gacaca ministers of justice and personnel, as well as facilitate trainings throughout Rwanda. Brown soon learned that administering justice in the wake of genocide would not be easy. She describes being taken by a local survivor to visit a mass grave containing the bodies of his family members.
"Then and there is when it went beyond statistics and a textbook to become real and personal," Brown says.
Kaitare, a history major, has a particular interest in studying genocide from a comparative perspective. Following his first year at Clark, he interned with Facing History and Ourselves, a nonprofit educational organization that develops programs that examine racism, prejudice and anti-Semitism in order to promote a more humane and informed public. A native of Rwanda and a genocide survivor, Kaitare was able to provide students and teachers at Facing History with the insight of a witness. Although his internship is officially over, he still keeps in touch with Facing History and continues to raise awareness about genocide by talking about his experiences in Boston-area schools and in forums at Clark. Kaitare hopes to return to Rwanda and help with the process of healing and reconciliation.
Preserving the past
Under the auspices of Experiential Learning International, Inc., an organization that provides opportunities for volunteer work and internships around the globe, Ashley Borell '06, a sociology major, spent two weeks near Kraków, Poland. There she helped to uncover and restore a Jewish cemetery at the site of the Plaszow concentration camp, which was featured in the movie "Schindler's List." As inmates of Plaszow, Borell's grandmother and great-aunt had been issued sledgehammers to use in breaking up Jewish headstones.
"Learning about the Holocaust through textbooks and memoirs is very different from actually being where it occurred," Borell says. "I wanted to know everything I could about the experiences and realities of the Holocaust and what my relatives had been through. This trip allowed me to see a lot of that with my own eyes. I would recommend experiential learning to any college student."
Haviv, who is now a graduate student at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, was among the first students to take advantage of the HGS internship opportunity when she worked at the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, founded by filmmaker Steven Spielberg, researching places, themes and events mentioned in Holocaust survivor testimonies.
"It was fascinating," Haviv says. "I got to research everything from tiny little shtetls in Poland, to Jewish communities in India, to Italian-Jewish immigration to America. Without the background information from my undergraduate courses, I wouldn't have known where to look. And without the Shoah Foundation experience, I don't think I would have understood how my knowledge could have been put to use and what good this was doing anybody."
Putting knowledge to use
For some students, these experiences provided a measure of personal healing. Kaitare found talking about his experiences for Facing History and Ourselves to be therapeutic.
"I felt peace inside by getting all this stuff I've seen out of my system," he says.
Although no one in Kolton's immediate family was caught in the Holocaust, she was grateful for the opportunity to recite the Jewish Prayer for the Dead at the cemetery at Terezín. "Being able to have those emotions flow over me made a difference to me," she explains.
The Arthur and Rochelle Belfer Fund and the Debra I. and Jeffrey A. Geller Student Research Fund, as well as donations from Ina Gordon and Pam Phillips, provide financial assistance to students wishing to take advantage of these opportunities. This financial support was crucial for Haviv.
"I worked every summer, 40 to 50 hours a week, and saved every dime to go back to school," she says. "If I hadn't had funding, I never would have been able to take time off to do the internship."
In her doctoral research, Haviv is comparing different genocide events with the aim of developing a model of preconditions for ethnic cleansing. "It's such a heavy, emotional topic," she explains. "If I'm not making it active and putting my knowledge to use, it just kind of sits there and simmers. That's probably why I want to do active work relating to the issue of genocide."
Read more about these students on the Web at www.clarku.edu/departments/holocaust/.
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