Nebraska Holocaust Survivor & WWII Veteran Network and Educational Portal

Aila Ganic and Ethan Tylski Author

03/29/2021 Added

40 Plays

Description

The Nebraska Holocaust Survivor & WWII Veteran Network and Educational Portal project will establish a dynamic, public platform to centralize access to the history of Nebraska Holocaust survivors and WWII liberators of Nazi camps through a curated collection of digital stories.

Searchable Transcript

Search:

[00:00:00.780]Hi, and welcome to our presentation about our research,
[00:00:03.690]the Nebraska Stories of Humanity: Holocaust Survivors,
[00:00:06.390]and World War II Veterans.
[00:00:08.190]We are honored to take this opportunity to share with you our work today.
[00:00:11.690]My name is Aila Ganic, and I'm a junior political science major at the
[00:00:15.080]University. I was born and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska.
[00:00:18.440]And following graduation,
[00:00:19.700]I'm hoping to attend law school in order to work in public policy,
[00:00:23.120]civil rights law or environmental law.
[00:00:25.520]I was introduced to this UCARE project through my position at the Teaching,
[00:00:29.210]Learning and Teacher Education office.
[00:00:32.420]Hi, my name is Ethan Tylski, and I'm a junior history major.
[00:00:35.630]I was born in Wichita, Kansas, but grew up in Omaha, Nebraska. Mrs.
[00:00:39.210]Dotan asked me to participate in her research after I was a student in her
[00:00:42.590]School and Society Education course. After I graduate,
[00:00:45.800]I hope to either join the Peace Corps or the AmeriCorps. Upon my return to
[00:00:49.700]Nebraska, I think I will either go into law or continue further into history in
[00:00:53.390]post-grad.
[00:00:55.340]There are five primary goals that this research hopes to achieve. Creating a hub
[00:01:00.140]for firsthand experiences,
[00:01:02.090]creating a centralized space where stories can be accessed,
[00:01:05.420]sharing stories of Nebraska
[00:01:06.770]Holocaust survivors and World War II veterans, establishing a dynamic platform to
[00:01:11.720]grow over time, and the one that pertains most to Ethan and I as students,
[00:01:16.160]the last goal is utilizing student research skills from our disciplinary
[00:01:20.210]scholarship to advance and impact the material for public use.
[00:01:25.760]Our project also meets the NU 2025 strategic research aim of using
[00:01:30.290]interdisciplinary skills. We also have multiple stakeholders,
[00:01:33.890]including several community organizations and University departments.
[00:01:38.870]Digital humanities bring along a unique form of methodology.
[00:01:42.770]So the digital humanities provide the space to formulate a collaboration of
[00:01:46.670]cross disciplinary study to bring social science research material to a new
[00:01:51.080]level through digital resources.
[00:01:53.600]So bearing witness through digital access allows the user
[00:01:56.780]the privilege of hearing how injustice and hate affected one individual,
[00:02:01.580]yet provides a broader awareness of the historic tragedy.
[00:02:05.240]So teamwork has been crucial in our methodology as we have been collaborating
[00:02:09.260]very close with the UNL Center for Digital Humanities.
[00:02:13.940]So we use various tools to collect and share material.
[00:02:17.810]In order to keep track of the materials we collect,
[00:02:20.600]we assign a specific name that correlates to the person
[00:02:23.540]It is connected to, save documents in Box and track the documents through Google
[00:02:28.130]Sheets. Once documents are saved to Box and Google Sheets,
[00:02:33.200]Ethan and I use Github to share our coding work with others and do the
[00:02:37.760]actual transcribing and encoding through the Oxygen XML editor.
[00:02:42.230]Various types of documents require different coding of metadata,
[00:02:45.950]so this part of the process requires lots of precision.
[00:02:49.760]The specific Holocaust survivor I'm researching is Bea Karp.
[00:02:54.170]My overall goal for this research is identifying how to share Bea's story in a way
[00:02:58.790]that is accurate and highlights the influence she had on our Nebraska community.
[00:03:03.520]So I've been compiling all stories, documents, books, videos, images,
[00:03:07.810]that detail Bea's life
[00:03:09.400]through resources provided by the University of Nebraska Lincoln,
[00:03:13.150]various newspapers and other databases of historical material.
[00:03:17.740]I've been recording and saving this material in Google Sheets and Box in order
[00:03:22.060]to keep an account of all aggregated documents and images.
[00:03:26.050]I've been coding the metadata and transcribing this material through the use of
[00:03:29.650]Github and Oxygen. And on the right here,
[00:03:32.080]you can see one of these emigration forms and these are the kinds of historical
[00:03:36.250]documents that I've been trying to find and save.
[00:03:39.730]And then I've also been transcribing Bea's testimonies, and she has given many of
[00:03:44.260]them while she has been living in the United States.
[00:03:48.000]Clarence Williams was one of the liberators in the Dachau concentration camp
[00:03:51.570]that I am researching for my part of the project.
[00:03:54.210]Clarence Williams was a combat medic in the 122nd Medical Battalion of the
[00:03:58.380]famous 42nd Rainbow Division in World War II. Williams left behind a plethora
[00:04:03.300]of primary documents for us to analyze. Not only are all of his war letters
[00:04:07.290]well-preserved,
[00:04:08.370]but he also took incredible photographs of his wartime experience that have
[00:04:11.670]never been seen before. The bulk of my research includes transcribing documents,
[00:04:15.750]such as letters, and coding their contents in XML and cataloging important
[00:04:20.280]places, people, and groups that Clarence encountered. Mrs.
[00:04:23.520]Dotan and I have also recently gotten into contact with Clarence's son, Tom,
[00:04:27.570]who is willing to meet with us and discuss his father's legacy in greater
[00:04:30.660]detail. And there he is right on the right.
[00:04:36.300]Although our research is finally taking shape in the form of an unofficial
[00:04:39.390]website, we still have a lot of work to do.
[00:04:41.790]We are now in the early stages of developing the searchable database that will
[00:04:45.270]include all of the primary sources
[00:04:47.010]we have collected, a map to trace the journey of our featured individuals, and a
[00:04:51.210]network analysis page that will allow our website viewers to trace connections
[00:04:54.810]between individuals, places, and events.
[00:04:57.450]The goal of our project is to make the history of the Holocaust more accessible,
[00:05:01.020]meaningful, and relevant to Nebraskans by highlighting personal narratives.
[00:05:05.190]We hope that by making this resource,
[00:05:07.110]we will be creating an invaluable asset for educators, students, local leaders,
[00:05:11.250]and historians
[00:05:12.060]to better understand the ramifications of the Holocaust and the importance of
[00:05:15.690]preventing future genocide.
[00:05:17.490]We still have quite a ways to go before our project is complete,
[00:05:20.370]but it has been incredibly exciting to watch our research finally take shape.
[00:05:25.170]First and foremost,
[00:05:26.070]we would like to thank the University of Nebraska for the opportunity to conduct
[00:05:29.310]this research,
[00:05:30.270]providing us with a generous grant for all of our work and being flexible
[00:05:33.360]during these challenging times. We would also like to thank Laura Weakly,
[00:05:37.170]the Encoding Specialist at the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities for
[00:05:40.710]patiently training us interns
[00:05:42.090]how doing encode metadata and always being available for any of our questions.
[00:05:46.380]We would be remiss not to thank the families of the survivors who have been more
[00:05:49.590]than happy to tell their relatives' stories and help us obtain important
[00:05:53.160]documents, photos, and videos for our research.
[00:05:56.520]Thank you also to the project PI Dr. Ari Kohen,
[00:05:59.390]Director of the Norman and Bernice Harris Center for Judaic Studies at the
[00:06:02.660]University of Nebraska Lincoln for sponsoring our research. Lastly,
[00:06:07.130]we would also like to thank our advisor,
[00:06:08.750]Beth Dotan, Doctoral Candidate and Research Assistant, in particular,
[00:06:12.710]who invited us to work on her project and gave us this incredible opportunity
[00:06:16.280]to put our skills and love of history and the social sciences to good use.
[00:06:20.120]I think Aila and I both agree that this has been one of the most fulfilling
[00:06:23.240]things we have done during our time here at the University.
[00:06:27.460]What makes this project so special is how vital it is to our Nebraska community.
[00:06:32.590]As Bea herself said,
[00:06:34.390]"I tell this story in memory of my parents and the 6 million Jews that died.
[00:06:38.980]I don't want the world to forget. It's a lesson to the future and the future is
[00:06:43.180]in your hands. And it's up to you to make sure nothing like that will ever
[00:06:47.590]happen again."
[00:06:49.270]It's up to us to keep Bea's story alive and ensure Holocaust education is
[00:06:53.830]accessible to all individuals.
[00:06:56.590]Thank you so much for giving us a platform to share our research.

The screen size you are trying to search captions on is too small!

You can always jump over to MediaHub and check it out there.

Comments

0 Comments

Nebraska Holocaust Survivor & WWII Veteran Network and Educational Portal

Description

Searchable Transcript

Comments icon comment

Related Channels

Comments