NSF REPORTS SCHOLARS USING GEOGRAPHY TO STUDY HOLOCAUST

FROM:  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
Geography and mapping give new dimension to study of the Holocaust
Research addresses questions about the scale of the Holocaust, the meaning of place, and the significance of spatial patterns

Numerous scholars in recent years have made the horrors of the Holocaust real to the public through various media, including books and memoirs, films, art, photography and museum exhibitions. Anne Kelly Knowles and her collaborators are using a different approach to better understand the genocide: geography and mapping.

More specifically, the researchers are employing historical geographic information systems (GIS), computer programs that store, display, and analyze data of past geographies to gain new insights into how the Nazis implemented the Holocaust, the patterns of events, and the impact of the Holocaust on different places.

"The key is to recognize that perpetrators and victims experienced the Holocaust at different scales, but that those scales registered – came together – in particular places at particular times," says Knowles, a professor of geography at Middlebury College, who is joining the faculty of the University of Maine in Orono as a professor of history in fall 2015.

"We wanted our geographical explorations and experiments to be deeply grounded in history,’’ she adds. "At the same time, we wanted to ask new questions about the scale of the Holocaust, the meaning of place, and the significance of spatial patterns. Mapping complex data, like the development of the SS concentration camps system, inevitably shows you things you would not know – unless you make a map."

GIS "allows you to layer many kinds of information in the same visual space, and to use animation to see change over time,’" Knowles says. For example, in compiling a data base of 1,300 concentration camps and their associated labor camps," you can ask the computer program a question about the data, and it provides the answer as a map,’’ she says. "I could ask: 'Which camps were established by Jan. 1, 1942?' and it would show me in a map. I could continue to ask questions, and see how the number of camps grew."

Michael De Groot, a former undergraduate history major at Stanford University involved in the research, developed a series of digital layers showing the political boundaries of Europe during WWII. Using animation, he showed how the boundaries changed over time in combination with the expansion of the camps. "When you watch this particular animation, you can see the growth of the Reich and the growth of the camps together," she says. "It so clearly showed that the SS only established camps within territory they politically controlled. Some historians already knew this, but to actually see relationships like that hits you between the eyes.’"

Ultimately, GIS animations like this could become a valuable tool for teaching future students about the events of the Holocaust, Knowles says. "The ability to tell the story of the Holocaust visually makes it very exciting for teachers," she says. "It gets across fundamental information about the dynamics of the Holocaust that is crucial for students to understand."

Some material already is available at the Stanford University spatial history lab website, as well as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website, she says.

Knowles worked with nine collaborators, an interdisciplinary team of historians and geographers who call themselves the Holocaust Geographies Collaborative, with resource support provided by Holocaust museum. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the project with about $500,000. Last year the group published a book summarizing the first phase of their research, The Geographies of the Holocaust.

Knowles plans to continue her studies with a recently awarded fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, which annually supports a diverse group of scholars, artists, and scientists chosen on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise.

Her Guggenheim project, Telling the Spatial Story of the Holocaust,will be a novella-length eBook that follows 10 people through the Holocaust (1933 – 1945), connecting their experiences to the spatial unfolding of the Holocaust as Nazi plans were implemented in one place after another. It will be equal parts research, new modes of geo-visual story-telling, and multi-dimensional narrative.

In the NSF-funded project, the Holocaust Geographies Collaborative focused on the different scales at which the Holocaust occurred across Europe, from the continental scale of the development of the SS camp system, to the regional scale, including attacks on civilian populations in Belarus and Lithuania, as well as the arrest and transport of Jews in Italy. The group also examined the urban scale of the Auschwitz camp and the Budapest ghetto, and the scale of individual experience in a study of Auschwitz survivor testimony from January, 1945.

"The Holocaust happened on every scale possible, including the planners in Berlin working with maps and deciding where to put the next concentration camp, making it easier for them to dehumanize the places and people they were planning to capture and obliterate," she says. ``But there also are the personal experiences, the intimate meaning of home, community, synagogue. We think of geography as both remote, abstract planning and intensely personal experiences in time and space.’"

By conducting a geographic analysis of a database of places where Italian Jews were arrested – and who arrested them – and where they were taken, it became clear "that Italian troops and police were every bit as involved as the Germans were," she says, which contradicted long-held assumptions that the Italians were not involved or not as culpable as the Germans were in the Italian Holocaust. "When you convert the information in a database into a map, you can see geographically what happens to these people and who arrested them - both Germans and Italians were deeply involved. It gives you a more nuanced sense of what was happening on the ground."

"This is what I find compelling about historical geography," she adds. "Asking questions about what is happening to people in their homes and in the streets makes it more real."

Another piece of the study – examining the database related to the assaults on civilians in Lithuania – revealed a short window of time when the attacks changed fundamentally. Initially, the Einsatzgruppen (specialized attack squads of German soldiers) in Lithuania went after men and boys. "But at the end of August, 1941, they started attacking all Jews – all ages, women and children and the elderly," she says."This is the moment of genocide, when they were trying to kill everyone.

"This is not brand new information, but by visualizing it, it makes this moment of genocide clear," she adds. "This is really important because there is no document in the historical record of anyone ever saying: 'Now is when we are going to start killing all the Jews.'"

The Holocaust Geographies Collaborative now is turning to new research on victims’ experiences, applying GIS and other digital methods, such as corpus linguistics (the study of language as revealed in samples of"real world" text), to analyze video and written testimony.

Knowles points out, most importantly, that the work she and her collaborators are doing is not just history, or geography – but both. And they complement and enrich each other.

"We go back and forth," she says. "A map shows us something that raises historical questions. Then you go back and do historical research, which raises more geographical questions. This is the new way of doing Holocaust studies – and of doing history."

-- Marlene Cimons, National Science Foundation
Investigators
Anne Knowles
Related Institutions/Organizations
Middlebury College

SECRETARY OF STATE CLINTON'S PRES STATEMENT ON MASS ATROCITIES

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
Preventing Mass Atrocities
Press Statement Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State Washington, DC
April 23, 2012
In a speech at the Holocaust Memorial Museum, President Obama made clear that the United States is taking concrete steps to prevent mass atrocities, protect civilians, and ensure that we hold the perpetrators of atrocities accountable. Presidential Study Directive-10, released last August, stated that “preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States.” And as the President outlined, that is why this administration has led the international effort to bring pressure to bear on the Qhadafi and Asad regimes, supported diplomacy to end the crisis in Sudan, and is supporting efforts to track down Joseph Kony and senior leaders of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Central Africa. But we are not just working to stop atrocities today. We are taking a number of steps to strengthen the U.S. government’s capacity to prevent them in the future -- including creating an Atrocities Prevention Board, enhancing the collection and analysis of intelligence, and expanding our multilateral diplomatic efforts. And while we pledge to do everything we can, preventing mass atrocities is a responsibility that the United States and all peoples and countries around the world share, and that is why we must all commit to work together to turn our promise of “never again” into a reality.

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"WE MUST TELL OUR CHILDREN" SAID PRESIDENT OBAMA

FROM:  THE WHITE HOUSE
President Barack Obama tours the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., with Sara Bloomfield, museum director, and Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Holocaust survivor, April 23, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Yesterday, President Obama spoke at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum about honoring the pledge of "never again" by making sure we are doing everything we can to prevent and end atrocities and save lives.
After being introduced by Professor Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, the President spoke of the importance of telling our children -- and all future generations -- about the Holocaust:
We must tell our children. But more than that, we must teach them. Because remembrance without resolve is a hollow gesture. Awareness without action changes nothing. In this sense, "never again" is a challenge to us all -- to pause and to look within.

A HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR SPEAKS TO CADETS

FROM:  U.S. AIR FORCE
Holocaust survivor: 'You're the last generation that will hear from us'
by Amber Baillie
Academy Spirit staff writer

4/23/2012 - U.S. AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. (AFNS) -- To this day, 77-year-old Marion Blumenthal Lazan feels a strong sense of fear when she sees a German shephard.

It takes her back to that cold, rainy night in 1944 when she arrived at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp as a 9-year-old, and was threatened along with thousands of other Jewish families by Nazi guards with vicious police dogs.

Although it's difficult for Lazan to revisit that dark period, she shared her story with 90 cadets at a luncheon April 17 in the Mitchell Hall Formal Dining Room for Holocaust Remembrance Week.

"Although I've spoken to upward of 1 million students and adults over the past 20 years, it still hasn't become easy," Lazan said. "I do recognize the importance of sharing that period of history because in a few short years, Holocaust survivors will no longer be able to give a first-hand account of it."

"You're the last generation that will hear from us, so I ask you to share my story, or any of the Holocaust stories that you have read and heard about," she added.

Lazan spoke about her experiences during World War II from Nazi concentration camps to liberation, and how she started her life anew in the United States.

"Mine is a story that Anne Frank might have told had she survived," Lazan said. "This is a story that could bring a message of preservance, determination, faith and above all, hope."

Lazan said she will never forget the night of Nov. 9, 1938. Often referred to as Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass, Nazis and their followers destroyed Jewish stores, synagogues and books, and Lazan's father was sent to a concentration camp.

"This was the beginning of a massive physical and verbal assault against Jews in Germany," Lazan said. "In reality, this was the beginning of the Holocaust."

The Blumenthal family, Marion, her mother, Ruth, father, Walter and brother, Albert, had filed papers to immigrate to America but were trapped by the Germans in the Netherlands. Eventually the family was shipped to a concentration camp.

"When we saw the cattle cars we were to travel in, our fears began to mount," Lazan said. "Adults suspected and they somehow knew what was in store for us."

Lazan said while at Bergen-Belsen, 600 people were crammed into crude, wooden barracks with two people per bunk.

"There was no privacy, no toilet paper, no soap and hardly any water to wash with," Lazan said. "In the almost year and a half we were there, never once were we able to brush our teeth."

Lazan said she never knew if she'd survive while being marched to the showers once a month.

"Watchful eyes of the guards ordered us to undress and because people had heard about exterminations and gas chambers, we were never quite sure what would come out when the faucets were turned on: Water or gas."

Lazan said death was an everyday occurrence often caused by malnutrition and dysentery. The dark living quarters would cause people to trip and fall over the dead, she said.

"We as children saw things that no one, no matter the age, should ever have to see," Lazan said. "I know that you've probably heard and seen movies and documentaries about the Holocaust, but the constant foul odor, filth and continuous horror and fear surrounded by death is indescribable. There is no way that this can actually be put into words or pictures."

Lazan said she would play make-believe games in her pastime, one in which became very important to her, and eventually became the title of her book, "Four Perfect Pebbles."

"I decided that if I was to find four pebbles of about the same size and shape, that it would mean my four family members would all survive," Lazan said. "I always found my four pebbles, and this game gave me some distant hope."

Lazon said her meager diet caused her stomach to shrink, and hunger was no longer painful.

"By liberation, at age 10-and-a-half, I weighed 35 pounds and my mother, a mere 60," Lazan said. "There is no doubt in my mind that it was my mother's inner strength and fortitude that finally saw us through."

In April 1945, the Russian army liberated the Nazi train one which Lazan and her family were aboard. The train was headed to the extermination camp and gas chambers.

"It's truly remarkable how any of us were able to survive in such horrendous conditions," she said. "Five hundred people died on the route or shortly after."

Among the dead was Lazan's father, who succumbed to typhus six weeks after liberation.

Two years later, at age 13, Marion, alongside her mother and brother, immigrated to the United States.

"It's a wonderful story of how we gradually recuperated and started our lives anew," Lazan said.

Lazan graduated from high school on time, after a delayed education, and married her husband Nathaniel Lazan, who later became a B-25 Mitchell Bomber pilot in the Air Force.

"My relationship with the Air Force goes back to the 1950s," Lazan said. "It was a proud moment when I pinned the silver wings on my husband in 1955 at Reese Air Force Base in Lubbock, Texas."

Lazan said despite all of the terrible things that happened to her as a child, her life today is full and rewarding.

"I'm very grateful that I survived body, mind and spirit, and was able to perpetuate my heritage with my husband and family," Lazan said.

Holocaust Remembrance Day was April 19