By Morris Malakoff, JTNews Correspondent
In the often oversimplified academic world of history, particularly in America’s secondary schools, the period of World War II, encompassing everything from Pearl Harbor to V-E Day, may fill half a dozen pages of a text book and a few hours of an instructor’s time.
It is often random facts and figures scattered through anecdotal stories with little reference to the reasons behind upheaval and genocide.
A quality teaching of the history of the Holocaust may be little more than a reading of The Diary of Anne Frank and a showing of the film Schindler’s List. A lucky class may get an hour with a local survivor.
Many can tell you that 6 million Jews perished in the camps of central Europe at the hands of the Third Reich, but the why and how is rarely presented.
As with most history, there is much more to the story than the minimum content often presented. There are deep and complex theories, facts and perspectives to be placed in a relevant context. Academic examination of the Holocaust is a growing area of study, but venues for its examination are limited and often toil in obscurity.
One of the strongest programs in the United States is incubating at Pacific Lutheran University in Parkland, south of Tacoma.
That program, which earlier this month facilitated the third annual Powell and Heller Family Conference on Holocaust Education, simultaneously reached a milestone in funding and raised the level of the program.
The occasion of the conference on the weekend of March 18-20 also served to announce the doubling of an endowment for the program to more than $2 million and the establishment of a permanent chair in Holocaust Studies at PLU, named for former PLU regent and refugee from Nazi Germany, Kurt Mayer.
The first academic researcher to hold the position of Kurt Mayer chair is Robert P. Erickson.
The endowment came together through the efforts of Mayer and his family, combined with that of Nancy Powell, her sister Carol Heller and her brother-in-law Harry Heller. Harry Heller’s parents are survivors.
The program, which had been on the academic sidelines for years at PLU, came to fruition through the efforts of Mayer during his time as a regent of the school.
Mayer admits it may seem counter-intuitive for the program to reside at a small Lutheran school.
“It is important to educate people on how a Christian government can be complicit in genocide,” he said. “The next generation needs to know and not forget.”
He also said that the passing of time has not meant the end of genocide or anti-Semitism.
“Yes, there has been Rwanda and Cambodia,” he said. “Even in my first days at PLU, which is a wonderful institution, I had to confront individuals who had issues with my being Jewish.”
Over time, he said, that has changed for the better.
“It is an evolving process, but I have seen change here and around the world,” he said.
Mayer said he hopes the endowment will grow and that eventually a department dedicated to Holocaust Studies can be established at PLU.
Nancy Powell discovered the program’s existence just a few of years ago.
“I found a wonderful program that is doing good work and wanted to help it grow,” she said.
She also has ties directly to the Holocaust, a network that has grown despite the passing of time that has dramatically shrunk the numbers of people with first-hand knowledge of the horrors of life for European Jewry in the 1930s and ‘40s.
In addition to her in-laws, who survived the camps, through a chance meeting by her son at a wedding in Australia she made contact with Sarah Tamir, a child survivor of the camps now living in Melbourne. Tamir came to the conference as a featured speaker.
The conference keynote was delivered by a former PLU history professor, Chris Browning, who has done extensive research and written a number of books about the systematic “Final Solution,” including both those who facilitated it and those who survived it.
He discussed the difficulties attendant in interviewing survivors and others associated with the Holocaust due to a number of human factors that have an effect on memory and willingness to discuss unpleasant events.
Browning currently is a faculty member at the University of North Carolina.
One day of the conference was dedicated specifically to educators and Holocaust education, including university students who have been completing studies on issues surrounding the Holocaust.
For Mayer, the success of the conference was about more than the hundreds who attended, but for what they took away and what they might build in the future. “It is about evolving relationships, mutual respect and respect for your rights and mine,” he said. “It is about hope.”
Mayer has also written a book documenting his family’s flight from Nazi Germany titled My Personal Brush with History, with all proceeds from sales going to the endowment at PLU.