As Nebraska lawmakers debated the future of Holocaust education in the state this spring, a team from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln developed a multidisciplinary digital humanities research project titled Nebraska Stories of Humanity: Holocaust Survivors and World War II Liberators.
Nebraska Stories of Humanity features the stories of five Nebraskans who either survived the Holocaust or helped to liberate concentration camps and later went on to share their experiences with friends, neighbors, and school children throughout the state. The featured individuals are survivors Bea Karp, Hanna Rosenberg Gradwohl, and Irving Shapiro, and liberators Clarence Williams and Maurice Udes.
Led by doctoral candidate Beth Dotan in Teaching, Learning and Teacher Education in collaboration with the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, the portal went live April 26.
“The site tells their stories through letters, documents, photos, maps, and other artifacts, all annotated and organized by individual,” explained Dotan. Interactive maps along with full-text searchability will help users explore the World War II experiences of these individuals.
According to Andy Jewell, Professor in the University Libraries and Co-Director of the CDRH, millions of people have used the many digital projects developed by the Center in its nearly twenty-year history. Each project is different and presents its own opportunities and challenges.
“‘Stories of Humanity’ makes a distinctive contribution by gathering artifacts and narratives that capture the way the lives of our neighbors intersect in major world events,” explained Jewell, “I think Beth’s approach will make these histories meaningful to learners in new ways, and I’m glad the CDRH has been a partner in the site’s development.”
For the last two years, Dotan along with Laura Weakly, Metadata Encoding Specialist in the CDRH, worked with a team of UCARE and Libraries students to scan, crop, and organize the almost 900 items of documents, photographs, postcards, and letters. Students encoded the textual items according to the TextEncoding Initiative guidelines and entered metadata for objects and photographs into a spreadsheet.
This experiential learning has given the students a hands-on opportunity to improve their research and digital skills and gain a close familiarity with these historic individuals. UCARE is the Undergraduate Creative Activities and Research Experience program which supports UNL undergraduates to work one-on-one with faculty researchers.
Carrie Heitman, associate professor of anthropology in the School for Global Integrative Studies and Associate Director of the CDRH, and Gerald Steinacher, James A. Rawley Professor of History have acted as advisors on the project. The team at the CDRH includes Karin Dalziel, Will Dewey, Sarita Garcia, Andy Pederson and Greg Tunink.
Another important project partner is faculty advisor and co-principal investigator Ari Kohen, Schlesinger Professor of Social Justice and director of the Norman and Bernice Harris Center for Judaic Studies, who is excited to see the release of this project to the greater community.
“This is one of those great examples of what the University of Nebraska is able to offer the public,” said Kohen. “This web portal of stories and artifacts will be available to everyone, and the digitized materials are not available anywhere else.”
In addition to the UNL team, a stakeholder group, led by organizations that have contributed information and materials to the project, has given education direction and a connection to the community.
“The stakeholders’ vision has given the site legs and connects us directly to donors who are members of their organizations,” explained Dotan. “This networking is already resulting in new partnerships within and outside the University setting.”
Dotan in this project was in the spotlight during the Spring 2022 Student Research Days and the presentation about the portal was one of the winners in the competition to receive funds for conference travel.
Dotan says that future work on the portal will be devoted not only to expanding the collection with additional stories but will focus on the educational components to support instructors and researchers utilizing the portal. They will be constructing models of inquiry to connect to Nebraska Social Studies standards requirements, newly adopted by the Nebraska Department of Education.
The Nebraska Legislature recently passed Legislative Bill 888 introduced by Sen. Jen Day of Omaha and it was signed by Governor Ricketts. The bill requires the State Board of Education to adopt standards for education on the Holocaust and other acts of genocide. In line with this new legislation, Nebraska Stories of Humanity will be a great resource for Nebraska teachers, students and the public interested in learning about the Holocaust.