Project History

From Beth S. Dotan, Co-PI

Nebraska has long been a refugee resettlement state. Among the refugees were Holocaust survivors and their families who made their home among Nebraskans prior to and following World War II. Throughout the years, Holocaust survivors and liberators of Nazi camps shared their lived experience of the Holocaust with audiences around the state. With the passing of time, there is a growing urgency and an obligation to share their remarkable experiences via new methods.

As educators and others began to envision a central place to access the stories of our community survivors and veterans who formerly visited schools, churches, synagogues, and public events, we began to consider how digital tools might provide an untapped space. We seek to tell their stories, preserve their memories, and celebrate their lives rebuilt. Close interaction in Omaha and throughout the state with families of the last Holocaust survivors’ and World War II liberators of the Nazi camps has made this site, Nebraska Stories of Humanity, possible. We are indebted to them for sharing these remarkable stories so that future generations can understand the atrocities of the Holocaust.

Centering these specific stories in a state with diverse immigrant resettlement may also provide an opportunity to consider how socio-political environs have affected other minoritized peoples in our state and our responsibilities as citizens in the community.

From Dr. Ari Kohen, Co-PI, Professor of Political Science, Schlesinger Professor of Social Justice & Director of the Norman and Bernice Harris Center for Judaic Studies, UNL

When it comes to teaching about the Holocaust, educators have long understood that in-person survivor testimony is the gold standard. There is no more effective teaching tool and, anecdotally at least, no more effective way to build empathy in students than to sit them across from someone who can share their own story. It makes the remote and historical lesson into something immediate, local, and personal. But with the passing of the generation that experienced the Holocaust, educators have spent years asking how they can continue to make this important connection for students.

This resource, the Nebraska Stories of Humanity web portal, is an answer to that question. Contained in this portal are several stories that will allow students to bring the Holocaust to life, connecting them to people who experienced the concentration camps and, importantly, who built lives afterward.

Akin to bringing these important witnesses into the classroom, this website presented a 360-degree view into the lives of survivors and liberators — before, during, and after the Holocaust. And, importantly for students in Nebraska classrooms, it connects us to these people directly: the people whose stories are told here are our neighbors and they raised their families, did their work, own businesses, and worshipped in the same places where we live today. Although we cannot bring them into our classrooms any longer, through this website we can get to know them as complete individuals and we can continue to learn from their stories of survival.

Description of the Collection

The items in the Nebraska Stories of Humanity portal are a collection of personal artifacts from the families of the highlighted individuals, but also other items sought from disparate archives. In addition, our stakeholders, such as the Nebraska Jewish Historical Society and History Nebraska, have partnered with us to include digitized materials that reside permanently in their safekeeping. The intent is to establish a collection that provides windows of insight and opportunity for research while discovering new information in the cross-section of materials.

The Ethics of Nebraska Stories

Cautious strategizing for this educational digital portal is exercised to ensure that it does not become another example of popular technoculture (Kahn 2010), but provides unique, informative characteristics to enhance knowledge. The site should be a tool that affords a cultural understanding of the historical data and Holocaust memory. The user should engage with the site as a tool that equitably provides sustainable and dialectical interaction. Rothberg (2009) contends we must consider “how to think about the relationship between different social groups’ histories of victimization” (2) to avoid making comparisons or asserting competing suffering. Further, he considers how his concept of multidirectional memory can unite cultures bearing tragic histories in a “productive, intercultural dynamic” manner (3), rather than divide them. We strive not to alter historical content from its context when curating the portal’s archival and gathered data (Parks et al. 2015). The components of this framework are complex, given the personal nature of materials collected and shared.

Works Cited

Kahn, Richard. "Chapter Three: The Technopolitics of Paulo Freire and Ivan Illich: For a Collaborative Ecopedagogy." Counterpoints 359, 81–101. 2010.

Rothberg, Michael. "WEB DuBois in Warsaw: Holocaust Memory and the Color Line, 1949-1952," The Yale Journal of Criticism 14, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 169–189.

Svensson, Patrik, and David Theo Goldberg. Between Humanities and the Digital. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2015.