Reflections

Ethan Clinchard, UCARE Student and Intern

Since my grandmother passed away, my family has gone through her belongings, which include some of her father’s possessions. Among the piles of documents, my father stumbled upon an original letter from his grandfather—the Vice Admiral. This letter detailed the unembellished story of his flight: During WWI, as a naval officer, he was flying with his comrade over the ocean. Shortly after taking off, they realized that the landing gear wasn’t retracting. Calvin really did climb out of the cockpit and onto the wing while the plane was flying to kick the landing gear, but he was unsuccessful. They were forced to bail into the water, where they waited for a nearby American boat to rescue them. Fortunately, both emerged relatively unscathed.

To me, this story demonstrates one of the key lessons I’ve learned during my time on the Nebraska Stories of Humanity project: original documents—primary sources—bring those who are no longer with us back to life. Individuals with incredible stories who are no longer able to share their narratives are personified through their writings, awards, artifacts, and the stories that are shared about them.

Through my work on this project—transcribing books, recording and captioning testimonies, evaluating and scanning artifacts, and much more—I have been fortunate enough to experience a bit of the same feeling my father and I felt when reading the Vice Admiral’s letter for the first time. It’s a feeling I can only imagine the families of the survivors and liberators highlighted in this project experience when they connect with their own history through these materials.

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Aila Ganić, UCARE Student and Intern

…Deciphering the most effective way to teach about the Holocaust has been a point of contention, even before survivors began to pass away. In a study of over 2,000 secondary education teachers in England, it was found that educators were unsure about how to go about teaching students about the Holocaust (Foster 2013). Over 80% of these teachers were also “self-taught” on the subject matter, meaning they did not receive education themselves about how they should teach the Holocaust (Foster 2013).

…Analyzing the portal and how Bea Karp’s life will be documented on the website, it is evident that this project will elevate the human impact of survivor narrative as survivors are the main focus of the portal. Karp, along with the other survivors, humanize the Holocaust and depict how the Holocaust was a result of antisemitism in Nazi Germany. With that sentiment, a perpetrator-oriented narrative for Holocaust education is avoided as the survivors themselves are the ones that are highlights. The survivors’ lives before, during, and after the Holocaust are shown to give the public an understanding that these were real people and were not just victims of the violence. As there are fewer and fewer survivors available to share their story to classrooms, this portal allows educators the opportunity to use video testimonies instead.

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Ethan Tylski, UCARE Student and Intern

The generation that grew up during the Great Depression and fought during WWII are often remembered as the “greatest generation.” I am sure that I am not the only one who sees the irony that the “greatest” generation lived during a time of human atrocity and suffering. They saw the “worst” of humanity. There are many traits, however, in the Greatest Generation, that earn them that title. Conviction, integrity, humility, and faithful commitment to one’s family and friends.

The primary focus of my own research was on Clarence Williams, an exemplary figure, a local hero no less, who embodied all of these traits. Clarence was a combat medic in the 122nd Medical Battalion of the famous 42nd “Rainbow Division”. Williams was deployed in January of 1945 and participated in the liberation of Dachau in April of that year. I had the honor of reading, transcribing, and encoding hundreds of Clarence’s letters. One of my big takeaways from that entire experience was that Clarence was a great man, living in the worst of times.

Stuck in my bedroom for the first few months of the pandemic, Clarence and I had a lot of alone time. Although Clarence never knew me, I often felt that we were having a conversation. The words that he wrote often stuck with me for days, or even weeks. There were parallels between what was going on in his life and my own. He missed his family, he grieved the loss of human life, he wanted to see a better world. Over time I discovered that Clarence and I weren’t so different. Although writing 80 years ago, I found that we shared many interests. Clarence was an avid photographer and extensively documented the course of the war. I also love photography. Clarence loved a game of cards. I also love cards, but he never won very often and neither do I. But Clarence, more than anything else, loved his wife Gretchen and wrote to her nearly every day. He missed her dearly. I also miss my partner sometimes, but obviously the circumstances are quite different. I live 10 miles away from my partner, he was 5,000 miles away.

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