Reflection by Aila Ganić, UCARE Student

Aila Ganić was a UNL UCARE student for the NE Stories of Humanities project in 2020-2022. She is presently completing her law degree at Georgetown University Law Center.

The following are excerpts from Aila’s UNL 2022 Honors Thesis:

Nebraska Stories of Humanity: Increasing Accessibility to Holocaust Education

This research seeks to answer the question: How can the digital humanities provide a vehicle that elevates the human impact of survivor narrative and testimony? The digital humanities act effectively to keep the stories of Holocaust survivors alive and will ensure Holocaust education will continue being taught in schools. In this paper, I look specifically at Bea Karp, a Holocaust survivor, to show the way that digital humanities are able to transform her story into an enriching learning experience for Nebraskans.

…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.

…For Bea Karp specifically, my overall goal was identifying how to share Karp’s story in a way that is accurate and highlights the influence she had on our Nebraska community. To achieve this goal, I compiled all stories, documents, books, videos, and images that detail Karp’s life through resources provided by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, various newspapers, and other databases of historical material. I began my research by searching Karp’s name using Google and saving any articles that appeared about her story. I also searched the University of Nebraska-Lincoln library’s newspaper archives to find articles that would not appear in a Google search.

As material was collected, I transcribed and encoded documents and transcriptions of testimonies using GitHub and Oxygen XML Editor. I transcribed testimonies Karp has given before, which includes testimonies from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Shoah Foundation, and recorded testimonies she has given to classrooms, such as at Walnut Middle School in Grand Island, Nebraska. Through GitHub, staff at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Center for Digital Research in the Humanities are able to access the transcribing and encoding work I do for each document. From there, a staff member reviews the transcription and encoding for each document to ensure it was done properly. The Center for Digital Research in the Humanities then handles the publications of each document on the actual portal website.

…The digital humanities are well-equipped to elevate the human impact of survivor narrative as it showcases a diverse array of perspectives and experiences during the Holocaust, creates a space for dispersed information and makes information about the Holocaust easily accessible to the public. Rather than focus on one survivor, students have the ability to research the experiences of multiple survivors and understand that each survivor had a unique life before and after the Holocaust. This also allows students to contribute to their own learning by being able to sift through the portal by themselves, rather than having to follow what their instructor thinks is most valuable. Further, information about Nebraska’s Holocaust survivors is spread out both geographically and digitally. This information also has language barriers as many documents are not readily translated. This portal, however, creates a space where users can find comprehensive information about the survivors and liberators included. Many documents in German and French have also been translated for the site, so users can avoid the language barrier and learn even more about the survivors’ lives.

…The Nebraska Stories of Humanity portal avoids the perpetrator-oriented narratives by focusing on the survivors themselves and by including materials and images that document the lives they had before and after the genocide. Karp has shared in testimonies memories from her life before the Holocaust. Images of Karp and documents from her life before the genocide have been included to give a visual representation of her life. There are also images of Karp’s life after the Holocaust, as well as Karp speaking about her life with her husband and kids, which will all depict that Karp has her journey after the violence she faced. These will all be included in the website portal to show a holistic view of Karp’s life and to humanize her. This portal will portray Holocaust survivors as individuals who had lives independent of the genocide before it occurred and were not simply victims of the violence.

Works Cited

Ganić, Aila, "Nebraska Stories of Humanity: Increasing Accessibility to Holocaust Education" (2022). Honors Theses, University of Nebraska-Lincoln. 390. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/honorstheses/390

Foster, S. (2013). Teaching about the Holocaust in English schools: Challenges and Possibilities. Intercultural Education, 24(1-2), 133-148.