Hello my name is Eric Schmalz and I'm the Community Manager for the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum's History Unfolded Project. I'm really excited
to be here today with a few of my colleagues to answer some of the
questions that community members, citizen historians, have been submitting to us
about our project. Before we begin with your questions I'd like to allow my
colleagues to introduce themselves.
Hi, I'm David Klevan. I'm the Education lead on the History Unfolded project.
And I'm Michael Haley-Goldman and I'm back- up on pretty
much all aspects of the project.
So we're going to jump right in and get to your
questions. Our first question comes from Amy M., who is from Texas, and she wants to
know what are some of the unexpected outcomes of the History Unfolded project,
and this is one that I'm very excited to answer because one of the joys of my job
is almost every single day I get excited about some of the material we've
received to the project, all the newspaper articles that I review as part
of my job. And as far as the people who are contributing, we have thousands of
people who have uploaded articles at this point, and they go all the way from
middle school students all the way up to graduate level students and you know who
you are. We also have adult lifelong volunteers,
and I've even worked with a number of Holocaust survivors on this project as
well. So it's been really unexpected for me to work with such a wide range of
audiences for people from all over the country as well. The second thing that's
been really surprising to me is just how generous people have been in wanting
to help us. So a lot of times when I ask what are you most interested in, a number
of you have told me, well, what does the museum need most, what do you guys
want, and that question is always something that is very nice for us to
receive and surprising. And then the last thing is just the data that we've
received, the newspaper submissions, just fascinating reports from different
states, different communities all over. We've received a lot from ethnic
communities, so we have a lot from the African-American press, for instance,
foreign language press, Christian and other religious affiliated newspapers,
and I keep a running track some of our favorite finds in a document
that I share with my colleagues, and a number of your articles are on that document. So
we're really appreciative of that. We're thinking about ways they can use it.
Just one of so many examples that I'd love to share today comes from the Madera
Tribune, which is in California, in early 1936 and there was the first Nazi
vessel that went to Portland, Oregon, and it was going into port, and it turns out
that while a good number of the people in the community came to welcome
the vessel, there were eleven protesters who actually organized a demonstration
against this very event, and three of them, according to news reports, were
Reed College students. So, to me it was just fascinating that this showed the kind of
divide of Americans, that there were people, even if they were in the minority,
who took a big stand against this and they were very upset about what was
going on. This particular article came from students at Milpitas Christian
school in California, so thank you very much for that one as well. We're going to
jump now to our second question, and this one comes from students at
Colton-Pierrepoint Central School in upstate New York, and the question asked about this
new exhibit. Will this new exhibit cause Americans to reflect on the
dots that were in the news in the 1930s and 40s, so as to see and propel us to connect
the dots that are in the news today? Will Americans see their way through today's
news to do something about today's atrocities?
I'll take that one.
You know, wow, we hope so! So, we have this new exhibition, and a part of this exhibit
was made possible through the research done by the citizen historians on History
Unfolded, and the exhibit's called Americans and the Holocaust. And
obviously we really do hope that folks will reflect on what they're seeing in
this exhibit and think about ways in which it's relevant to their lives today.
One of the things that I really noticed as more and more research came in
through History Unfolded is something that I hadn't quite put together until
I really started looking at it was that even though a lot of events really were
covered all over the country, oftentimes on the front page, for most events, with
you know with the exclusion of Kristallnacht
or the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses in 33, most of these events would be
covered for one day, and then the event might not be in the news the next day,
because the news cycle would keep going there'd be something else to report. And
for me, that was one of the things that I really pulled out of it for how I think
about the way I consume news today and what's reported because unless something
is constantly in the news, we tend, we're aware of it, but we tend to forget it. We
go on with our lives. And as part of why Kristallnacht was such an extraordinary
event, it was so hard to ignore, it couldn't be ignored, and it was in the
media for weeks, and that's part of why it demanded a response. But it's really
challenging, it's really challenging for folks, even when they're aware of things,
to act on it. In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, there were public opinion
polls, and we have these polls in the exhibit as well, and Americans were
fairly united in their condemnation of Nazi persecution of Jews, 94 percent.
When asked after Kristallnacht, do you agree or disagree with the Nazi treatment of
the Jews, 94 percent said we disagree, they were disgusted.
But yet at the same time, over 70 percent that were asked, do you think we should allow more Jewish
exiles into the US, and they said no. And so there wasn't that connection between
outrage, or at least unhappiness or disagreement, and the idea of using
revised immigration policy as a solution to that. And so I think today we struggle
with the same things. There are lots of things people see going on around in the
world that they don't like, that they're upset about, but trying to figure out
what's the right solution, what sacrifices am I willing to make, or how
can I as an individual make a difference is a really really hard decision. In the
exhibit Americans And the Holocaust we tell the stories of Americans at all
levels of society who took a variety of actions, from
sponsoring immigrants to come to the U.S.,. signing affidavits, joining
nonprofits that went out and helped to facilitate rescue of refugees, who
pressured the governmen,t who wrote letters to the editor all the way up
through government officials, who tried to change policies. And so we hope that
that will inspire our people to think about what kind of power do they have,
but, you know, we really won't know, we really won't know but we hope that it
does have an impact.
Thank you very much for that response David. So, we have a
couple more questions we're going to answer now. This next one comes from students at
Beth Jacob of Boro Park in New York City, thank you for that question.
Are you planning to publish a statistical analysis of the coverage of
the different topics in newspapers across the United States? It would help
with interdisciplinary teaching of the Holocaust, for example.
So, one, it is great to hear that question that people are thinking of this as data
and thinking about what you might build out of the History Unfolded collection
that's been gathered. It was one of the goals of the project initially to create
a data source about the newspapers from the past that could be used by anybody,
so it is really great that people are thinking about what might come out of it.
The answer is that this data will be available to anyone who wants to use it.
Researchers and other groups can take the data when it's completed and do
their own research. So we're hoping there'll be a lot of things published
from History Unfolded, and the resulting research will be made available to everyone.
Thank you Michael. We have one more question we're going to
answer for you today, and this comes from a student, Autumn H., at Lakeview High
School in Michigan. How can I personally help to get more people my community
active about this project? Thank you so much, Autumn, for that question. It's one
I'm very happy to answer, as part of my job as the community manager is we work
really hard to try to inspire people to get excited about this project. You've
heard in our responses so far just about how real this research is. This is not
busy work, this is research that has already,
as David mentioned, been contributing to the work at the Museum, with the special
exhibition which is now open, and we encourage you to come and see it if
you're in Washington DC, but also the work that we're doing with our larger
initiative. We are working on lesson plans and a traveling exhibition, and a lot
of ideas. We haven't fully explored all of them, but when you're talking to other
people, tell them that this is work that the museum is currently doing for a
purpose and it could really go far. And then, as Michael said, also in the
scholarship. So it's not busy work, it's really exciting.
Beyond that, especially for the students out there, talk to your teachers, talk to
your librarians. One of our challenges here is that we don't always have the
opportunity to tell everyone, there are many people don't know this project
exists. You're on the ground, so if you're in your social studies or English class
or even some of your other classes, you go to the library, mention to your
educators about this project and then they might help you to facilitate it in
your classes. So we would really appreciate that as well. The other thing
you can do if you're really, really excited, especially if you participated
before, is help organize a research sprint. We have a guide on our website to
organize a research sprint, so you can work with us on that. We've had a number
of really successful sprints around the country so far. And then the last thing I
would say is reach out to me. Part of my job as Community Manager is to be
available to answer your questions, to talk to teachers and librarians and
lifelong learners. So you can contact me via email or phone. I'm happy to work
with you in order to get started on that. So those are the questions that we're
going to be answering today. We thank you so much again for submitting them all to us.
This project continues through 2021 and so we're going to continue to go strong
collecting as much data as we can around the country. So thank you so much for
your participation so far. We're really looking forward to continue to work with you.