Giving Voice to the Silenced Stories

Speaker: Beth Dotan, Research Assistant Professor at the Norman and Bernice Harris Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln
This program will take a glimpse into the collections of Holocaust survivors who settled in Nebraska and Nebraska WWII servicemen who liberated individuals interned in Nazi concentration camps, existing under inconceivable conditions. A grave reflection on this period in American history that connects Nebraskans to this global event from over 80 years ago, their silent experiences are now being shared. Archival materials are now preserved in a digital humanities web project at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln through the work of the Norman and Bernice Center for Judaic Studies and the UNL Center for Digital Research in the Humanities. nestoriesofhumanity.unl.edu/
In addition to making the stories available to the public digitally, the website serves as a teaching tool integrating digital storytelling with state educational standards for secondary classrooms and higher-education research. Dotan will demonstrate how digital methods elevate these stories and how personal archives have provided unexpected historical discovery and networking within our Nebraska community.