The catalyst for having Holocaust Awareness Weeks began when Dr. Vincent V. Patarino Jr., Ph.D. had moved to Grand Junction to start his first professorial job at Mesa State in 2003. On a weekend morning he went out to his driveway and discovered a clear plastic bag with a rock and a flyer inside. The flyer had the words, “How we whites need to stand together…” and it continued with derogatory terms toward other races and was just “really nasty, dripping with racism,” Patarino said. He discovered these flyers were distributed locally and along the Front Range.
The distrubution of these flyers and the death of his mentor Robert A. Pois, history professor at the University of Colorado, were the driving forces to begin and continue Holocaust Awareness.
Patarino teaches history in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences and has worked with groups such as the Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA), Phi Alpha Theta, Associated Student Government (ASG) and local businesses to make Holocaust Awareness an annual event since 2003.
This event has grown from one week of four presentations to the addition of the field of flags and now a two week event of seminars.
“It is the largest of this type of seminar in the Rocky Mountain West,” Patarino said.
One keynote speaker, Patricia Limerick, presented “Too close to Home: Facing Sand Creek on the CU-Boulder Campus.”
Patarino worked for 3 years to get Limerick to come to Mesa State to share her information.
After each seminar a discussion is essential to answer any questions about concepts presented. A student at Limerick’s presentation asked, “How come we can’t get past this or move past this?” Patarino replied, “We forgive but we don’t forget as long as it’s still happening people still need to be educated about ethnic cleansing and genocide.”
The field of flags brings an image to the staggering number of people killed for being Jewish, Communist/Socialists, Homosexuals, Poles (non-Jewish), Soviet citizens, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Freemasons, Roma and Disabled.
Senior and President of the GSA, Amanda Williams said, “To me, the field is an expression of sorrow as much as it is beauty, it is both remembering the strength and perseverance of those who were persecuted and remembering that the past can repeat itself if we forget.”
The GSA keeps the flags and signs, provides maintenance for the field of flags as well as setting up and taking down the field.
Patarino would like for Holocaust Awareness to continue to grow in attendance as well as to become a more traditional conference with funding to bring in more speakers with a day/time format with papers being presented.
“Education should never stop,” Patarino said.
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