News Reporter
The Holocaust Awareness two-week event is here again and for the 10th consecutive year CMU is hosting a series of events and seminars to pay homage to the victims of genocide, both past and present. This year’s series title “Overcoming Intolerance and Hatred” is designed to prompt important conversation about understanding diversity and increasing respect both on campus and in the community at large.
The first week of free events brought students and Grand Junction community members alike on a powerful journey through Nazi Germany, West Africa, Cambodia and even Whitwell, Tennessee in a quest for tolerance in an increasingly intolerant world.
Over 2,000 flags were planted in the ground between CMU’s University Center and Wubben Hall for the ceremonial “Field of Flags Display” last Monday.
“The display is a way to memorialize all of those people who have lost their lives in the Holocaust. It’s a way to both educate and advertise the series,” Assistant History Professor and Head of Holocaust Awareness Week Dr. Vincent Patarino said.
The demonstration is colorfully arranged to show the various groups targeted by the Nazi regime. The color arrangement is the scheme used by Nazis for identification. Placed in a neat 34 x 50 section of the field, the flags are surrounded by educational boards students can reference. Each flag represents 5,000 lives, a grand total of roughly 13 million.
CMU junior Traci Collier recalled learning that 12 flags are equal to the population of the Grand Valley.
“I think in America we’re very sheltered and I think it’s hard for students to recognize the significance of it [the Holocaust],” Collier said. “I hope that by learning about the Holocaust students can maybe start doing stuff themselves to create change.”
Patarino recited the poem, “To the Little Polish Boy Standing With His Arms Up” by Peter Fischl as an official commencement of the monument, and as the surrounding crowd bowed their heads for a moment of silence a slight breeze began to blow. Mothers, fathers, and children, all victims of a different time, waved in the wind.
Special guest Dr. Eze from Stanford University presented his seminar on “Islamic Globalization and Ethnic Cleansing in Contemporary West Africa” Tuesday.
“The best way to do this kind of research is to talk about it… to share it,” Eze said.
Eze shared Mali’s violent struggle with Muslim fundamentalism and explained how Islam has been corrupted to allow violent militias to wreak havoc on the fragile state. He used analogies, comparisons and tied the situation in Africa to Nazi Germany.
“Hitler tapped into the people’s dissatisfaction with the state,” Eze said. “He presented himself as a kind of god to save the German population.”
The first week came to a dramatic climax with Larry Cappetto’s Keynote Address on Wednesday. A local community member, Cappetto has interviewed over a thousand veterans across North American and Canada.
“My goal is to document and record history,” Capetto said. “Our young people need to learn the sacrifices that were made for them.”
Capetto showed his 10th film, the award-winning Lest They Be Forgotten, which was constructed over five years from interviews with seventeen Jewish survivors of Nazi Germany.
“I really wanted to hear the accounts of people who actually survived it,” sophomore Doreen J. Harvey said.
In a personal recounting like no other, Capetto’s documentary brings the horrors of the Holocaust to the immediate conscience of his audience. Harvey was particularly impacted by the tattoos some survivors had from the Auschwitz.
“It connected me to my grandmother who had numbers on her arms,” Harvey said.
She discovered that Hitler had borrowed the idea from Andrew Jackson’s removal of Native Americans, proof that history really does ground us.
Presentations will continue this week including Maureen McCarney’s, “London Calling: Punk, Atomic Bombs, and the Holocaust,” and Mellisa Conner’s “CSI Genocide: The Physical Evidence.” A full program can be downloaded at http://www.coloradomesa.edu/holocaust/.
cferganc@mavs.coloradmesa.edu
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