- Meagan Blais, Prof. Paul Vincent, and Taylor Mitchell at the Rotary Club of Keene, February 7, 2011. (Anna Tilton photo)
Meagan Blais and Taylor Mitchell, two Keene State College seniors majoring in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, spoke on “Studying the Holocaust: What is at Stake?” at a February meeting of the Rotary Club of Keene. It was the same presentation they gave at the first-ever Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges’ (COPLAC) Undergraduate Research Conference last October at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts.
Their talk, with supporting PowerPoint presentation, focused on the lessons and insights they gained from a Holocaust Studies Travel Seminar they took in June 2010 to Holocaust-related sites in Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic.
“The presentation, a finely tuned balance of knowledge and passion,” noted Holocaust and Genocide Studies Professor Paul Vincent, “had a powerful impact on the Rotarians.” After their talk, a representative of the Dublin School (Dublin, NH) who was among the Rotarians, approached Meagan and Taylor to ask if they would offer their presentation at a Dublin School assembly. The students created the public presentation as part of their requirements for an independent study in Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
From best friend’s grandmother and new ‘Aunt-in-law’, we are all very proud of all of your hard work and dedication to a very timely and relevant subject in light of the unrest and cruelty in our world today.
Congratulations to Meag and Taylor, two student standouts and dear travel companions, participants in last June’s Holocaust Studies trip to Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic. How impressive and important that Meag and Taylor are reaching the community with their deep understanding of the Holocasut and Genocide!
Nona
Great work…I only wish all of these study programs were around when I was there in the early 1960’s!
My wish upon retiring from the US Army was to finish, finally, my Masters and go on to a doctoral program. I managed to obtain 79 graduate hours but did not persue my doctoral program.
My thesis was to be: “Intolerance: An Historical and Educational Look back at the Twentieth Century” (and how can we Learn from it to make the Twenty-First Century better!)
I have some books I would like to pass on to the center and will mail them soon…a few others I am holding on to for memories sakes but will be willed to the center.
Someone working in this studies program should write a paper about the “people” who were a “part” of the various genocides of the last century. We know about the leaders, but what about the “worker bee’s”…how could they do what they did/cope and not lose their own true inner-self. In reading some of the pamphlets about the “genocide trucks” used by the Nazi Regime, I found that they wrote the technical pamphlets as if they were talking about animals and not human beings! Maybe that is how they were mentally able to cope with the horrors for which they were a part and parcel of for that regime. How about comparisons with Armenian, Cambodian and other Holocaust tradgedies of th 20th Century.
History is filled with human extinction’s…it seems to be a part and parcel of our primitive past as “tribal” peoples with a need to possess and a need to destroy enemies before they destroyed us or tried to force their “ways, thoughts or religion” upon us…isn’t that why we continually have “wars?” That is the key to understanding the problem and winning “The Battle For Tolerance in the 21st Century!”
I am off my “British soapbox” now! However, on my next visit to KSC, I hope to visit and see this exciting, new progam at work.
Ken Morris, ’64