How a U of R English course helps students ‘see’ history
Students in the English course Representing the Holocaust use mapping technology to retell stories of systematic persecution, courage, and resilience shared by those who survived one of history’s most horrific genocides.
“While the focus of the course was on literature—published survivor memoirs—this project broadened the range of stories students study, incorporated organic historical research into the course, and provided a sense of scale [as well as]both temporal and spatial perspectives for each individual story,” says University of Redlands Professor Sharon Oster, who has now taught the course twice, most recently during the spring 2018 semester.
Students begin by listening to survivors’ testimonials, videotaped and archived by the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation Video History Archive. After further research, students turn to Esri Story Maps, a publicly available platform that lets authors combine maps with narrative text, images, and multimedia. The students harness this technology to trace the survivors’ journeys
and translate their narratives visually using custom map symbols, defined in a legend, to represent what happened at each location.
Combined with survivor quotes, images, and video clips of the testimonials, the story maps become interactive multimedia representations of the Holocaust survivors’ experiences.
Recent graduate Ryan Shuman ’18 knows the stories of the Holocaust all too well. The video testimony he heard and researched was that of his grandmother, Lilliane Shuman (née Dzierlatka).
“The story was told to me consistently from about the age of nine,” he says, “with some of the more gruesome details being left out. Mapping helped me conceptualize the chaos of the Holocaust and ‘see’ a story that I had only ever heard verbally.”
The project helped Ryan know his grandmother “even better” and provided a “completely different outlook” on her story. “Everyone in our class has sympathy for their survivor in their testimony, but no one [else]had their survivor’s blood running through their body,” Ryan wrote in his reflection paper. “As much as I tried to keep it academic, this project was personal for me. To quote Art Spiegelman [best known for his graphic novel Maus], ‘my grandmother bleeds history.’”
Oster notes that the exercise of following a series of historical events through one individual’s forced odyssey is enlightening. “The mapping changed [the students’]sense of geography and of the great distances that innocent individuals were forced to travel and move as a consequence of persecution, some never to return to their birthplaces or homes,” she notes. “They came to see the broad scope and scale of the Holocaust by studying one case in fine detail, and then, from there, extrapolating that sense by roughly six million and more.”
Student Leah Volchok ’21 says her greatest takeaway was the opportunity to create her own connection to the past: “As the future generation, we can make story maps to connect us to our ancestors and remember what happened in the past to prevent it from happening in the future.”
“We’re very proud of the collective spatial and geographic information sciences (GIS)-infused work that takes place here at the University of Redlands. We are one of the only universities with an extensive integration of spatial thinking, GIS research and teaching, and applied GIS across undergraduate, graduate, and professional education, as well as administrative functions.”
—Provost Kathy Ogren at the Spatial Learning, Research, and Community Service Symposium in April 2018
Tracing Lilliane Shuman’s Escape from Europe
A story map by Ryan Shuman ’18 traces the story of his grandmother, Lilliane Shuman (née Dzierlatka). Here are edited excerpts:
Antwerp, Belgium (1930–1940)
Abraham and Fijgla Dzierlatka live a quiet family life.
Lilliane Dzierlatka is born on March 16, 1930, to parents Abraham and Fijgla Dzierlatka (originally from Poland), followed by the birth of a sister, Laura, in 1932. Life is family-oriented and peaceful. This comes to an abrupt end when Nazis invade Belgium. On May 10, 1940, the family leaves as refugees, taking nothing with them. “I told my Dad, I think it is thundering outside,” Lilliane recalls. “He told me to get away from the window because the sound was bombs.”
Lille, France (1940)
The family walks to Lille, France, with friends and extended family members. Eventually, everyone else decides to turn back because they think living under the Nazi regime couldn’t be that bad. Dzierlatka family members keep walking because their motto is “things don’t get better, they only get worse.”
Letters, such as this one marked by Nazis, become an unreliable form of communication.
Bordeaux, France (July 1940–April 1941)
From Lille, they walk and take trains towards southern France. But they are separated after Fijgla, Lilliane, and Laura become ill and check into a hospital, while Abe leaves to find a home for them in America. After exiting the hospital, the three embark on a treacherous return to Antwerp to try once more to convince the extended family to leave, but ultimately they depart without them.
Vigo, Spain (January 1942)
After traveling back and forth looking for legal papers and passage to the United States, Fijgla, Lilliane, and Laura board the Serpa Pinto for what they think is America. Almost all the ship’s passengers are Jewish refugees.
The Serpa Pinto is turned
away from the United States.
New York (June 1942)
After a month at sea, the Serpa Pinto passengers are denied entry to the United States by Congress. The U.S. Coast Guard urges the captain to take the refugees back to Europe; instead, he begins to make contact with different countries.
Havana, Cuba (1942–1945)
The ship is finally allowed to dock in Havana, Cuba, where the three young women are admitted into a refugee camp. They live out the war in Cuba while in contact with Abe, who is running from immigration officials in disguises all over the state of New York.
With their passport (left), the Dzierlatka women leave Cuba for Miami.
Miami, Florida (1945)
On Nov. 11, 1945, the family reunites in Miami. They then move to New York, where the details of their relatives’ fate gradually come to light. “My mother had aged, the sadness never left her,” says Lilliane. “We just went on with our lives.”
