"Remembering the Holocaust"-Library Lecture Series

Last Tuesday, Dr. Steve Gowler of Berea College gave a great lecture on Holocaust memorials to students, faculty, staff, and community members!

Dr. Gowler's lecture was not your typical seminar on the history of the Holocaust or Nazi resolutions, but rather an examination of the memorials that have been placed all over Europe in honor of the millions of people who lost their lives in concentration camps, Jewish ghettos, and death camps, including Jews, the Roma, POWs, and the disabled. He showed a great number of photos from his trips to Germany, Belarus, The Netherlands, France etc.

In his lecture Dr. Gowler noted that some of the memorials have been restored in recent years

Site of Belzec Concentration Camp ca. 2000*

New monuments on the site of Belzec ca. 2012*

While other sites and monuments have remained popular destinations for travelers for a long time.

A gravestone for Anne Frank and her sister placed at a mass grave at Bergen-Belsen*

Auschwitz-Birkenau entrance.*

The personal stories from his trips to Europe in search of these monuments included a tale of searching through the countryside of Belarus with a student for Holocaust memorials. They asked family, friends, and strangers to point them in the direction of a Holocaust memorial, but few people actually knew where to look!

Belarus Stolbsty Memorial*

Dr. Gowler has a great webpage filled with stories and photographs from his travels. Check out Remembering Catastrophe: Holocaust Sites Today to see more pictures like these and read more information about each location!

We are so glad to have had Dr. Gowler with us at LaGrange College for our Library Lecture Series!

*Rights to these photos are owned by Dr. Steve Gowler http://faculty.berea.edu/gowlers/remembering/

**This post was written by Lindsey Lowry