Why I do what I do

As a historian, you're expected to gravitate towards a certain time period/event/person etc. to really delve into during your college career. If it was a true free-for-all, I don't think I would hesitate to become a Tolkien scholar (though I'm horrible at learning languages and would have a lot of trouble learning Elvish). :o)

Anyway, point is, as soon as I got to college, I took a course called "Music and the Holocaust" - and that's how I really got interested in studying the Holocaust and other genocides. I like the way Adam Jones, a visiting scholar to my school, put it: "we study genocide because we want it to stop." Plus, I feel connected through my Jewish heritage, and as horrifying and as dreadful it can be to study sometimes, it is what interests me most. That is what my mom asked me today after we watched "The Pianist" for the first time - why do I study the Holocaust?

There was one point last semester where I had just about had it. I had just started my internship at the Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in NYC (teaching and giving tours to students grades 6-12), I was starting work on my senior honors thesis (more in a minute about that), and I was taking a class called "The Holocaust in Art and Literature." I remember I was reading a speech that Hitler made (after watching the propaganda film "Triumph of the Will") and I was just like - that's it. I had to put it all down for a weekend. And I realized that it's okay to do that... as long as we never forget about it and we keep coming back. It has become a true privilege to listen to a Holocaust survivor speak, which I have lucky enough to experience at least 6 times in my life. This is just one way to keep it alive, but there aren't many left. I feel like I am doing my part by bringing my experiences and pictures from Eastern Europe, as well as my research, to my future students, as a social studies teacher.

All of this suddenly came flooding back to me tonight after the movie finished. Since I got back from Europe (a Holocaust study tour, no less) in early May, I've been putting off my thesis work on gender in Holocaust memorials. I've been sewing constantly (my [almost always] relaxing obsession), and reading FICTION again (gasp) - but now it's time to get to work. I feel a lot better now after a two month break from thinking. I think I'm ready to go back to it.

This is probably a good thing because I met with my professor a couple of days ago, took out more than ten library books, and have a reading assignment on postmodernism to finish for her in two weeks.

-Jess