ABOUT THE PROJECT
This work is the continuation of work begun in fall of 2006 when Dr. Linda Veltze received a SALT (Successful Applications of Learning Technologies) Grant from the Reich College of Education for the Milan Holocaust Survivor Recovery Project. In March, 2007, three professors, Linda Veltze, Rosemary Horowitz, and Jeff Goodman, accompanied by a library science graduate student, Jerianne Queen, traveled to Milan, Italy to film interviews with thirteen Holocaust survivors. The team used a collaborative interview approach, with Mr. Goodman serving as videographer. The resulting footage was made available to various departments across the Appalachian State University campus and excerpts of the interviews and a summary of survivors’ stories were created by Jerianne Queen and used in the North Carolina public schools
In the fall of 2009, Dr. Veltze received another SALT Grant to support a photo exhibit featuring the black and white photographs taken by Mr. Goodman in March 2007. This exhibit, which opened July 2, 2010 at Appalachian State University's Turchin Center for the Visual Arts, also features Dr. Veltze’s selections of audio clips from the original interviews, has been designed to serve as a model for teachers and others wishing to do similar projects combining oral history and photography.
This project would not have been possible without the generosity and expertise of many people, including Dr. Rosemary Horowitz and Dr. Rennie Brantz of Appalachian’s Center for Judaic, Holocaust and Peace Studies, Hank Foreman, Director and Chief Curator of the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts, and Dr. Peter Petschauer. Dr. Brantz and Dr. Petschauer assisted Dr. Veltze and the Turchin Center in the selection and titling of materials for the historical panel included in the exhibit. Dr. Horowitz provided her support in all aspects of the exhibit creation.
Dr. Liliana Picciotto Fargion, renowned Italian historian on the Shoah, made possible all of the contacts with survivors and provided the resources of the prestigious research center CDEC (Centro di Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea) in Milan. We would also like to thank Jonathan Fargion, who facilitated our contacts around the city and who served as translator for those survivors who preferred to give their testimony in Italian.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Jeff Goodman is a Practitioner-in-Residence in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in Appalachian State University’s Reich College of Education, having taught in the education and media studies programs since 1993. His early interest in the intersection of the arts and sciences led him to photography and documentary film, and he has produced a variety of media and led numerous workshops for students of all ages on this topic. His focus throughout his teaching and production work is on promoting the use of media tools as means of connecting people to one another and to the physical environment, using his work to affirm the idea that the goal of all art is to help us pay attention. Jeff recently received the 2009 Rennie W. Brantz Award for excellence in teaching in the Appalachian State University First-Year Seminar. Mr. Goodman can be contacted at goodmanjm@appstate.edu.
Linda Veltze is a professor of Library Science in the Department of Leadership and Educational Studies in the Reich College of Education at Appalachian. She is on the Faculty Advisory Board of the Center for Judaic, Holocaust and Peace Studies, and has served as a panelist at the July 2003 Martin and Doris Rosen Summer Symposium on the Holocaust. In 2003, on a fellowship from the International Youth Library in Munich, Germany, she had her first opportunity to visit CDEC, the research center in Milan, where she met Dr. Liliana Piciotto Fargion and learned about her work on the Italian Holocaust. In 2007, Dr. Veltze put together a team of committed individuals and initiated the 2007 interviews. Her scholarly interests and work relate to international, intercultural and multicultural topics. Dr. Veltze can be contacted at veltzela@appstate.edu.