The University of Southern Indiana is hosting its second annual Rechnic Holocaust Series Monday September 18. The main speaker, Margaret McMullan, will present “My Family’s Holocaust Story and the Threats We Face Today.”
She’ll also discuss her memoir “Where the Angels Lived: One Family’s Story of Exile, Loss, and Return.”
According to USI, it will will share her family’s journey to Pécs, Hungary, where she “uncovers her Jewish ancestry, a part of her past her grandfather kept hidden.”
She’s been featured in USA Today, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, Glamour and other national outlets.
She’ll be appearing with the help of two USI professors, who spoke with WNIN’s Tim Jagielo about themes of collective memory and linking history to today.
USI Assistant Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Associate Professor of history Kristalyn Shefveland and Associate Professor Kelly Kaelin, will be part of the discussion at the Rechnic Holocaust Series Monday night.
“I think something that this series really speaks to that we do in all of our history courses, is really talk about history, how history is constructed, or how history is made,” said USI assistant professor Dr. Kelly Kaelin. “And one thing that we do is think about how there isn't just one story to tell but that stories are created based on the records that we have in the sources that we have.”
And so having somebody who can kind of speak to these … smaller micro-family histories can really kind of add texture and more character to the kind of broad stories of World War Two in the Holocaust that are so often told in pop history.”
She’s talking about Margaret McMullan’s presentation — “My Family’s Holocaust Story and the Threats We Face Today.”
Academically, Kaelin focuses on German History and the themes of societal recovery, which will complement the lecture.
She’ll be at the Holocaust series with Dr. Kristalyn Shefveland, Assistant Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Associate Professor of History.
Shefveland said, “… from this particular session, I think one of the most important takeaways is the importance of family histories and the legacy of trauma and memory as it relates through generations and how we can learn from our ancestors, and how we can share those stories to the future generations.”
Kaelin is currently teaching a class on the history of Nazism, that extends from 1918 all the way up to today called Nazism from Hitler to Kanye.
“So I think for my students who I've encouraged to go to this presentation, it'll really help them connect what we've been talking about in class to contemporary history, and how that the legacy of the Holocaust still affects us today,” Kaelin said.
Shefveland said another important theme they will explore is “collective memory.”
“When we think about this presentation, we're talking a lot about what is referred to as collective memory or even the politics of memory, what we choose to remember as a society, what we choose to actively forget.”
She agrees this theme relates to certain school districts in the US watering down America’s racist history.
“So when we're not dealing with difficult subjects with nuance, and analysis, then we are allowing those subjects to fester, so to speak, and for groups to not have their voices and identity heard,” she said. “And knowing that they are a part of our national fabric, as it were, and that this is a story that needs to be told.”
But of course this series is about airing out that history, and making it applicable today. Kaeilin said that collective memory is also built by family records across generations …
“…diaries, memoirs, all of these things can kind of build together to help create a history of even just what this one family is just about dislocation, about trauma, about Jewish identity in the face of persecution, all of these kinds of things then begin to tell a story collectively of who this family is from 1900 or even earlier, up until our speaker as a member of that family in the present day.”
Shefveland said USI holds these events because of the long German heritage and connections to the broad history of a Jewish diaspora.
“The personal, the micro history has a deeper impact than just one family, and it can intertwine and intersect with a city, a state and national history,” she said.
“But keeping in mind that these stories, these family stories, across time, across generations across space, have reverberations for the Jewish Diaspora, and that in homelands that are destroyed and homelands that are recreated through memory and through keeping people alive through memory.”
The Edward D. and Regina Rechnic Holocaust Series is from 7-8 p.m. Monday, September 18 in Carter Hall located in University Center West on the USI campus. It is free to attend.
There will be a Q and A session and reception following the presentation.
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