National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education Collaborates with Seton Hill Art Program on New Project

 

On Tuesday, February 10^th, panelists and students gathered at a forum to discuss “The Question Mark[er] Project,” a collaborative effort between the Seton Hill University Art department and the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education (NCCHE). Panelists included Sister Lois Sculco, vice president for mission and student life; Pati Beachley and Carol Brode, art faculty members; Dr. Michael Cary, professor of political science and history; and visiting artist Diane Samuels.

So what is “The Question Mark[er] Project?” The campus community will submit questions relating to genocide and the Holocaust, which will be illustrated by memorials designed by Pati Beachley’s “Advanced 3-D Media” students.

The idea began with a tree.

When the NCCHE was founded in 1987, a couple that were on the board of trustees donated a peace tree.

“That became a kind of symbol of our center. And the tree produced these beautiful white flowers each year. And I used to go out and look at them,” said Sculco. The tree was struck by lightning a couple of years ago and died. Around that time, Sculco attended a conference at Seton Hall’s Catholic-Jewish center, which had a permanent symbol on campus in the form of an art sculpture. A couple of years ago, Samuels joined the NCCHE advisory board.

Sculco said, “Diane was always saying to me ‘I want to do something for the center. I’m not doing enough for the center’.” Instead of replanting a tree, Sculco, Samuels, Brode, and Beachley began to talk.

“She [Samuels] has some very relevant experience in combining her work/her vision with the story of the Holocaust,” said Brode.

In 1996, Samuels was working in Munsingen, Germany when a colleague told her about an interesting memorial in nearby Grafeneck. When she arrived, Samuels was greeted by several diasabled men who took her down a path to a big stone carving.

“I had my dictionary, and word for word I translated what that stone said.  It said ‘for the 10,654 sick and disabled people who were murdered in 1940 at this site by the National Socialist Party.’ So this is 1996, I’m Jewish, I was standing there with 5 or 6 disabled men, and it occurred to me if I had been there in 1940, we would have been killed,” said Samuels.

Grafeneck had been site “A” for the Nazis euthanasia experiments. In 1939, the National Socialist German Worker’s Party sent questionnaires around to the institutions for the disabled throughout Germany and asked the directors to evaluate the conditions of their residents. Many of the directors thought that their residents were going to be taken into the service, so they evaluated their abilities as much less than they were, and so many people who could work were evaluated as not being able to work.  Those lists were then used as the killing lists.

“And if you were disabled and able to work, you were not murdered and, you were put into a factory. If you were disabled and could not work, you were killed immediately,” said Samuels.

Sometimes, people willingly sent disabled or disgraced family members to Grafeneck. The family didn’t want to know about it anymore, so when these killings started, very often the families were not in touch with the resident. It was a long time before the families members knew that they had been murdered.

The Nazis had used Grafeneck to develop Zyklon-B, the gas used to exterminate thousands in the concentration camps.

The stone carving and outdoor altar had been placed on the mountaintop in Grafeneck in 1989. A local pastor had been ministering to elderly locals, many of whom had expressed remorse for knowing what was going on at Grafeneck in 1940.

Samuels said, “They talked about seeing Grey buses going into Grafeneck with soaped windows but they could see that there were people inside and then the buses would come out without people inside.”

Since there was a crucifix on the site, the pastor asked Samuels to consider a companion that would honor the Jewish victims as well as those victims whose names will never be found. Her inspiration came from a folk tale called “the alphabet story,” wherein a man who couldn’t read or write recites the alphabet, asking God to form his words into prayers.

Samuel’s Alphabet Garden consists of seemingly random blocks placed in the ground, surrounded by flowers year round. In a granite display case, embedded in the garden wall is a red memorial book containing the names of the victims identified so far. A plaque reads:

 “Please take these letters and form them into prayers.”

“One of the goals of the project that we’re talking about here is not to forget the past, but to use the past as a way to discuss current events and future events. When we talk about history, we have to ask what defines history …people need a place to go, to mourn, to think, and discuss,” said Samuels.

After the submission due date (March 1^st), an advisory panel will pare the questions down to three or five. Those final submissions will be reviewed by Beachley’s class, who will ultimately decide on which question to turn into a marker. The unveiling of the first marker on campus is scheduled for April 23^rd.

 “What we’re envisioning is markers that actually would create a pathway a person could walk-that you go from marker to marker and think about each question that the marker is embodying,” said Brode.

But why should we continue to study history?

“Knowledge is historical memory-we need to know these things so that they make the present comprehensible… Also, many people are victimized by these things, and we need to come to terms with that. Healing has to take place,” said Cary.

Cary said that “there might be a self-satisfaction that we get out of studying genocide and saying   ‘we’re so much better than they were’. This makes us perhaps less vigilant to the problems in our own societies.  So as we study and ask these questions, we should ask what could make us prone to ignore some of the lessons that we think we’re learning.”

Brode said, “we hope that it will be a long-term, ongoing project for Seton Hill, for the community, and we think it has the potential to involve many people…we’re hoping that interest in genocide and Holocaust studies will prompt you to look at events in the world today and perhaps study the past to understand the present.”