Jaclyn Figg

Staff Writer

It has been said one thing can’t exist without it’s opposite; there wouldn’t be love without hate.

How do the lovers then combat the haters, how do they evade hate crimes due to ethnicity, religion, class, gender identity, appearance and so on?

Education is one way the Department of History’s Holocaust Memorial Project makes a stand.

“This is an effort to achieve greater communal understanding of the Holocaust but also to identify warning signs of hatred and to combat intolerance in society,” said Justin Dolan Stover, assistant professor in the Department of History.   

April 14 and 15 mark the third annual Holocaust Memorial project at ISU.

Holocaust survivors were brought in to speak to ISU students in previous years, but this year the department decided to take a different route.

“I really wanted to stem away from all the shock and horrors from the holocaust and make it beneficial to teach it and so what I wanted to do is get teachers involved,” said Melissa Danielson, secondary education and history major.

One of the focuses for this year is to get teachers from various places involved to discuss different methods of teaching the Holocaust.

Friday April 15 there will be a roundtable discussion with educators from Idaho State University, Bonneville, Skyline and Renaissance high schools to discuss different methods of teaching the Holocaust to students. The event is open to anyone who wants to join 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in ISU Liberal Arts Building room 327.

“What I think the whole emphasis of this is to not only spread awareness of the holocaust and commemorate it but then to help educate the next generation of teachers,” Stover said.

The goal is to discuss how to teach the Holocaust through exploration of literature and political discourse.

“I wanted to bring in teachers to come talk to the students here and say what their methodology and their pedagogy is with the holocaust, what they do and how they tie it in with today,” Danielson said.

Straying away from just the history department, this year the event is bringing in instruction from different disciplines.

A film will show each night in the ISU LA Building room 324 at 6 p.m.

Thursday night April 14 the Italian film “Life is Beautiful” will run, then Friday night “The Pianist” with discussion to follow both evenings.

“I think the way we offer different areas of study, we’re talking about literature and film and how to teach it, I think that’s going to be important,” said Matthew Bingham, President of the Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship.

Kicking off the event, there will be a literature discussion Thursday from 1 to 2:15 p.m. in the LA building room 327.

Matthew Levay, assistant professor of English will examine “Austerlitz,” a novel by German writer W.G. Sebald addressing the Holocaust and World War II.

Proceeding Levay’s instruction, Stover will discuss Adolf Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf,” providing historical background and its contribution to the reign of the Third Reich.

“We’re placing in context some readings about the holocaust and then discussion, so it’s interactive,” Stover said.

Instead of an expository event where there is a public speaker and an audience, this year event coordinators wanted it to be interactive; discussion is encouraged after each event.

According to Stover, Laine Butte, an ISU graduate as of December, came up with the literature and movie nights to make it more interactive. 

Perhaps with recent political events and intolerance on the ISU campus, the community of Pocatello and ISU should watch out for signs of hatred and work together to combat it. 

“Even with the holocaust you can have the seed bed of hate and all it takes is events to bring it to the fore,” Stover said.