Bringing history, technology, and testimony together in a powerful format, The team at "Through Hell to the Midwest" maps Holocaust survivors' oral testimonies using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). These maps tell the stories of individual survivors from Central and Eastern Europe, who survived the horrors of the Holocaust, and then rebuilt their lives in the American Midwest.
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In the past decade, researchers have tackled key issues in Holocaust studies, especially focusing on Jewish survival and resistance. Traditional narratives often emphasize 1938-1945, overlooking Jewish life before the Holocaust and how survivors rebuilt afterward. This project joins efforts to explore both the devastation of the Shoah and the resilience of Jewish communities before and after.​​​
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We take a geographic approach, examining Holocaust experiences through spatial histories. Studies of postwar Jewish life still lean heavily on narratives centered in Europe, North America, and Israel, with little focus on smaller U.S. communities like Kansas City or the rural Midwest. This project aims to address this oversight.
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Mapping survivor testimonies uncovers fresh insights. Holocaust studies usually focus on specific sites, like Auschwitz or regional communities, but this narrow lens creates a static view. By analyzing survivors from across Europe, we see the vast geographic upheaval they endured during and after the Holocaust.
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“This mapping project is a remarkable achievement in terms of accessibility and relevance. It makes the survivors’ experiences real and concrete in a way that only geography can and, by adding the documents, it clearly refutes any attempt at denying that this happened. We are grateful that the survivors’ stories will move forward in such a dynamic and engaging way.”
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Jessica Rockhold, Director of the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education
"Through Hell to the Midwest is a remarkable project for a number of reasons. First of all, it is a model cooperative digital humanities project in which scholars, graduate students, archivists, and educators are working together to reveal information about the life trajectories of survivors that is not as easily visualized or made legible without the help of these modern methods and technology. But more importantly, on a collective level, since these are all survivors who landed, for one reason or another, in Kansas City, it is a reminder of the fact the Holocaust is not some history far remote and space and time, but a history that is close to home and an integral part of the American experience. These KC survivors could have been your neighbors. Thus their wartime struggle and pain, their family histories, as well as their multifaceted contributions to postwar life in Kansas City, are part of our story as well.”
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Stephen Naron, Director of the Yale Fortunoff Archives