Amanda Romeiser
This March over spring break, I will be traveling in Europe, studying the World Wars and the Holocaust with the Study Tour Faculty Led Program to the Netherlands and France. We will be departing from the Philadelphia International Airport on Wednesday, March 8, and returning on Sunday, March 19. This study tour will be accompanied by a course during the spring semester of 2017, which will be taught and the tour will be led by Dr. Michael Hayse, director of the M.A. Program in Holocaust and Genocide Studies and Associate Professor of History, Mrs. Gail Rosenthal, director of the Sara and Sam Schoffer Holocaust Resource Center, and Dr. Mary Johnson of Facing History and Ourselves. The goal of the course is to broaden our understanding of the Holocaust, including the essential background information of the World Wars in order to prepare us for the experiential core of the course, which is the study tour components.
The amazing opportunity that this study tour provides the students, and the part that I am most excited about, is the ability to travel with three Holocaust survivors, who were “hidden children” during the war. When I heard about this incredible opportunity, I knew it was something I wanted to be a part of. The survivors, Leo Ullman, Maud Dahme, and Dan Kochavi, will be accompanying us, and we will be visiting sites relevant to their personal stories. Additionally, we will also be tracing the life stories that connect with two of the Stockton student participants, Tyler Eden and Jennie Meltzer. We will be touring the Anne Frank House, the Portuguese Synagogue, the “Hidden Village,” the D-Day landing sites, the Shoah Memorial Museum, and the Drancy concentration camp, to name a few a few of the sites.
Following our return, the student participants will be working on individual projects related to the World Wars or the Holocaust and how the historical sites we visited relate to our personal projects. Unlike some other students going on the Holocaust Study Tour, I am not a history major, pursuing a minor in the Holocaust and Genocide Studies, nor does my family have direct connections to the horrors of the Holocaust. My interest is very personal. I have always been very moved by the events of World War II, and the more I have learned regarding the Holocaust, the more I am made aware of the extreme psychological torture inflicted on the victims and the more I realized the connections the Holocaust has to my future career as a law enforcement officer and forensic psychologist. This is what I want the focus of my project to be. I am very excited about this opportunity, and I am counting down the days until we leave.