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Faculty share lessons learned through Holocaust |
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Tuesday, 11 September 2007 |
by ALLISON CASEY
Lifestyles Reporter
At age 3, Dr. Zohara M. Boyd was running through the streets of Poland with her parents as bombs exploded around them.
The event had become so ordinary, she asked her parents, “Why are you afraid? It’s just bombs.”
Boyd is the co-director of the Office of Judaic, Holocaust and Peace Studies at Appalachian State University.
She was born in Piotrkow, Poland in 1942 during the formation of the first ghettos of World War II.
At three months old, her father acquired false Catholic baptismal certificates and escaped to Warsaw.
“It was strange that we went to Warsaw when Jews were known to be fleeing Warsaw,” Boyd said.
Boyd and her family lived in Warsaw from 1942 to 1945 by hiding in plain sight - a practice known as
“walking on the Aryan side.”
Her family was the only group of survivors from her village.
“If you see someone bullying
someone and you stand vacant and smiling, just be aware of what you’re doing. These are the small
holocausts of the soul.”
-Dr. Zohara M Boyd, co-directory of the Office of Judaic, Holocaust, and Peace Studies |
After relocating to France, and then to Canada, Boyd came to the United States in 1951 with her family.
Dr. Peter W. Petschauer, a retired Appalachian history professor, is the son of an S.S. officer.
He and Boyd began speaking at high schools together about six years ago.
During a trip to Europe last year, Petschauer discovered documents in his stepmother’s apartment that
put the final pieces in the puzzle he had been attempting to solve since 1971.
Growing up, Petschauer’s father gave little indication as to his past as an S.S. officer.
He recently published a book in German called “The Father and the S.S.”
 Special to The Appalachian
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“It’s been a very interesting road,” he said. “That’s why I wrote the
book, because you have to deal with who is your father, what they did,
how do you explain his enthusiasm for the regime…It took me a while to
figure out how to manage that in my own soul, so to speak.”
Petschauer’s father grew up in Yugoslavia and was employed as an
economic developer in Berlin. His job was to help Yugoslavians find
jobs in Germany.
When his office was taken over by Heinrich Himmler, he was relocated to northern Italy in 1939, and placed into the S.S.
“But the question remains the same…what you think as a child is a very
decent and honorable person,” Petschauer said. “I have no serious and
good explanations for it.”
Petschauer said he is amazed at how much the stories of himself and
Boyd interconnect, despite the fact that they come from opposite ends
of the spectrum.
“Her and my story interconnect beautifully,” he said, “We came to the
same conclusions. Her story is the story of someone whose family was
persecuted by the Germans and mine was not. It’s the
opposite, and yet we came to the same conclusion.”
Of these conclusions, Petschauer said we must learn to fight
totalitarian regimes at all levels and learn the proper ways to treat
one another.
“We have done terrible things to people as a society, in Iraq, for
example,” he said. “What Dr. Boyd and I are trying to do is to show how
easy again it is for people to explain to themselves, ‘well that’s
okay, you can torture people, you can abuse people, you can shoot
civilians...’”
Boyd said she still sees shocking examples of anti-Semitism, including hearing offensive jokes.
During the oil shortage in the 1970’s, Boyd saw “Burn Jews, not oil,” written on the subway walls in New York.
“You don’t suppress their right to free expression,” Boyd said. “But don’t let them think your silence implies consent.”
The lessons of the Holocaust need to be applied to everyday life, Boyd said.
“Be mindful of your own life,” she said. “If you see someone bullying
someone and you stand vacant and smiling, just be aware of what you’re
doing. These are the small holocausts of the soul.”
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