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Paying a price for service. In The Oxford Project, photographer Peter Feldstein and journalist Stephen Bloom return to the small town of Oxford, Iowa after an interval of 20 years to photograph the residents a second time and ask them about their lives. Jim Hoyt, Sr. recalls serving in World War II, fighting in the Battle of the Bulge and witnessing the concentration camp at Buchenwald:

Contributed by Ken Smith on 11/20/2009
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Twitter Times. The New York Times experiments with social media, setting up "curated lists" of Twitter users sorted by topic. Interested in the latest comments and developments on topic X? They've probably got a list for you.

Contributed by Ken Smith on 11/18/2009
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Eight documents that shape human rights. Neighboring IPFW's Human Rights Institute offers a list of eight historic documents that have served to define the rights and protections each individual is entitled to as a citizen. These documents are one kind of protection against the excesses of human hatred and violence, but they require many other elements to achieve their intended results: systems of law and the people who make them work; communities of conscience; journalists and scholars to seek and publish the truth; political leaders who raise us up by their example; citizens who gather together in groups to work for progress and to protect those in danger, and more.

We publish this ten-part series of resources for readers interested in the Holocaust and human rights, in gratitude for the work of South Bend's own Kurt Simon, who was able in the 1930's to help members of his own family flee Germany before they were swept up in the Holocaust and who continues as a benefactor in support of arts and other public works that build awareness of the Holocaust. The series concludes on the date of publication by IUSB's Wolfson Press of the second expanded edition of Gabrielle Robinson's biography, Kurt Simon: Businessman and Benefactor. Thank you, Kurt Simon.

Contributed by ADP / SB on 11/17/2009
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Misconceptions about the Holocaust. The Illinois Holocaust Museum, located in Skokie, offers a web page containing discussions of about twenty misconceptions about the Holocaust. Elsewhere on the museum site, learn about resources provided by the museum to visitors online and in the Chicago region.

Contributed by ADP / SB on 11/17/2009
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Holocaust oral histories recorded in 1946. A professor from Chicago, David P. Broder, traveled to Europe in 1946 for the purpose of gathering first-person accounts of the concentration camps from survivors, and he was able to record about 90 hours of interviews in several languages, touching on many of the camps and events from across the years of Nazi rule. These recordings are made available with audio and transcripts at the Voices of the Holocaust site. Consider, for example, the lengthy interview with Otto Feuer, a native of Vienna who spent nearly the entire length of the war in concentration camps.

Feuer hesitates to explain his experiences because, he says, "it's not to be told in such a short time about the experience of someone in the concentration camp." And yet he does share some representative pieces of his experience and his reflections.

Contributed by ADP / SB on 11/16/2009
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Indianapolis resources for Holocaust education. The Bureau of Jewish Education, located in Indianapolis, offers five kinds of support for education in Indiana on the Holocaust:

* Teacher Education Workshops
* Tolerance Trunks (portable collections of resources)
* Tours of the Albert and Sara Reuben Holocaust Memorial
* A Speakers' Bureau of Holocaust Survivors and their Children
* Library Research Opportunities

Contributed by ADP / SB on 11/16/2009
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Hate speech and the Internet. In a podcast series from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, researcher Danah Boyd considers the openness of hate speech online:

What does it mean to think about the kinds of community organizations that we need to help address antisemitism, to help address all sorts of hate activities and prejudice in digital spaces? Not to look at the technology as the source of it, but to think about interventions. You can blame the technology and hope that it will go away, or you can look at it as an amazing opportunity to see what's going on and actually work to address the problem at its core.

Read or listen to the rest of Boyd's discussion of hate speech and new media and her balanced thoughts about hope:

Because, in some ways, when you see young people recognizing the darker sides of the world, they're some of the most passionate people to really try to embrace and change the world, because they've got a long time to be living in it. And so, in some ways, them growing up with the fact that hate is not ended at this point allows those with a passion for tolerance to really engage.

Contributed by ADP / SB on 11/15/2009
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The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum online. Readers interested in the work of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum can visit in Washington, view the website, or even use Twitter to follow brief updates of their unfolding work as "a living memorial, inspiring citizens to confront hatred, promote human dignity and prevent genocide."

Contributed by ADP / SB on 11/14/2009
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The Holocaust via IU Press. More than two dozen books from Indiana University Press address many aspects of the Holocaust, including the writing of witnesses and survivors, historians, philosophers, and other scholars who bring a great variety of perspectives on those years. Each book cover image includes a link to a more detailed description of the contents, serving as a preview.

Contributed by ADP / SB on 11/13/2009
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Newspapers still reporting on the Holocaust. The New York Times gathers 5500 articles that continue to report on the Holocaust itself, its aftermath, the issues that are involved, and lives and events that continue to unfold, on a site called The Holocaust and the Nazi Era. Some pieces open up hints of the past in haunting and moving ways -- for example, read (and listen to) the article on the recovery of the 1944 radio recording of "The first Jewish religious service broadcast from Germany since the advent of Hitler.” (Audio link.)

Contributed by ADP / SB on 11/13/2009
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