Good morning GHA fans! As we move towards the halfway point, students are really delving into their coursework with field trips and projects...
RA Nikki Garcia works on blowing up a raft for Patrick Raney's Conservation Biology class's field trip down the Buffalo River.
On the other hand, this means that faculty have begun cutthroat battles for computer lab time, and this intern is caught in the crossfire. Nevertheless, judging from the pictures from Sunday night's baseball game, students seemed to enjoy last week's activities.
Last night, students encountered another individual who overcame tremendous obstacles in his life: Moshe Baran, a Holocaust survivor and member of the partisan resistance movement that fought Nazis and disrupted German war efforts from European forests during World War II. Now a speaker for the Holocaust Center of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, Baran told his story through a documentary, maps, and his own account of his life before, during, and after the war. A native of Poland and only 19 when the war began, Baran worked at a Nazi labor camp and lived in a Jewish ghetto. In 1942, he escaped the ghetto to fight for the resistance movement along with 30,000-40,000 other Jews.
Students were eager to learn about Baran's extraordinary life and asked intriguing questions about both his own experience and cultural and political attitudes during the war. Prompted by student questions, he discussed what America was like when he first arrived here in 1950. He said of the contrast between America and Poland at the time, "To me...it was amazing that people of different races and ethnic groups could live together and not kill each other."
Baran ended his talk by relating his experience with connections to contemporary politics and cultural issues. Having both experienced the Holocaust in Europe and witnessed segregation in the United States during the 1950s, he emphasized the importance of tolerance. His final words of advice for our students? "Language can heal, and language can kill," a message that anyone, young or old, can appreciate.
Tonight, Dr. Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, will be giving a lecture on science. Stay tuned for more updates!
