By Kate Martinez
Dr. Tom Holub has completed his sabbatical after spending the last semester doing research at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
Holub is a senior professor in the School of Education at Edgewood College who works to help train special education teachers, and he has spent a lot of time learning about people who have been marginalized by their disabilities.
His initial interest started after he was invited to give a speech at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie, Ill. about people with disabilities during the Holocaust. He was later contacted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to apply for a fellowship opportunity.
“That just sort of evolved into me meeting some people, and they were interested in my work,” Holub said.
From there, he worked at the museum for three summers and focused on studying the different ways that people living in concentration camps held on to hope.
Last semester, Holub was granted a sabbatical by the college, so he reached out to the museum to do further research. While in Washington D.C., Holub worked with the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies under the mentorship of Dr. Patricia Heberer at the USHMM.
Holub has now completed his manuscript, titled “Hope in Desperation: Voices of Holocaust Survivors,” and he has been traveling to speak about his research. Holub’s research has been featured in the Holocaust Museum’s own publication.
Holub interviewed 34 Holocaust survivors, who were all children during the time, and they reflected on what things helped them persist, such as religion and family.
“I tried to unpack different ways that those survivors, or people during their ghetto experience, how hope might have helped them stay alive,” Holub said. “I looked at it with all these different lenses.”
A goal that Holub has is for his research and this theme of “generalizing hope” to be applied to other current issues, such as the Black Lives Matter, women’s rights, and LGBTQ movements.
“I believe that hope could be fundamental to the change that we need to make,” Dr. Holub stated.
In October, he will travel back to Washington D.C. to find out if his manuscript will be published. Holub hopes to do further research on the hope of the people with living with disabilities during the Holocaust and continue speaking about his research across the country.
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