{"id":27458,"date":"2019-06-27T05:30:48","date_gmt":"2019-06-27T10:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=27458"},"modified":"2019-06-27T01:50:24","modified_gmt":"2019-06-27T06:50:24","slug":"discovery-of-unexpected-heritage-turns-apsu-graduate-into-budding-holocaust-scholar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2019\/06\/27\/discovery-of-unexpected-heritage-turns-apsu-graduate-into-budding-holocaust-scholar\/","title":{"rendered":"Discovery of unexpected heritage turns APSU graduate into budding Holocaust scholar"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – In 2017, the Austin Peay State University (APSU) student Shawn Harding discovered his family had fled Eastern Europe following a violent persecution of that region\u2019s Jewish residents.<\/p>\n

In 1905, a nice Catholic family from the Ukraine\/Poland border immigrated to the U.S. with very few belongings and one big secret \u2013 they weren\u2019t Catholic. More than 110 years later, the family\u2019s great-grandchildren finally learned the truth.<\/p>\n

\"Austin<\/a>

Austin Peay graduate Shawn Harding. (APSU)<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were killing the Jewish people, so my family left,\u201d Harding said. \u201cOur past was obscured because they saw what happens to Jewish people.\u201d<\/p>\n

The unearthing of this long-forgotten secret led Harding on a search for other family members still living in Eastern Europe. His quest didn\u2019t end with a happy reunion. After months of research, he learned many of the Polish and Ukrainian members of his bloodline disappeared around 1943 or 1944, presumably the victims of concentration camps.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I found all this out, in the summer, I was preparing an independent study for my research course in my master\u2019s degree, which would take place in the Spring of 2019,\u201d he said. \u201cI wanted to study the Holocaust, and my professors at Austin Peay really invested in me.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a political science undergraduate, Harding created a research website called The Holocaust Blueprint, www.theholocaustblueprint.org<\/a>, which provides educational resources and interactive maps of Holocaust sites in Europe.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went through and documented every location of the ghettos in German-occupied Poland and other countries in Europe, so students and professors can use this resource for free,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Continuing the Journey at APSU<\/h3>\n

After earning his bachelor\u2019s degree in political science with a minor in international relations, Harding looked for a graduate program that would help him continue his research into this subject. In the fall of 2017, he enrolled in Austin Peay\u2019s Master of Professional Studies program with a concentration in Strategic Leadership. The program is an interdisciplinary graduate degree in the social sciences.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I switched to my master\u2019s degree, I wanted to study ghetto leadership, how the Judenrat, the Jewish council, functioned as a government,\u201d he said. \u201cIn the summer of 2018, I went to Poland, and my master\u2019s program allowed me to earn credit for what I was doing. I studied with some of the top Holocaust professors in Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n

[320left]Harding\u2019s research revealed that the Judenrat had a significant impact on their ghetto populations through control of food supplies and other means of day-to-day life; however, they were restricted to what the Nazi regime allotted to them. This limited form of government, however, did not provide the Jewish people with a voice inside the ghettos.<\/p>\n

\u201cGetting the Jewish people to vote while they were starving to death was impossible,\u201d Harding said. \u201cCorruption began because life and death was on their doorsteps.\u201d           <\/p>\n

While in Poland, Harding visited the Jewish ghettos, along with Auschwitz and the other camps where his family likely died.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was hard,\u201d he said. \u201cBut my whole focus was to learn about the Holocaust, and if I hadn\u2019t gone over there, my perspective would have been entirely different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, the APSU graduate is continuing his research while also writing about the Holocaust as a blogger for The Times of Israel. He\u2019s thinking of pursuing a law degree, with a focus in international human rights, or continuing his studies in a doctoral program. Whichever route he chooses, he credits his alma mater with giving him the freedom to pursue his passion.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a student, it was an amazing adventure here at Austin Peay, being able to do what I do,\u201d he said. \u201cI liked the way Austin Peay approaches students and classroom sizes. For me, it was the better option.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – In 2017, the Austin Peay State University (APSU) student Shawn Harding discovered his family had fled Eastern Europe following a violent persecution of that region\u2019s Jewish residents. In 1905, a nice Catholic family from the Ukraine\/Poland border immigrated to the U.S. with very few belongings and one big secret \u2013 they weren\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[23,262,512,825,9793,7386,30111,27542,5323,33784],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-78S","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27458"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27458"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27459,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27458\/revisions\/27459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}