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TRACES is an innovative, non-profit educational organization created to gather, preserve and present the stories of people from the Upper Midwest and Germany who encountered each other during World War II. Many of these stories have lain beneath the dust left in the wake of a World War that most people thought never touched the American Heartland. TRACES is calling this conference as a forum for scholars and community members to openly learn, think, and speak about issues involving prisoners of war (POWs). This inaugural conference on WWII POWs promises to unearth an amazing legacy, nurture qualities of humane understanding, and foster thoughtful responses to today's challenges, armed with actual models from the past.
The gathering offers participants an exciting list of speakers, including keynote speaker Lewis Carlson (professor emeritus of history at Michigan State University), who with panelist Norbert Haase (a Dresden museum director) wrote We Were Each Other’s Prisoners/Warten auf Freiheit, an oral history which mirrors TRACES’ vision and the conference’s theme. Additional panelists include Heino Erichsen (once a German soldier and POW, he now heads a Texas-based international adoption agency), Howard Hong (a retired professor of philosophy who toured most Midwestern POW camps during WWII as representative of the
War Prisoners Aid of the World YMCA) and Mike Waters (a Texas A & M anthropology professor who heads POW-camp excavations). Tuesday evening’s Film Night will feature Sharon Young (maker of The History Channel’s excellent documentary Nazi POWs in America), Camilla Calamandrei and Robert Galloway (both invited,) and other POW-film makers, including Steven Balvanz and Michael Schaubach.
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