CSM Group Travels to Amsterdam to Learn More About the Holocaust

Some College of Saint Mary students, faculty and staff used spring break to immerse themselves in the culture of the Netherlands as they traveled to Amsterdam to learn more about the significance of the Holocaust.

The group, led by Assistant Professor Mark Gudgel, EdD, traveled from Omaha to Amsterdam on March 18. The itinerary included visiting the Anne Frank House, the National Holocaust Museum and Westerbork Concentration Camp.

For Nursing Instructor Mary Lopez, the trip to Amsterdam was personal. Her father was from Emmen, Holland. “During World War II, he worked for the Dutch Underground to deliver food and messages to Jews in hiding,” she said. “He was captured by the German Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp for two years.”

Her father was imprisoned in the same camp – Bergen-Belsen – as Anne Frank.

Lopez learned that Jewish nurses played a vital role during the Holocaust, rescuing more than 600 Jewish children before they were transported to concentration camps. “These nurses risked their lives to save others,” she said. “They were clever in how they coordinated these rescues. When the city street train would pass and the guards could not see, they smuggled children in laundry carts or handed them to a designated person on the train.”

While visiting these historic locations, first-year student Jessenia Florez was moved by the stories of those concentration camp prisoners who clung to their faith and hoped they would make it back to their families.

“There were so many families torn apart,” she said.

Over the past two years, research and instruction librarian Hannah Wilkes has helped plan events and community education opportunities for Holocaust Remembrance at CSM. The trip gave her an opportunity to gain more context. Her great-grandparents had also emigrated from Jewish communities in Poland and Lithuania.

“Having read the ‘Diary of Anne Frank’ at a young age, climbing the very steep steps into the real attic was a powerful moment,” she said. “I was similarly overwhelmed at the National Holocaust Museum, which did an amazing job of centering the lived experiences of Dutch Jews before, during and after the Holocaust.”

Faculty, staff and students who attended the trip included Gudgel, Hannah Wilkes, Mary Lopez, Alex Gonzalez, Rosario Chaclan, Valerie Ramirez, Jessenia Florez, Shacty Alvarez Hurtado, and CSM President Heather Smith.