Dr. Shelly Cline, the director of education and historian at the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education (MCHE), is celebrating a decade of service to the organization.
In recognition of her anniversary, MCHE staff interviewed her about her work. The following is an abridged version of the interview:
As an academically trained historian, what made you choose to utilize your degree in public history?
“Initially, I really did think academia was going to be my path, and there is something very exciting about teaching people at a time when their worldview is still forming and shifting. And so, when I first moved into this public history space, I wondered how that would change — how it would be to reach audiences that are more set in the ways that they think. They're living their fully formed adult lives, and so how can my work impact that? I came to realize how much education still needs to be done for the general public. There's clearly a need to understand how genocides occur, how ordinary people are involved and how democracy can be dismantled.”
You are a modern Europeanist, but you wish you had learned more about the interwar period and have been very active in adding that history to your areas of expertise. Why has that history become so important to you and how you teach the Holocaust?
“When I was learning to be a historian, that early period really was glossed over. I think before we assumed not that the Nazi regime was a foregone conclusion, but that there was so much focus on those years as opposed to how we got there. The more I started looking at the Weimar period, the more resonance I see that it has for our world today.
“Starting to tell a Holocaust story in 1933, in many ways, is really jumping in the middle of things. So, it's become essential to me for people to understand how Germany transformed and how the lives of average citizens changed before we start to ask questions about what they did during the Holocaust. It's an incomplete picture to get them at the moment when we start to see persecution of Jewish people happen as opposed to how their own state transformed.”
What is your proudest accomplishment at MCHE?
“The thing I’m most proud of is our European trip in 2023 — working to plan the pre-education sessions, the way we worked to build our travelers into a cohesive team and creating this impactful experience for our travelers.”
You are known to have a bit of wanderlust. Why is traveling so important to you, and what location has had the most impact on your understanding of the Holocaust?
“Traveling is important to me because there's nothing like being in the space and seeing not just the location, like the site of Auschwitz, but also where it’s located in relation to the surrounding town. What are the people there like today? How is this history still a part of the fabric of the community? So I think that when you go to a place, you're not just the closest you'll ever be to that history because you're in the space it happened, but you get a chance to see how that continues to impact that space today.
“Or seeing the reuse of space in Ravenbrück where the barracks of the SS women were turned into youth hostels. Being in what’s left of the space was important.
“Going to Auschwitz to see it in comparison to other camps is also impactful. Obviously, being there is its own thing. But then, once you've been to Auschwitz, [at] every other camp you go to you're thinking about size and scope and purpose in comparison to that particular location.
“Going to Vilnius did really impact my understanding of how the Holocaust is memorialized in Eastern spaces. What we think of in the West as the meaning of the Holocaust [compared to] to a space in the East and seeing that Holocaust obfuscation — both in terms of how Ponar was remembered, and then in the State Museum, that at the time was called "Museum to Genocide" that had no mention of the Holocaust — was really impactful for expanding my view of how other parts of Europe deal with their Holocaust history.”
MCHE has a small team that is very close to each other. What does it mean to you to be part of this group?
“This is difficult work that we do, and I think that one of the things that makes it possible is the support of the people around me, and the small but mighty team that we have. I'm particularly grateful to Jessica [Rockhold] for her leadership and the trust she has placed in me to use my natural creativity to enhance our programming and contribute to the vision of MCHE.”
The full interview is available in the spring/summer issue of the MCHE newsletter, available at mchekc.org/about/newsletter.
Those who would like to acknowledge Dr. Cline’s work over the last decade are invited to submit a tribute in her honor at mchekc.org/tribute.