Blugolds Featured in BBC, National Geographic Documentaries
UW-Eau Claire's Dr. Harry Jol and a team of research students highlighted, the team’s use of ground-penetrating radar helps locate mass graves of the Holocaust
UWEC Integrated Marketing and Communications |
Students at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire have rare and unique research opportunities. They discover examples of this every semester. From therapeutic gloves for Parkinson’s disease patients to building a robotic dog or tracking the changing landscape in a Minnesota flood plain, Blugolds do it all.
But this is a first: Dr. Harry Jol, professor of geography, and a team of research students are featured in a National Geographic documentary that highlights the team’s use of ground-penetrating radar to locate mass graves of the Holocaust at sites across Eastern Europe.
Streaming on the National Geographic channel since mid-September, “The Hidden Holocaust” features several scenes and interviews depicting Jol’s ongoing research project called The Holocaust Mapping Program, work he and students have been conducting for more than seven years in places like Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, along with other locations in the former Soviet Union.
Jol’s ongoing research has been funded through the International Fellows Program at UW-Eau Claire, the L.E. Phillips Family Foundation and University Foundation donor Jeff Liddicoat. Jol's work also has been supported by numerous in-country partners, such as the Jews in Latvia Museum and the Uniting Foundation of Latvia.
NONE OF THE SITES WE WORK ON ARE EVER EXCAVATED, BUT THE RADAR IMAGERY ALLOWS FOR ESTIMATES OF DEATH TOLLS. THE STORY THAT EVENTUALLY UNFOLDED IS TRULY UNIMAGINABLE.
DR. HARRY JOL
RESEARCHER, UW-EAU CLAIRE GEOGRAPHY PROFESSOR
“This National Geographic documentary is actually drawn from a different documentary by the BBC, called ‘How the Holocaust Began,’” Jol explains.
This earlier film includes the team working in additional sites and with a strong focus on the tragic story from Alytus, Lithuania, where a suspected 8,000 people were executed in mass burial pits in the woods outside the town.
“None of the sites we work on are ever excavated, but the radar imagery allows for estimates of death tolls,” Jol says. “The story that eventually unfolded is truly unimaginable.”
The specific footage featuring the UW-Eau Claire team in the National Geographic and BBC films was shot in 2022, and the American research team that summer included: Dr. Harry Jol; Delia Ihinger; Taylor Phillips; Tristan Wirkus; Michael Barrow; Isabel Radtke; Bri Jol; Dr. Phil Reeder of Duquesne University; and Christopher Newport University's Caroline Hayes and Mikaela Martinez Dettinger.
"The work in Central and Eastern Europe that Dr. Jol engages UWEC undergraduates in not only has deep historical significance but also is incredibly meaningful for all involved," Dr. Erica Benson, executive director of UW-Eau Claire's Office of Research and Sponsored Programs, said.
For former student researcher Tristan Wirkus, seeing the research and the discoveries make their way to such an accessible platform as National Geographic is exciting and gratifying.
“This and other documentaries are taking the hard facts we learned through the research and launching it out into the world,” Wirkus says. “While it may be unpleasant to learn the details, people must recognize that the Holocaust wasn't just in the concentration camps as part of the ‘Final Solution.’ Knowing how it really started in these hidden pockets of Europe is invaluable in a world where tensions can rise and history must never repeat itself.”
Another former researcher on the 2022 summer team, Delia Ihinger, said she, too, is very glad to see this important history disseminated by National Geographic and the BBC – outlets with a much more popular reach than academia and traditional research publications.
“That's why this project, and others like it, are so important. These stories deserve to be found and told, these people deserve the respect that they did not get in their deaths,” Ihinger said.
Jol and a team of students will return next year to Eastern Europe, where sadly, there are more Holocaust discoveries to be made.
Read the full story from UW-Eau Claire online at uwec.edu/stories. The 2022 student team's research blog can be viewed online through StoryMaps. All of Dr. Jol's research history and dissemination of findings can be viewed online at www.jolgpr.org.
